MPC 3 -- Let's GO!!

Neodymium wrote:

benway wrote:On the “DAWless’” thing, I’ve always thought it was pretty much a racket - if you make people believe that the laptop is the problem rather than the fact that making good music is hard, then it’s easy to present buying more gear as a solution. But there’s never going to be a single piece that will miraculously make producing a track a breeze from start to finish and cut out all the hard work studying records, music theory, engineering, just learning the tools. As well as the willpower to push through the blocks that come between jamming out an idea and finishing a track. Doesn’t matter what tools you use, this is really what it’s about.

So why do you use an MPC and not just a Laptop?

MPC is just a DAW in a box, but it’s an all in one solution, which for me increases my output a lot. The one thing that prevents me from turning every song inside my MPC into something mastered is the process of interfacing the MPC with the computer and then recording everything in. If MPC3 is even more DAW like and makes this process easier i will be all for MPC3s move towards a more typical DAW like system.

emdog wrote:MPC is just a DAW in a box

It's a little more than that -- it's a DAW in a highly portable box with deeply integrated performance hardware and audio/midi/cv interfaces.

Oscar South wrote:

emdog wrote:MPC is just a DAW in a box

It's a little more than that -- it's a DAW in a highly portable box with deeply integrated performance hardware and audio/midi/cv interfaces.

Yes, I meant to write that as well.

benway wrote:I just don’t get the DAWless DAW crowd.

So many people seem to have convinced themselves that just cramming a full desktop DAW into a dedicated hardware will get them past whatever blocks they have. As if the laptop is the problem, as opposed to having the patience and perseverance to learn the tools and do the difficult part that comes between having the idea and finishing a track. It’s always going to be a worse experience than using a proper DAW unless it comes down to attaching a mouse, keyboard and 19” monitor to your MPC at which point I’m not seeing how it’s different to just using a laptop. And people who want this will never be happy, because fundamentally what they think they need is a contradiction in terms that will never work in reality.

"whatever blocks they have", "As if the laptop is the problem", "patience and perseverance to learn the tools", "people who want this will never be happy"

For me, these assumptions are unrelated. It was simply the centralized overall computer environment that was a thorn.

I love Cubase, in itself. I used it from Pro12/24 all the way until a few years back. I.e. for many years. I gave everything (hardware and software) to a friend of mine that make movies.

The actual problem, for me? Interoperability. I spent an incredible amount of time managing and troubleshooting software, at times. The OS, DAWs, countless plugins, peripheral hardware... updates, upgrades, version mismatch, odd compatibility problems, etc. More time than I wanted to spend on something that has nothing to do with music.

With MIDI and hardware equipment, there are rarely these kinds of problems. So, I just wanted to disconnect my music creation from the computer. I have a lot of equipment (and experience) from over 40 years of music making.

Sure, the MPC X is also a computer, of course, but I only use the sequencer with MIDI tracks and sometimes drum tracks. For audio I use a Yamaha 24-track recorder with a full built-in mixer and MIDI as a companion. Very cool.

With an additional 16-ports of USB3 MIDI, I can control pretty much anything I want from the MPC X.

The MPC X standalone, for me, has been a great solution. I am really looking forward to the new arranger replacing the current "sequencer" screens. Not a necessity, but a fantastic surprise, for me.

"I dont want to work with laptop computer I want MPC but MPC never worked for me cause it's not exactly like my laptop worked so I want MPC to work exactly like my laptop computer worked so I can finally switch from laptop to MPC and people who dont get that should shut up and just use a laptop"

hm.
Probably - I hope - its just the language barrier that confuses me when I try to follow the discussions.
Time to retreat from the topic I guess and wait and see how the actual release will be.

No, not the language barrier, this is one of the standard circular arguments you'll see here and on other social media groups. Hopefully Akai know what they are doing as I doubt most 'DAW users' will ever be happy with the inevitable limitations and compromises of standalone hardware.

moonlake wrote:"I dont want to work with laptop computer I want MPC but MPC never worked for me cause it's not exactly like my laptop worked so I want MPC to work exactly like my laptop computer worked so I can finally switch from laptop to MPC and people who dont get that should shut up and just use a laptop"

hm.
Probably - I hope - its just the language barrier that confuses me when I try to follow the discussions.
Time to retreat from the topic I guess and wait and see how the actual release will be.

