Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
By Luigi Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:50 am
what yall think is the best? and whats the diffence between them more then digital, analog, and dat it seams more practical with adat.

what u got and whats your opinion?
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By dabmeister Tue Oct 28, 2008 12:04 pm
The Adat feature will give you a mirror image (if not better) with full punch and dynamics. Can't say that about the analog outs, even though they have plenty of punch themselves.
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By feline1 Thu Oct 30, 2008 5:48 pm
I have both.

To be honest, there is little difference in audio quality, as the Analogue outs are balanced and have high spec D>A convertors.

So really, the most important consideration is what you need to connect to!

Obviously, the ADAT output would not be much use if you were trying to get multi-channel audio out of the MPC4000 and into a multi-track Otari tape recorder, for instance. Or if you were gonna fire a load of different analogue signals into guitar stomp boxes, hardware FX units, etc, that all only had analogue inputs.

If your gear has a choice of inputs, personally I'd probably plump for ADAT, as a single optical cable is just simpler and tidier and cleaner.

Also remember that the highest sample rate you can get down the ADAT cable is 48kHz - it can't do "SMUX" to give 4 channels of 96k
By Luigi Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:08 pm
alrigt

what about if your wanna run vst effects in realtime tru the outputs? Ive heard that the adat card dosent charge the cpu as much as the 8outs, is this true??

Im planing to buy a Motu mk3, so it has both analog and adat connectors.

about soundquality, when tracking out your beats, does it make any difference what kHz I use? i mean, all my samples are 16bit 44khz. does it makes any diffrence ??
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By feline1 Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:33 am
I doubt anyone has benchmarked how much "CPU" the ADAT "uses" versus the 8 analogue outs (and I doubt you'd notice any difference in the Akai's behaviour - I've never ever heard its audio output glitch due to CPU issues)

As for the difference in sound quality of different sample rates and bit depths -
come on :lol: you know the higher ones are better. However if you can't hear any difference, you won't care.
(Your MPC4000 loses half its polyphony and on board FX at 96k - but the onboard FX suck anyways).

Basically, any sampling I've done on my own MPC, I've done it at 96/24.
But as you've noticed, all the existing sample libraries I own at at 44.1 (or even 32!)