Support and discussion for all of Akai’s modern standalone MPCs including the MPC X / X SE, MPC Live 1, 2 & 3, MPC One / One+, MPC Key 37/61.
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By oldee Wed Nov 13, 2024 6:11 am
What kind of MPC plugins do you use to for some saturation on a track, aka beef up, get that fuller sound, like that sound that will make your track punch through even on a sh*tty iphone speaker

From my experience I found the Air Enhancer added some nice flavour to my drums and bass. Couldn't find too much on the plugin besides that it is supposed to boost the harmonics. It's definitely trial and error and required some dialing in:
- for the drums I hit a sweet spot close to 200hz, a fair bit of gain, just had to split out my hats because I didn't like what it was doing to them. It really added some nice depth to my kick/snare though
- bass definitely needed more finesse, even slight gain adjustments change the whole mood and tone. was minor but definitely a difference maker

any experiences or tips on the air enhancer or other saturation plugins would be great
By J.O.BEATS Wed Nov 13, 2024 4:24 pm
Tube sounds good on almost everything. I use to use it a lot on drum buss and it always has a place on my master

The drum program efx are good and I use the soft clipper a lot. Also the new air soft clipper will beef up those drums nicely
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By Sense-A Thu Nov 14, 2024 1:06 pm
Audio saturation is a type of distortion that historically comes from overloading the physical components of analog gear. Pumping signals through tubes, transformers, or tape machines for example, turns out to be sonically pleasing to the ear because saturation introduces two new processes to the original signal: compression and harmonic enhancement. Saturation in music can be used as a creative effect such as overdriving a bass, or can be the more subtle byproduct of a signal passing through circuitry.


You can achieve some saturation by harnessing the EQ and compression settings already inside your mpc and tuning the audio levels of each track and sample. Tune the compression gain setting on master out FX.

Use the free Sansamp PSA1 VSTs / modelers / or the hardware pedals/rack. You can adjust drive, crunch, punch, preamp, etc.

Or any amp simulator could add saturation. or tape emulation.

Or you could use guitar pedals such as OVERDRIVE pedals or tape emulation or amp modeling pedals or add extra compressor to your master out. the art pro vla2 comes to mind. Many such units became popular about 10 years ago and some cost anywhere from $300 to thousands.

You could record a song into a cassette recorder and then record it back into your DAW for lots of real tape saturation. It might help glue a track together or give it a new character.