MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
By diegoeskryptic Tue Nov 25, 2008 11:59 pm
This is my own personal opinion. And im not here to start a war of words....


i've owned all the mpc's except the 2500 and the 3000.

The best ones to me were the 4k and 5k. The 4k because it can hold more sounds and it has the keygrouping feature, which comes in handy if your not really into sampling and like having a ton of sounds at you disposal.

I got the 5k because of the bigger LCD, its more user friendly, not as bulky, got it at a cheap price, and its simply more asthetically appealing IMO (otherwise, I would have the 4k). Even the manual is an easy read. The synthesizer is not that bad believe it or not.

After having the MV8000 as my first hardware sequencer, then downgrading to the 2k and then to the 1k; was the worst thing I could have ever done.

I purchased my first mpc (2k) from Jahrome. and using the 2k was like making beats on a calculator. I hated it.

The 5k suits my needs pretty well. Hopefully we get 4k keygrouping features in the next updates.
By oneday2one Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:58 pm
yes, ...the keygrouping feature.

...a lot of people say, "i will never need that"

...but i think there is a strong possibility that those people simply don't understand the potential in creating your "own" samples.

...then they might think, ...why would i buy an instrument, like a piano, and sample it when i can buy professional samples from million dollar studios.

...okay, ...of course that is true.

...but what about "creating" your own sounds, ...making your own instruments.

....like more than transposing them acrossed the pads. with a true audio editor like soundforge/wavelab, ...you can totally sample/record a completely organic sound.

....lets say for example a very wierd 'long' sample from a record, ...or something turned like metal crashing, ...and you zoom in past the attack, ...and you apply a reverb or something and resample it, ...and compress it etc.

...you can then use those editors to work with several different octave creations,... ...so that you can then map it acrossed all 61+ keys, ...or simply 'literally' transpose them acrossed all 61+ keys with greater ease.

...it should be impossible for anyone to say that this wouldn't enhance the creative abilities inherent in the future of the mpc 5000.

creativity means using things in ways that perhaps they were not intentionally created to by used for.

doesn't this make sense?
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By LvngDead Wed Nov 26, 2008 7:08 pm
I still don't understand the deal with keymaps. I don't mean this in a bad way, but I have never owned or used a 4k, so I don't know what the feature is really capable of.

How is Keymapping different from the autochromatic assignments on the 2kxl?

And can't you created the keymap programs right on the 4k? It sounds like you need extra software to create the programs.