Is there an alternative to the MPCs?

My laptop has a SmartMedia Card slot in it so I can load .Wav files and transfer them to any machine that recieves it..I am really mobile so I want to be able to make sequences on the road. The MPC 1k is the most reasonable for the price but is there something else out there? I seen the Korg Esx-1 Electribe but it only has about 9 tracks. I am aware that this is a MPC Site and it would be in direct competition, so let's just say this question is for str8 fwd ppl(Producers).....

for the on the road experience...i don't think there is a machine that can touch the 1k....I could be wrong though........hey man I feel you about getting an honest opinion......but i will give you that....Akai don't give me no dough to tell you otherwise!.....not that i would either........I can not speak on a machine I do not believe in!

I had an electribe (though the older one) and found it frustrating, all bells and whistles. The MPC I've had for 3 days and have already done so much more with it than I ever did with the Electribe.

I'm finding the MPC has a quick initial learning curve, but without being at the expense of future potential. I keep thinking of ideas for beats that I never had with the Electribe or any software I've ever used.

when i was deciding i played with the red electribe with the tubes in a store. it sounded thin and cheesy to me. the mpc sounded big, although noticably darker. ive had the mpc for several months now and i love it. it's changed the way i do music for the better.

yeah, your laptop with Reasons, or Project 5, or OrionPro 5 and a MPD16 or Korg MicroKontrol

or

hardware 1.Yamaha RS 7000
2. ASR-X
3.Roland MV 8000
4.EMU Command Stations
5. Roland MC 909 plus MPD16 or Korg MicroKontrol
" Slamm'en combo"

Electribes ES series sequencer is tight but the sound engine sound hollow. Nonphatt! even if you bring in your own samples.

No.

PJay wrote:No.

To the point!

If you're planning on taking your laptop with you, you could get a software drum sampler like NI's Battery, which comes with a big bundle of very use-able kits, and then control it from the Akai MPD16 USB PAD CONTROLLER [which is like the drum pads from the MPC without the sampling engine - i.e. purely a midi controller] and a sequencer like Fruityloops. Add a firewire audio interface to the equasion [i.e. M-audio Audiophile Firewire, s/pdif in/out, two analog ins/four analog outs] and you'd have a pretty sweet set-up.

On the down side, your lap top needs to be stable or it could crash mid set. Having said that, my mate's mpc corrupted his memory card when he was just about to start a gig, so nothing is 100% reliable.

I recon in the UK I could pick up the kit described above [including software but not the laptop] for just over half what I paid for my MPC1000.

Hope that helps,
Spud.

the closest thing yur gunna get to the mpc on a laptop is fl studio 4,add the akai mpd 16 to get that mpc feel ,fl studio is tight,its not an mpc,but its tight

There's a lot of options, if you don't won't to carry around the MPC1k and a laptop. I only no the the MAC stuff, so here goes:

>Bitshift's iDrum - 16 step seq. (promise of more steps soon), so freakin' easy to use, loads wav and aiff, 99 paterns, with as many tracks as you computer can handle (which should be a lot if they are drums), automap midi option (takes me 10 seconds to load all my samples and map them), had loads of promising features and is only version 1.0. i'm using it now with the mpc. it's no replacement but a very viable option.

>Akai's MPD16 - great midi controller, just choose your software and go!

>There's loads of controllers out there....there's also software that'll turn your keyboard into a virtual midi controller, so you can play your keys or samples like pads! (check http://homepage.mac.com/seishu/ssworks/MpcPgmMaker.html go to MicroSynth and see)

There's always Reason to, i can't stand the generic sounds and feel of that program but people like it and it gets thumbs up on the low CPU usuage. Reaktor is a very serious option that get's overlooked by hiphop heads because of how it's marketed at Dance, Trance, Techno and the IDM folks, it's amazing....synths, slicers, grinders, pads, sequencer's, live tools, create you own synth or what the hell download one of the 3,000 plus synths others have made on NI site. Go to Native-Instruments.com, look for community, go to user library's, check out all of the free synths, sample tools and fx. (i dig it but this program isn't necessary if your just a loop digger....)


The MPC1k is small and takes up little space. It's seq. is rock solid and it's features are really amazing, given it's price. There are other options but i wouldn't buy any groove boxes or whatever. Get the MPC1k (any MPC, for that matter) or go software, or both in my case. Check out Prefuse 73 to here how far programing on the MPC can go.

actuel wrote: Check out Prefuse 73 to here how far programing on the MPC can go.

Amen to that.