MPC 3 -- Let's GO!!

MPC3 Autosampler 8 layers in action // Featuring PWM Mantis

What is round robining exactly? Have read the term a few times in this topic now, but I don't know it (English isn't my first language).

Randomisation, in that case the order of every next sample is randomly generated.

Christov wrote:What is round robining exactly? Have read the term a few times in this topic now, but I don't know it (English isn't my first language).

With layer, you may have 4 layers each controlled by velocity. Then 4 samples, played soft to loud, which typically means quieter to louder and brighter. Creating more realism. But if you want to play the same velocity in succession, say straight 16th hi-hats at velocity 38, you don't want the sound getting louder and brighter, but remain consistent. But now you have exactly the same sample playing 16ths. when you hit a hi-hat with the same force, there is always a variation in tone each time, even though they are not louder or brighter. But with one sample for that velocity, the sample is just repeating. This is sometimes called the machine gun effect.

Round-Robins allows samples played at the same velocity to sound the same brightness and volume, but have a variation in tone that creates and realism. You may have 5 samples of a hi-hat played at the same force assign to the same velocity, but now it will cycle through them to create variation. Sometimes this is in order, samples 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5, and others it's random 1,5,3,4,2,5,4,1,2,3,1,4. depending on how it's implemented.

This applies to all instruments. A bass player may pedal the 5th, meaning play straight notes of the 5th, as the harmony changes around them. having variation in tone for successive notes of the same velocity creates a realism.

This also eats up memory. A sample of a piano having samples every 4th note over an 88 note keyboard is 22 samples. Then having 8 layers of velocity, is 176 samples. When you start adding round robins in, say 5 round robins, you now need 880 samples.

This is where software samplers took over from hardware samplers, with computers having bigger Ram and Drives, such as Kontact. Creating a full Kontact Library is a mission and a half. In programs like Addictive Drums it's far easier to create realistically played drum parts, but if you want to use it to create drum 'n' Bass, you can actually go in and restrict to one sample per velocity switching off round-robins, in order to replicate hardware samplers.

So if anyone is creating MPC libraries with lots of layers and round-robins, hat's off to them, they are really putting in the work.

33 pages and Zero beats made. Lol


Good riddance to the "Program" tho.

kidkeitel wrote:33 pages and Zero beats made. Lol


Good riddance to the "Program" tho.

Did you post any beats on this thread? & programs aren't going away. They will just be Drum Tracks. It was mute states per track on different seqs that was removed & even that's coming back.

Make a beat before its too late, hurry

That's in MPC2. But in MPC3 there's the slice motion thing, which lets even a single "layer" use slices as round robins. If I understood correctly. There can be 128 slices inside a single WAV file, so this beefs up things a lot.

[/quote]
You don't really really understand the implications of the added functionality. You can have the greatest sound in the world or a crappy one, its a sample player, that has never changed. What makes amazing thing possible now is not only can you have 8 layers, but every layer can actually be a longer audio file, and that audio file can be sliced to only play a section of that audio file on a press.

You can round Robin it or random play it. So essentially you can do all sort of things to spice up a sound. Different harmonics, time shifting, detuning pitch, articulations and that's just the start. Imagine putting a chord progression on layer one, guitar articulations on layer 2 and hi hat on layer 3 and having combinations of that round robining and random playing, plus using velocity layer triggers etc etc etc.

For clarity I'm talking about long er audio files that have different chord and different articulations spread out over the wave and then sliced. There can hardly be a reason that one couldn't create amazing eargasiming instruments with this, now that it can be handled by disk streaming.

You are right about the current way the MPC handles keygroups. I don't really find them that useful either due to the high memory impact, but disk streaming a keygroup changes a lot. This shouldn't eat a massive chunk of memory. It opens up a vast amount of possibilities sound creation wise and especially performance wise.[/quote]


I definitely understand the added functionality, I watched Nik Trikakis do stuff like this ok the Force years ago.

All I was getting at is that the hardware isnt currently powerful enough to be effective at this, and even with disk streaming, the MPc wont be as powerful as using Sampletank, Kontakt or Xpand for complex, layered sounds.

The point is that the entire keygroup engine still needs updating. Having 8 keygroup layers is a welcome addition, but to me it just doesnt make sense without a mod matrix, true multi-timbral capabilities.

Heres a prime example: When using a Strings patch, say I want Legato on layer 1, Pizzicato on Layer 2, Marcato on layer 3, and Tremelo on layer 4, but I want to switch between them using the mod wheel and I also want the ability to use vibrato. Because of the limited modulation capabilites, this is impossible. Also, I would love to have the Pizzicato layer arpeggiate, while using the legato layer to sustain simultaineously. Currently, this is not possible on the MPC.

I understand that adding more sample layers makes sense for some users, and Im confident that a few will take andvantage of them, but I still feel like the keygroup engine needs improvements to be used more effectively.

Keygroups don't even have an actual legato mode. Even with "legato" it will re-trigger the new note's sample. Unusable for synth leads. And there's no sustain loop tuning, so short loops such as single cycles will be out of tune relative to the attack portion of the sample.

It's usable for piano/rhodes/pluck kind of sound and drums. That's it. And pads with long sustain loops.

I really think we'll ever see the keygroup engine develop to Kontakt levels, I suspect the only way we can really take things to another level is if they allow third party plugins, but I suspect that's still going to be heavily restricted. Dustyslices was talking about the QUBIQ references in Ring The Alarm

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=217595

QUBIQ is an app/platform that allows for creation of vst plugins, appears to be owned or certainly closely associated with Sonivox (i.e. inMusic, Akai's parent company). So putting 2 and 2 together, you have to assume this is potentially where they are heading with the MPC.

test…

EDIT:
lol sry ‚bout that but for some reason forum blocks me from posting anything else.

—-
in 2.15 onwards, there is also an entry in MPC.settings called ******** (if my memory serves me right). I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen it before but I might be wrong - just a food for thought.

EDIT 2:
OK, seems I can’t post a most important keyword:
<s.c.r.i.p.t.i.n.g_e.n.a.b.l.e.d> - drop the full stops

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Keygroups don't even have an actual legato mode. Even with "legato" it will re-trigger the new note's sample.

I'm not sure a sampler -any sampler- is able to perform a realistic legato.

By definition, legato moves the current note to a different tone without re-triggering the sound. A synth can do that because it generates the waveform on the fly and what it does is transposing it in real time, but a sampler is somehow a different animal and reads a sample every time you trigger a note.

Even if what is playing is not actually the whole sample but a looped section of it, when triggering a new note it needs to read a different sample and break the real legato.

EDIT: there are some exceptions, especially in ROMplers, but that's more because the sounds have been carefully curated to hide the legato breaking point.

That's one of the reasons why sampled synths can't fully emulate real ones, while VSTs can, IMHO.

Yes Cloudflare security in place, was getting hammered a few months ago, our data usage has gone down 90% since running the site via cloudflare.

Scripting enabled sounds very promising.

dustyslices wrote:test…

EDIT:
lol sry ‚bout that but for some reason forum blocks me from posting anything else.

—-
in 2.15 onwards, there is also an entry in MPC.settings called ******** (if my memory serves me right). I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen it before but I might be wrong - just a food for thought.

EDIT 2:
OK, seems I can’t post a most important keyword:
<s.c.r.i.p.t.i.n.g_e.n.a.b.l.e.d> - drop the full stops

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.