So why do you use an MPC and not just a Laptop?

Actually a good question, and with so many answers as there are MPC users.

I'd say laptops are uninspiring. Nobody wants a musical device so generic that it can also be used for spreadsheets and paying your taxes. Also, laptops, like cellphones and tablets, are distraction machines. We need something separate so we can focus on music, and music only.

I think most people wants an all in one musical instrument with as much DAW capabilities as possible...

othernet wrote:
It has more to do with some of the "old-timers" (see what I did there...sarcasm ); having invested so much time in the 2.0 workflow, moving to 3.0 could be a chore. I'd probably feel the same if I spent eons learning Elektron's alchemic workflow only for them to do something else. But I hardly spent time with 2.0, so diving straight into 3.0 isn't too painful. After watching several early users, I think 3.0 seems quite similar to most of the 2.0 workflow and is an improvement—just IMHO.

hmmm not really... more like spending 20 years plus with a great workflow , THE mpc workflow which is based on a Sequence\Track\Program paradigm, this paradigm enabled me to do lots of different stuff, want me to throw some examples:
-live sound & music for theater
-live mute films sonorization
-live performances with loads of options even on small ram specs like the mpc2kxl with which i started my mpc journey in the early 2000's
-song production
-experiments in sound and music

Roger Linn envisioned a kind of mutant machine that has limitations but was flexible enough to do many things wonderfully with limited resources. the current mpc line already gave us some limitations like the silly time signature management, no step recording features other than on list edit (and very awkward there too) and other minor stuff but ok cool, i can manage that.... but now the entire flexibility has gone.
and for what? simplification on the structural side which for some people means dumbing down a workflow that proven EXCEPTIONAL for decades.
i dont get why a lot of people dismiss this common experience.
you just want to bang out a type beat? of course you'll be able to do it on the new os, but know what? i can do it on my old cheap android phone as well. what i'll lose is a very clever environment which isn't replaced by ANYTHING revolutionary or forward thinking. i think is the gamification process (or the dumbing down process) we tend to observe in many fields nowadays (think apple MACOS where you cannot install applications unless they are in the apple store... or you learn how to defeat the gatekeeper... thats treating your customers as children with cognitive issues in my book).

hyena wrote:thats treating your customers as children with cognitive issues in my book).

Have you been following the 3.0 rollout? Or any recent updates in the last few years? They know their demography

Looks like some cool new features added to the arp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIAY98Vqfw?si=ZZkSNTVIUZL2VulZ

It’s always the same with Akai.

1) show the community something new.
2) Roll it out to the influencers to build up the hype even further.
3) we don’t actually pay our influencers so let’s give the influencers some time to make some money on their channels.
4) Release it to the masses..

robleighton22 wrote:Looks like some cool new features added to the arp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIAY98Vqfw?si=ZZkSNTVIUZL2VulZ

That’s cool

zangetsu01 wrote:It’s always the same with Akai.

1) show the community something new.
2) Roll it out to the influencers to build up the hype even further.
3) we don’t actually pay our influencers so let’s give the influencers some time to make some money on their channels.
4) Release it to the masses..

To be fair there are legitimate testers who have it who don't make videos

But like, they could've just waited to announce. What was the purpose of this past 3 weeks?

I hate the fact that they made this some stupid hyped up event. I really wanted to provide feedback but I'm feeling like with this rollout the private beta is basically for actual-factual testing and the public beta is more like a 'preview' or 'demo' i.e. primarily a marketing venue.

Whatever floats their boat but it sucks to have your intelligence insulted.

Summer would have been a great time to release the beta as a lot of people tend to have more spare time to test it. But AKAI is probably dropping it in september or even later when many people won't have a free minute to try it out.

kaydigi wrote:

robleighton22 wrote:Looks like some cool new features added to the arp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIAY98Vqfw?si=ZZkSNTVIUZL2VulZ

That’s cool

+1 thats great