By johnnytravels
Tue Jun 16, 2026 6:25 am
richie wrote:Every time this topic comes up I picture a room full of people demanding scientific-grade recreations of 30-year-old hardware limitations.
"I need the exact S950 filter behaviour." "Not close. Exact." "And the S1000 time stretch." "And the MPC3000 converters." "And the input overdrive." "And the pitch shifting." "And the aliasing."
"And every undocumented quirk caused by aging electronics and manufacturing tolerances."
…
The year is 2041. A thread appears: "Why doesn't the MPC X Mk7 accurately model the unique sonic character of the MPC One Retro Legacy Edition from 2024?"
The cycle is complete.
I get what you’re saying, but I think there’s a difference between aged electronic and general characteristics of a machine that were formative of style.
The woowoowoo of the non-resonant S950 filter for 90s boombap basslines, the graininess of the s1000 time stretch for jungle and DnB and so on.
I think people who want these emulations are not necessarily asking for perfectly accurate characteristics but to the point that the style and texture of the music once dependent on these characteristics can easily be reproduced.
For me it’s a very practical question too: I can record a whole bunch of samples loud into an sp1200, mpc3000 or even 2000xl and the sounds all glue together without any fx. I can’t do that with a live 3 and this is something that’s missing. The MPC sample advertises an oldschool workflow which is cool, but everything still needs a bunch of external post-processing to fit together organically. I’d rather the new boxes didn’t need this.
