Lil Help in Iraqistan

I'm in Iraq and will probably be for a lot longer. I've been out of the beat making game for a long time but I've been inspired and want to start playing with tracks again not to mention I have lots of time on my hands. I used to work with SP-12's and ASR's only, never had an MPC. I decided to have an MPC-2500 sent over to play around with and get my skills up again. Here is my question.

All I have to get my sounds from is my laptop. Obviously I can't ship crates of records over here mixers, turntables etc. I'm looking for a "box" of some kind that I can hook between my laptop and the MPC. Something that will allow me to run from USB to 1/4 phone vise versa. I hope Im making sense. The standard inputs to sample from look like L and R 1/4 phones on the back of the MPC.

Is there such a beast that will plug into my computer via USB then allow me to plug 1/4 inch into it. Like a big ass usb hub only with analog in's outs etc? Any help would be appreciated. Last time I was doing this stuff it was straight off the turntable into the ASR. Sorry for my ignorance, but I've never once taken a sample from a computer.

Do I have options other than the headphone jack on my laptop to get my sounds out of the computer and into my MPC?

Thanks a million.

dude are you serious. Go usb to usb the 2500 can do that no need to sample through quarter inch.

Lampdog wrote:Can the 2500 use USB for sampling? I thought 2500 USB was for transfer of files ONLY, not sampling, has that changed with the new OS?

ohhh my bad i thought he just wanted transfer files.

personally if i was in your position i would download tracks onto the laptop, and loop them on there. then tranfers the files via usb to the mpc

but why not just copy the whole song via USB to your mpc and chop it up in there?

Lampdog wrote:I dont' remember anyone saying anything about loops, did I miss something?

u miss a lot lamp.........................

.................................................no really you do

StonesThrow wrote:dude are you serious. Go usb to usb the 2500 can do that no need to sample through quarter inch.

I dunno about the new os but it's for file transfer only as far as I know. I know that I can transfer the music as a file from the laptop to the MPC. I was hoping there was a box that I described in teh first post as well. Thanks for the help.

Mr. London wrote:I was hoping there was a box that I described in teh first post as well.

The box you´re looking for seems to be a straight USB audio interface. There´s plenty around in different price ranges.

http://www.zzounds.com/cat--USB-Audio-Interfaces--2424

If you´ve got Firewire on your laptop and a lot of money to spend you could go for the heavier pieces:

RME:

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/firewire/ff400.htm

MOTU

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/ultralite/

I would get a 1000
with your internet connections get as many mp3's as possible, then with a sample editor, chop what you want, then usb it into the 1000 and make your tracks...Before i got my turntable all i used were mp3s to get my samples and they worked out great...Grab limewire, think of some tracks and get em..

thanks Ryssen that's exactly the stuff I was thinking of. Cheers all.