MPC 3 -- Let's GO!!

jpeg wrote:

moonlake wrote:So, how stable is the beta? Should I sign up ?

how would anyone know how stable it is if none of us have used it?

no dont sign up

Uhh probably because the folks on the beta team have been running it for a week already?

mmm i see i'm not the only one very worried about the program dropping.
what some fail to understand is how important the classic mpc structure is to some of us, both for production and for live performance. i like very much a lot of the new features but this abrupt change is something that will probably force me to remain with 2.x and have no updates (unless akai will be really really fair and provide some bug fixes for 2.x in the future, a thing that other companies like Ableton do...no new features but bugfixes and stability updates go on for a while after a major upgrade, lets hope for this to happen here as well).

saying that this change is a move "forward" is a misrepresentation in my opinion: Roger Linn envisioned the mpc in a moment in time where the future of electronic music production was all to build, there were no standards, the DAW didn't exist, so he had no preconceptions or comparisons in mind to force his thoughts in a particular direction, and the whole mpc concept was a thing of genius. What is still TODAY relevant in the classic mpc structure is the modularity and versatility of it, something that will surely get lost, what is provided as a substitute is absolutely nothing revolutionary, it is really something we have in every DAW nowadays. This doesn't mean it doesn't have value, it will surely make a lot of users happy, but its no step "forward", its homologation, a very conservative and predictable move.
i get the whole "lets simplify things" but... simplicity must regard form, while content\structure must strive for complexity. High complexity and high versatility in the most simple and usable form, this is what a good design is. i can name quite a lot of recent products that have that kind of vibe (the one that comes to my mind right now is Drambo, a genius "modular groovebox" ios app...)

I still hope there will be room for discussion and that perhaps the sequence\track\program structure can be brought back OR replaced with something truly new and forward thinking, but my hopes are fairly low in this moment.
sorry for the long rant.

8 layers (instead of 4), and slice-based round robins, even simultaneously, that's actually good stuff, though only for piano and drum sounds. I hope this means someone is looking at the sample engine and also doing bug fixes like making mod wheel LFO to work again, to do something as simple as vibrato. And it would be great to have proper legato so I could make a lead sound. Sustain-loop fine-tuning would also be nice. Not to mention wavetables... Or are things like this considered too much of a threat for plugin sales. Like, if users can make their own sounds from samples, it means fewer plugins sold.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:also doing bug fixes like making mod wheel LFO to work again, to do something as simple as vibrato.

Just set an organ with sine wave LFO modulating pitch, set WHEEL > LFO to 100 and saved project. Reloading project and the organ plays with no vibrato until I change mod wheel, all as expected, no corrupted LFO. Is that the correct procedure to recreate the 3.3 Force bug? If so, it would seem to not be an issue in MPC 3.4

Beyond that, no changes to keygroups other than 8 layers and slice motion

MPC-Tutor wrote:Just set an organ with sine wave LFO modulating pitch, set WHEEL > LFO to 100 and saved project. Reloading project and the organ plays with no vibrato until I change mod wheel, all as expected, no corrupted LFO. Is that the correct procedure to recreate the 3.3 Force bug? If so, it would seem to not be an issue in MPC 3.4

Thanks for testing. If it still works after loading a project, then it should be fixed. It's been kind of depressing that I can't even have a sound that has working mod wheel vibrato, except by using e.g. the Hype plugin. Odyssey would sound nice, but its pitch LFO does upwards only, which means out of tune. Someone who has the real thing said that must be a bug and the original's LFO goes both up and down. Small bugs and basic omissions here and there narrow the Force's usefulness in a frustrating way. Oh yes, envelope followers, totally awesome feature, but save/load doesn't work, they don't start running after loading a project, they need to be toggled off/on, one by one, every one of them. I can just hope that MPC3 puts pressure to fix that as well.

They'll most likely add the ability to boot into vintage mode.

emdog wrote:They'll most likely add the ability to boot into vintage mode.

Somebody already asked elsewhere, they said its not possible. They wont be making a dual boot system, you pick one or the other..

Akai says you can convert projects from 2 to 3 & back to 2: https://www.elektronauts.com/t/mpc-thre ... 73139/9306

B-Wise wrote:Akai says you can convert projects from 2 to 3 & back to 2: https://www.elektronauts.com/t/mpc-thre ... 73139/9306

Ruining the version 2 project with a copy of the same kit for every track

Tefty offered some insight into the Track Mutes situation.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Not to mention wavetables... Or are things like this considered too much of a threat for plugin sales. Like, if users can make their own sounds from samples, it means fewer plugins sold.

If they added a wavetable engine to the sampler, I think they'd also have to improve the modulation, the number of envelopes and LFOs (Make their shapes more flexible) to get the most out of them. Even just 2 layers being Wavetable would be amazing.

I think having wavetables in the MPC would bring in many more users and really up it's appeal. Wavetables seem to be the foundation of so many younger producers when they turn to synthesis nowadays.

Oh man i can only imagine the incredible instruments expansions Tutor is going to create with 8 layers and disk streaming. I can foresee Kontakt quality sound expansions for real.

SuperKonquer wrote:Oh man i can only imagine the incredible instruments expansions Tutor is going to create with 8 layers and disk streaming. I can foresee Kontakt quality sound expansions for real.

Unfortunately, the MPC is not kontakt, and it is also not a workstation (Fantom, Motif, Triton/Kronos/Nautilus). Maybe 8 layer keygroups are useful for some, but I have found that the MPC hardware is not optimized for these type of sounds, and all it does it use up the very little and highly valuable sample memory. It is better to just sample directly from a VST, synth or plugin instead of using keygroups. I have a lot of the aforementioned expansions, but I would rather sample a trumpet from my MC-101 than use the "MPC Orchestra" to get a more realistic sound. My friends said the expansions sound cheezy and lame compared to the same beat with hardware sounds or VSTs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 8 layers are for drum samples only, and disk streaming is for audio tracks.

bitermc wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but the 8 layers are for drum samples only, and disk streaming is for audio tracks.

Nope, 8 layers for keygroups as well and disk streaming can be used on any sample, but you can only automatically enable disk streaming on audio tracks.

Any other sample (e.g. samples used in kits and instruments) has to be individually set to stream via the 'project' window, there's no quick way to set all samples to stream (because they know it's likely going to cause too many performance issues). There's also no way to set streaming options in a program itself, it's a project setting, so it's not something expansion developers can pre-configure for you.