MPC 2500 JJOS DIRECT RECORDING

I have searched the jjos site but cant seem to find out if i will lose the direct recording feature if i change to JJOSXL. any help with the major differences and features lost would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

You will lose direct recording.
See the comparison chart:
http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/mpc2500/chart.htm

He's trying to figure out the difference between the two... i'm also curious.

peace

i've already mentioned it several times, but this feature ought to be in the jj os. Apologies in adv if they have now...
p.s. audio tracks are nothing like the DR function. DR was a better way to rec imho.

BLACK DORIS wrote:p.s. audio tracks are nothing like the DR function. DR was a better way to rec imho.

agreed 100%.

I think if JJ implements direct record and the ability to make any track a continuous sample track just like the 5000, people are going to be wondering why in the world they ever thought audio tracks were taking the mpc in the right direction.

audio tracks are just dumbed down continuous sample tracks where the samples aren't stored in a program, the samples need to begin at the start of a bar and the samples can't carry over past the end of a sequence.

How do you feel about the lastest improvements of audio tracks, mike?

phx_chronic wrote:How do you feel about the lastest improvements of audio tracks, mike?

I can't really give an honest opinion about it because I haven't installed OS2XL, mainly due to the change in simult. I don't want to record the notes that I've simulted, I think that's counter-intuitive to the purpose of simult.

but based on what people have said and what the manual says online, I'm still unimpressed with audio tracks. It's still just a limited continuous sample track. samples have to start at a bar.. which is lame. and they can't overlap from the end of a sequence to the beginning of the sequence which is lamer.

what if you have a 4 bar loop and just want to record a scratch at the end of the sequence that will continue playing back across to the beginning of the sequence? you can't do it. what will happen is the mpc will just stop recording at the end of the sequence, and the resulting sample will have silence added to the beginning of it so that it starts at the beginning of a bar, thus eating up valuable sample time. oh, and if you have loop off on your sequence, it won't stop recording at the end of the sequence, but it will extend your sequence.. so if you're recording some keys over your drums, your drums will stop at the end of the sequence, but the mpc will extend the sequence and you'll be playing over either dead air or only the metronome if you have it on.

and I've seen posts here about how sometimes to get audio tracks to work how they want, some people actually take the recorded sample from the audio track, assign it to a pad in the program, and then trigger it on another track placing it at the proper step so that it's timing is appropriate... that's exactly what direct record WOULD DO FOR YOU!

so audio tracks still have flaws and should've been abandoned a long time ago in favor of direct record and continuous sample tracks. it would've saved the headache of JJ having to come up with this whole bar nonsense considering that direct recorded sample work in song mode.

Mike Feedback wrote: but based on what people have said and what the manual says online, I'm still unimpressed with audio tracks. It's still just a limited continuous sample track. samples have to start at a bar.. which is lame. and they can't overlap from the end of a sequence to the beginning of the sequence which is lamer.

Audio tracks do not have to start on a bar, that's only if you are dropping a sample on an audio track.
An audio is simply a time line, if your sequence was 4 sec long you have 4 sec to record things where you need them to be.
The biggest thing that's now different is you can do multiple takes on the timeline to help your edits or because you want to build audio.
Why would an audio track overlap? That makes no sense because it's asking the audio to exist twice.
If you need overlap then use a sample, audio tracks are a linear perspective so if you wanted overlap you would record on a longer timeline.
Just like in Pro Tools when you loopa section it doesn't recirculate it extends the region for the amount of time equal to the number of loops.

Mike Feedback wrote:what if you have a 4 bar loop and just want to record a scratch at the end of the sequence that will continue playing back across to the beginning of the sequence? you can't do it. what will happen is the mpc will just stop recording at the end of the sequence, and the resulting sample will have silence added to the beginning of it so that it starts at the beginning of a bar, thus eating up valuable sample time. oh, and if you have loop off on your sequence, it won't stop recording at the end of the sequence, but it will extend your sequence.. so if you're recording some keys over your drums, your drums will stop at the end of the sequence, but the mpc will extend the sequence and you'll be playing over either dead air or only the metronome if you have it on.

Audio tracks are more of a song construction tool so working in a pattern mentality will never match.
If the MPC was like the MV where song mode worked like an expanded pattern it would be a simpler way to work instead of chaining patterns together to make song.
MPC kinda makes you work in patterns and build by joining them instead of having a functional linear method.
Audio tracks still work best when you just look at them as a time line not as a sample.

