Post your views and questions about the Akai MPC2500
By djjudah Sat May 20, 2006 11:28 pm
Although I have DJ'd for over 20 years I am a newbie to production with more money than skills. In the last 3 weeks I have bought:

Dual 2.5 G5
Reason
Ableton Live
KRK 8 Monitors
MPC 2500

I am having a issue with my 2500 and sampling. I am using my iPod with a song that is at 192K but when I assign it to a pad, it sound hollow. Also when you sample do you start you own kit or do you add to the installed kits

Thanks in Advance
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By Spirez Sat May 20, 2006 11:34 pm
djjudah wrote:Although I have DJ'd for over 20 years I am a newbie to production with more money than skills. In the last 3 weeks I have bought:

Dual 2.5 G5
Reason
Ableton Live
KRK 8 Monitors
MPC 2500

I am having a issue with my 2500 and sampling. I am using my iPod with a song that is at 192K but when I assign it to a pad, it sound hollow. Also when you sample do you start you own kit or do you add to the installed kits

Thanks in Advance


I need to double check but i think for the MPC to recognise it properly it needs to be 16-bit 44.1khz

Check the specs in the back of the manual, it should be in there

By _Stilo_ Sun May 21, 2006 10:11 am
I'm afraid he's actually talking about MP3s in 192KBit encoding bandwidth. I just wonder that he hears anything of that at all in the MPC...

You'd have to convert them to WAV in 44.1kHz/16Bit to properly work in the MPC. There's something called DiskWriter plugin for Winamp for example that does this.


Peace,
Stilo.
By ZAM13 Sun May 21, 2006 12:59 pm
djjudah wrote:Although I have DJ'd for over 20 years I am a newbie to production with more money than skills. In the last 3 weeks I have bought:

Dual 2.5 G5
Reason
Ableton Live
KRK 8 Monitors
MPC 2500

I am having a issue with my 2500 and sampling. I am using my iPod with a song that is at 192K but when I assign it to a pad, it sound hollow. Also when you sample do you start you own kit or do you add to the installed kits

Thanks in Advance

Nothing like diving right in ....Looks like a lot of learning to do, This is the type of guy who sells everything in a year because he is still mixing records , But hey Good luck . Concentrait on 1 piece of gear at a time . Learn the MPC then move on to the other programs . learn Live first then reason , You will have a better understanding for reason if you learn it last. I dont think MP3s are compatable with the MPC WAV only at 44-16
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By Spirez Sun May 21, 2006 1:11 pm
Bit quick to judge Zam...

In my opinion i would concentrate on learning the MPC, hook reason up as a sound module and use Ableton to track out.

Reason's not a great lot of use when you've got an MPC AND Ableton. Can be useful for laying down quick ideas but the MPC is still better for this
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By nogginj Sun May 21, 2006 1:18 pm
how so many miss the fact that this is probably referring to sampling from the audio of the ipod is beyond me. like everyone says, mp3s do not transfer to the 2500 digitally. think!

an mp3 is a compressed and lossy form of an audio file. lossy means that once compressed, certain things about the sound are gone, forever. this is why mp3s are so small, and this is why mp3s are not considered professional quality. one of the reasons you might notice the sound difference is what i just explained. this is why sampling direct from vinyl or regular audio cd is preferred....there is a sound and a crispness and with vinyl a warmth that you cannot exactly get with an mp3. now, a 192kbps mp3 i one of the better ones, but there still will be some difference, especially in the higher frequencies like crashes and hi hats. if you really want an example of this, record an mp3 at a low bitrate and listen to a crash, or just re-encode an mp3 over and over a couple times (mp3->mp3->mp3->mp3...transcoding mp3s greatly reduces the quality, even at the same or higher bitrates than the previous).

so yea basically, unmless thats the effect you want, forget about sampling mp3s. keep yer ipod for casual listening and use some wax to sample from yer mixer (im assuming you have a relatively good one).

hope that helps explain things a bit.

By _Stilo_ Sun May 21, 2006 2:19 pm
nogginj wrote:how so many miss the fact that this is probably referring to sampling from the audio of the ipod is beyond me. like everyone says, mp3s do not transfer to the 2500 digitally. think!
...
[a lot of MP3 explanation stuff]
...

Yes, you're right, MP3s don't load on the MPC. But djjudah did say no word about how he transferred the song from his iPod to the MPC, so I don't see that we are missing anything here.

And basically, I don't think that the compression losses in a 192kBit compressed MP3 are audible at all when you play it back and sample it properly. If so, he would recognize the same effect if listening to the MP3 directly, wouldn't he? That effect he mentioned has to do with something else. Maybe he will give us some more insight into what he did exactly.


Peace,
Stilo.
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By nogginj Sun May 21, 2006 5:33 pm
point taken...i just dont see any other way of doing it. of course im assuming and we know what happens when one assumes ;].

anyway i still think if there is an audible noise at all, and it sounds like crap, its probably happneing in the transfer process and my guess is that an mp3 when you really get into one little sound over and over like with a smaple, youll notice it much more than just listening. also, iPod headphones arent going to be as strict as say a studio or dj monitor...plug an ipod into one of those and youll hear the difference. also some people have golden ears.
By djjudah Mon May 22, 2006 4:22 pm
On an earlier post I had an issue with sampling from a MP3 player. Many of you suggested that I on sample from a cd player or record. A friend found the issue. I am not sure what it was but he said he "Normalized the Gain"

Thanks for the input
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By nogginj Mon May 22, 2006 6:47 pm
normalising basically brigns the volume up to a set point. so he basically turned it up. can fill out the sound.

and to all of you who forgot about audio transfers (anyone know what sampling is?) HA! ;p

i keed. the **** attitude on this board is contagious.