Akai is back at NAMM this year

John Schaefer wrote:
Post a short video clip of your MPC screen cycling through the new type keygroups on the Filter, Envelope or LFO/Mod pages so we can see it changing values per different keygroup.

None of the YouTubers have shown this.

He can't because it won't.. if you click the legacy button on the screen then magically it will work again.. the funny part is the setting for control all keygroups will change per keygroup.. although it is doing absolutely nothing because it doesn't work. Lol.

HUBA wrote:What I don't get is the youtubers not reporting on this. One would think people so dependent on followers, who are literally competing on credibility wouldn't risk their reputation by not mentioning major bugs or downright malfunction.

Conan Liquid is none of the usual suspects, but he has done some videos on recent MPC additions. He is not shy about telling Akai to throw unfinished stuff at their customer isn't a good move.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAn4s7YrND4&t=550s

Masi wrote:

HUBA wrote:What I don't get is the youtubers not reporting on this. One would think people so dependent on followers, who are literally competing on credibility wouldn't risk their reputation by not mentioning major bugs or downright malfunction.

Conan Liquid is none of the usual suspects, but he has done some videos on recent MPC additions. He is not shy about telling Akai to throw unfinished stuff at their customer isn't a good move.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAn4s7YrND4&t=550s

Appreciated. I haven't seen any of his stuff before as I can remember but I'm gonna give him a go now. This forum needs a like button..

[quote="HUBA
Appreciated. I haven't seen any of his stuff before as I can remember but I'm gonna give him a go now. This forum needs a like button..[/quote]
Conan is one of the best. His tips for mixing on the MPC are pure gold. Check him out ASAP!

This review wasn't much but his part about the cons worthwhile. Very honest dude.

kja wrote:

John Schaefer wrote:
Post a short video clip of your MPC screen cycling through the new type keygroups on the Filter, Envelope or LFO/Mod pages so we can see it changing values per different keygroup.

None of the YouTubers have shown this.

He can't because it won't.. if you click the legacy button on the screen then magically it will work again.. the funny part is the setting for control all keygroups will change per keygroup.. although it is doing absolutely nothing because it doesn't work. Lol.

Here's a short video I made with two different keygroups, with each having different settings.



Anything else ..?

Logrinn wrote:Here's a short video I made with two different keygroups, with each having different settings.

Anything else ..?

You appear to be changing tracks not keygroups... Changing keygroups would be going to the keygroup selector at the top and flipping between 1 and 2. You're on the Main page and flipping from track 3 to track 4, which under the new 1-to-1 system on MPC3 means they are different programs.

HUBA wrote:Seems we'll all be getting our share after all. Got to admit I feel pretty glass half full myself today





Unlike with most other previous updates which went more like

OK, this made me Lol.

John Schaefer wrote:You appear to be changing tracks not keygroups... Changing keygroups would be going to the keygroup selector at the top and flipping between 1 and 2. You're on the Main page and flipping from track 3 to track 4, which under the new 1-to-1 system on MPC3 means they are different programs.

Ah, I see.
You mean KEYGROUPS. I thought you meant KEYGROUPS.
(Hmm, unfortunate way of naming stuff)

So if you mean changing to different settings of for instance the filter in the KEYGROUP (not to be confused by the KEYGROUP) then you’d have to use the Legacy mode, where you’d be able to have 128 different filters. But in the new KEYGROUP you’ll have more filters to choose from and two of those that can run in series and parallel - but on the KEYGROUP (not in separate KEYGROUPS).

Hmm, maybe someone should look at naming these differently to avoid confusion.

So regarding the Advanced Keygroups, TBH I haven't had a chance to look into this in any detail at all but to clarify what is being discussed:

A 'keygroup track' can have multiple keygroups.
In legacy, each individual keygroup within a track can have it's own filter, envelope, LFO settings etc
In advanced mode, filter, LFO, envelopes are seemingly 'global' to the entire keygroup track as a whole.

So might seem restrictive in some cases, obvious one would be where I say, have keygroup:1 as a sawtooth, keygroup 2 as a vinyl noise sample. I would likely want the noise to have it's own independent filter, perhaps a fixed high pass, while the sawtooth would have say, a low pass or whatever. And I'd want independent control over each keygroup's envelope(s), for example the sawtooth could be a long release while the noise is set to create an short noise burst.

In legacy this was done directly editing each individual keygroup, now I'm not entirely sure how I'd have the noise with it's own independent adjustable envelope setting in advanced mode.

Open to suggestions on that one, just don't have the time to delve into this as I'm working on a very specific section of the new MPC Bible It might be that some configs are just more suitable with legacy mode, or is this a bug?