Mike Feedback wrote:and I've seen posts here about how sometimes to get audio tracks to work how they want, some people actually take the recorded sample from the audio track, assign it to a pad in the program, and then trigger it on another track placing it at the proper step so that it's timing is appropriate... that's exactly what direct record WOULD DO FOR YOU!

Seems like a waste, just sample it in the first place.
Defeats the whole purpose of the whole linear audio accompanying your sequence.

Mike Feedback wrote:so audio tracks still have flaws and should've been abandoned a long time ago in favor of direct record and continuous sample tracks. it would've saved the headache of JJ having to come up with this whole bar nonsense considering that direct recorded sample work in song mode.

Audio track now work in song mode as well.
I use to own a 2500 and the direct feature was a joke with only 1 continous available, I get way more use out of the audio tracks.

Sovereign wrote:Audio tracks do not have to start on a bar

JJ Manual wrote:When the [REC]+[PLAY] key is pressed in the state of the above figure, recording is started from the bar
of a current position and the bar of a current position is automatically inputted into the BAR field.

I take that to mean that the recording will start at the beginning of the bar, and then that bar number is placed in the "bar" field for the sample. in other words, the sample will start at the beginning of the bar, and can't begin at a different step i.e. 01.01.25. If it can start at some arbitrary step, tell me, where is that information stored?!

Sovereign wrote:Why would an audio track overlap? That makes no sense because it's asking the audio to exist twice.

if you're recording something that has reverb you may want the tail of the reverb to overlap the beginning of what you recorded. makes sense now, right?

Sovereign wrote:Audio tracks are more of a song construction tool so working in a pattern mentality will never match.

with the exception of maybe progressive music, most songs are constructed of patterns that repeat. intro, hook, verse, hook, verse, hook, outro... etc. I don't see how audio tracks are more of a song construction tool than working in patterns.

Sovereign wrote:Audio tracks still work best when you just look at them as a time line not as a sample.

is my sequence not a timeline? I don't understand what your point is. if you're trying to say that Audio tracks work best when you're not looping, then you're pretty much proving my argument that they are flawed. I can easily use direct record "linearly" as well, or they'll work properly if my sequence loops.

Sovereign wrote:

Mike Feedback wrote:and I've seen posts here about how sometimes to get audio tracks to work how they want, some people actually take the recorded sample from the audio track, assign it to a pad in the program, and then trigger it on another track placing it at the proper step so that it's timing is appropriate... that's exactly what direct record WOULD DO FOR YOU!

Seems like a waste, just sample it in the first place.
Defeats the whole purpose of the whole linear audio accompanying your sequence.

that's exactly my point.. the only way for them to sample in time with the beat was to use audio tracks, and then manually take them out of an audio track, assign them to a program and then trigger them in their sequence. they are manually doing what direct record would do.

Sovereign wrote:Audio track now work in song mode as well.

yes, I know, thanks to the whole "bar" addition. but direct recorded samples always worked in song mode, and they have the advantage of not having to start at the beginning of a bar, being able to carry over to the start of a sequence, and the ability to overlap, whether it be overlapping itself or another sample on the same track.

Sovereign wrote:I use to own a 2500 and the direct feature was a joke with only 1 continous available, I get way more use out of the audio tracks.

I agree that 1 continuous sample track sucks, but Akai has fixed that with the 5000 which can have any or all tracks be set as continuous sample tracks. since JJ allows any track to be an audio track on the 1000 and 2500, obviously these machines are capable of having more than 1 continuous sample track.

I'm telling you, add direct record and the ability to make any track a continuous sample track, and audio tracks will be obsolete. I know what audio tracks are, and I know what they're capable of doing, and you can't tell me one thing that they can do that a direct recorded continuous sample track can't do, but I've been giving lists as to what direct recorded continuous sample tracks can do that audio tracks can't.


I had a 2000xl for years which didn't allow you to record audio while a sequence was playing. the ability for the 2500 to direct record is one of the main reasons why I made the switch. audio tracks do not allow me to do what I was able to do with direct record which is sample while my sequence is looping, assign that sample to a program and then to the sequence. I'm extremely disappointed that this has yet to be added to any JJ OS.

I don't want my mpc to be a multi-track recorder. I have Pro Tools for that.

Still seems that your desire is for audio tracks to be like samples instead of linear audio.
You simply record something at the appropriate point on the timeline to within a bar which reduces the problem of wasted memory.
This is the very reason I don't work from the pattern perspective it's just to limiting on creativity.
If I need reverb to decay into the beginning it will do so because instead of looping back to the beginning of a pattern it will continue into the next bar.
people just like to believe people construct from patterns but I find more and more people not working that way to avoid the repetition and develope better transitions.
Just because you have a song structure does not mean you piece it together from patterns.

Many of us add live elements into MPC whether it 's from percussion, synths etc and triggering that is a waste when you can drop it on a audio track.
Many people prefer to track to the DAW not create in it so the MPC plays a different role.
I really doubt that JJ's audio tracks have the same system requirements as a continous does resource wise.
The 5k feels pretty snappy so there's a lot more horsepower going on under the hood than the 1k/2500, so unless Akai adds it to the 2500 it might just be that it can't handle it.
They originally gave the 2500 the 1 track in response to the MV, but the MV could do multiple tracks.
Makes me suspect that if the 2500 could handle more than 1 they would have given it at least 8 to be competitive instead of just 1.

audio tracks ARE samples. even the audio tracks in mutli-track recorders are samples. when I add a new track to protools, I add a new "sample track".

and what audio is not linear? your points aren't proving anything. the advantanges you're trying to show for audio tracks aren't advantages at all because continuous sample tracks can achieve the same thing. I feel like I'm talking to a wall.

you can just as easily direct record a live instrument into your song. if anything, it can work better because you can enable direct recording, play your song from the beginning and play your keyboard or whatever instrument along with your beat for a while (whether it's looping or playing a long sequence that doesn't loop), and then punch-in the recording whenever you'd like. can you do a punch-in like that with an audio track?

and don't kid yourself, songs start from patterns. how many songs do you know that don't have repeating patterns? just because they play the entire thing out instead of having a sequencer loop the parts that repeat doesn't make the songs not comprised of patterns. they didn't make that two dot repeat sign in sheet notation for nothing.

Sovereign wrote:Makes me suspect that if the 2500 could handle more than 1 they would have given it at least 8 to be competitive instead of just 1.

that is a terrible argument considering the 2500 was released with chop shop that could only chop in mono. does that mean that it wasn't capable of chopping in stereo?! obviously not. the 2500 was also released WITHOUT audio tracks too ya know, but JJ added those. just because something was not there, doesn't necessarily mean it's not possible.

and the resources for audio tracks should be exactly the same as a continuous sample track (assuming it's limited to 1 sample within a bar) since they would both essentially be doing the same thing. continuous sample tracks with too many overlapping samples may use more resources and cause lagging, but if used like audio tracks work now where only one sample is allowed to play from a track at a time, it shouldn't be a problem.

Mike Feedback wrote:

I had a 2000xl for years which didn't allow you to record audio while a sequence was playing. the ability for the 2500 to direct record is one of the main reasons why I made the switch. audio tracks do not allow me to do what I was able to do with direct record which is sample while my sequence is looping, assign that sample to a program and then to the sequence. I'm extremely disappointed that this has yet to be added to any JJ OS.

I don't want my mpc to be a multi-track recorder. I have Pro Tools for that.

++1. I passed on the 2kxl for the same reason.

Here's a link to what you could do with direct record - warning, it's just an example (not a great one but you'll get the idea)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Tk0hcU ... re=channel

For me, i could audition a bunch of instruments on the fly (keys, soft synths, bass etc) while seq was playin and then hit record when I had something that I liked. From there it was just like the example above.

Maybe I need to mess with the audio tracks more - but for the ease of use, the DR is all over it.

C'mon jj, is it really that hard to add DR to your already impressive os... just 1 track of DR!!!

Triggering a sample is not the same as having it locked to time.
I guess you would also tell me in Pro Tools there's no difference between Tick based and Sample based tracks.
It not whether or not you want to say it's still just a sample it's about what the unit is being told to do to and with that wav.

Looping a pattern is not Linear recording and you know that.

Songs don't start from patterns, beats start from patterns and patterns sometimes become songs but most often just remain beats.

I guess the old Direct appeals to you because of your methods but that just your choice not because it's better.

Sovereign wrote:I guess the old Direct appeals to you because of your methods but that just your choice not because it's better.

True.
cheers

Sovereign wrote:Triggering a sample is not the same as having it locked to time.

are continuous sample tracks NOT locked in time????

this is my whole point.. continous sample tracks can do exactly what audio tracks do, and then more.

end of discussion.