Some stuff can be handled elsewhere, for example for a piano I would normally have different release times on the lower note keygroups but that can now be done via the mod matrix using 'key track' mapped to amp env release.

There's also the GLOBAL parameter setting for all the envelopes (bottom right of envelope), which the manual says controls whether the envelope is applied to the current 'voice' or entire keygroup. Not sure exactly what this means....

so looks like Akai have played all their cards for NAMM; so no new hardware; it seems they decided to wait until 3.0 matures to a more stable point before rolling out new hardware.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Open to suggestions on that one, just don't have the time to delve into this as I'm working on a very specific section of the new MPC Bible It might be that some configs are just more suitable with legacy mode, or is this a bug?
...

To be honest I'm fairly confident this is a bug, because the alternative, that is it by design, is just too insane to comprehend. If the intention was that each Advanced Keygroup was its own program, well surely they would have been called Advanced Programs? If you can't have more than one of them in a program why does it let you add more keygroups in the keygroup selector up top?

To be advertising a new all singing and dancing keygroup modulation section and not state clearly that you can only ever have one of them in an entire instrument, seems very odd indeed. The only software sampler on computer that behaves this way is the Logic Sampler, in that the entire instrument only gets an LFO, Envelope and Filter. Every other software sampler has them per keygroup/zone. Samplers from the 1990s like Yamaha and E-mu always had Filter, LFO, Envlopes per-sample not per-instrument.

I feel like they're going to quietly update it to 3.42 and just go 'woops' in the changelog.

Chatting to the beta testers and they feel it's as intended. If you need different env/filter settings per keygroup, use legacy. If you want the other stuff, use advanced, they reckon it's probably a CPU optimisation related to the mod matrix.

One suggestion is to perhaps use the aux envelope to target specific layers via the mod matrix - so instead of two keygroups from my example, use 1 keygroup with the sawtooth on layer 1, noise on layer 2, aux envelope targeting layer 2 to create the desired shaping. I will try it later.

John Schaefer wrote:To be honest I'm fairly confident this is a bug

MPC-Tutor wrote:Chatting to the beta testers and they feel it's as intended. If you need different env/filter settings per keygroup, use legacy. If you want the other stuff, use advanced, they reckon it's probably a CPU optimisation related to the mod matrix.

Absolutely shocking if that is the case.

I understand the CPU optimisation but I don't appreciate Akai being dishonest about the new features. Essentially that is a new program type, not a new keygroup type, and that new program can only really have *one sample*. They're gonna lose people over this, and I'm one of them.

John Schaefer wrote:

MPC-Tutor wrote:Chatting to the beta testers and they feel it's as intended. If you need different env/filter settings per keygroup, use legacy. If you want the other stuff, use advanced, they reckon it's probably a CPU optimisation related to the mod matrix.

Absolutely shocking if that is the case.

I understand the CPU optimisation but I don't appreciate Akai being dishonest about the new features. Essentially that is a new program type, not a new keygroup type, and that new program can only really have *one sample*. They're gonna lose people over this, and I'm one of them.

Has Akai ever been honest about new features?
Nothing different since 7 years.
They don't care if they lose you, they gain a big gang of expansions/presets users anyway, we are at this point.

Maybe let's agree on the terms.

'Keygroup Instrument' is the track itself (or when exported, the 'XPM', previously 'keygroup program').

'Keygroups' are the individual keygroups that make up that instrument, up to 128 of them per instrument, each supporting 8 sample layers and each keygroup with their own note range and keytracking settings.

This is the same in legacy and advanced modes, so not sure why you say advanced mode only supports 1 sample? When combined with 128 sliced samples per layer (via slice motion) we're looking at support for 13,000+ samples per 'keygroup instrument' (in theory, RAM and CPU allowing).

The issue is that in advanced mode, all those keygroups are routed to the same filters and envelopes while in legacy filters and envelopes are unique to each keygroup.

So you can for example, use advanced keygroups to create a multisampled piano comprising of 88 distinct keygroups, each keygroup with 8 layers and 3 round robins per layer. But they must all share the same filter/envelope/lfo settings, which is probably not an issue as there's plenty of options in the mod matrix to handle stuff like filter or envelope keytracking (in legacy mode you'd have to manually configure this per keygroup).

I'm really referring to situations where you want to have a 'keygroup instrument' that contains different envelope/filter configurations per keygroup. This is not possible with advanced keygroups unless it's a bug or achieved via convoluted mod matrix set ups and plugins etc.

John Schaefer wrote:I understand the CPU optimisation but I don't appreciate Akai being dishonest about the new features. Essentially that is a new program type, not a new keygroup type, and that new program can only really have *one sample*.