I’ve just had another round of selling and I’ve now got enough money for either of these.
I’ve boiled down my setup to a Digitone and an Analog Four MKI. I’m solid with these, love them both. What I’m looking for now is something with easy sampling and sequencing capabilities to run along side chains running on the Elektron boxes.
I briefly had an MPC One but due to some issues I had to send it back. I didn’t love the work flow or the screen graphics (a bit drab to me) but I didn’t have much time with it.
So now I’m considering the Verselab. I like it’s size and design and I’ve had a mc-101 which I really liked.
My biggest concern is that because I don’t have any experience with samplers I won’t adjust well to editing samples on the Verselab by just turning the samples start/end dial with no visual feedback.
So I’m wondering what advice you can give?
Right now I’m 70:30 in favour of the Verselab.
PROS:
I haven’t had one before;
It’s prettier IMO and better size wise for me;
I liked the mc-101
CONS:
The One can do a lot more and has visual aid for sample editing
Thought I’d round this off by saying I ended up getting a Polyend Tracker. The sampling capabilities are limited but they are on the Verselab too. I think with the Tracker I will come up with different sounds to complement the DN and A4. Transitions, fills, textures that will hopefully be more to my style than the maybe more mainstream Verselab.
And if it can’t do all I want it to, I’ll trade up for the MPC One and bite the workflow bullet.
Sorry for talking to myself here but you never know, it might be of interest? I think I’m going to like the Tracker a lot.
Also, there’s surely a niche for a midi sequencable stereo sample player with decent memory for playing longish song sections? The Blackbox is the answer I guess, but it doesn’t do enough to justify the £500 price tag to me.
hi this popped up, i’m having similar gear decisions.
Was originally looking at any groovebox just to be free of computer and get making stuff again.
After going through some research, came to Polyend Tracker - guess i’m more into IDM and experimental accidents, and kind of familiar with tracking.
Upon pulling the trigger they went out of stock everywhere, was looking at the Digitakt which peaked my interest with the p-locks glitchability. But no Song mode and pattern chaining doesn’t get saved, so dunno. I kind of want to create finished tracks not just jams. Now looking at the MPC One, never been a mad sampler or Akai person, but does seem to be a complete solution in a box - even if as you from what i can see the workflow and graphics are meh!. Any thoughts? how you doing with the Polyend? … heard some bugs around, but happy to look past them I guess.
In the meantime, I’m getting into Renoise…awesome, but the irony is I’m tracking on the computer… which is the last place I intended to be.
I am loving the tracker. It is so fun for me. I bought an akai mpx16 for £80 for longer and stereo sampling duties. To be honest though since I got a usb hub I have been using my pc for recording song sections from hardware. Usb midi is solid for me.
I still have my eye on an MPC One but can’t really justify getting one. If I just needed an all in one box though it would be hard to resist. You could always buy one, try it and if you don’t like the workflow, sell it and get a tracker when they are back in stock? Good luck
Graphics are a matter of taste, but I don’t have any problem with the One’s workflow. I’ve not used anything that’s more immediate in terms of sampling a sound and getting it into a playable state, and the sequencing is similarly slick as long as you’re comfortable with how the MPC sequence / track setup works. I think that, as you say, it’s a strong ‘single box’ solution - even without any external sources you can sample and mangle the internal synths for days. I wax on about it quite a lot here, but, I think, with good cause.
I can’t comment on the Verselab (not even sure if you’re considering it yourself), but based on my MC-707 experience I’d want to do a fair amount of research before opting for that. With the Tracker, I think that if you like it, you’ll love it - it’s doesn’t have the scope of the MPC by any means, but it has that magic element of being unfamiliar and different that can prove insipiring. I’d say that the Tracker encourages experimentation, whereas the MPC supports it. But if you decide you want to do something polyphonic, for example, or bring in some longer samples, or work extensively with other gear, the Tracker is going to get in your way - it’s not built for that. The MPC is there for you whatever you want to do, but generally in a fairly familiar way. Which is sometimes exactly what you want.
thanks for getting back, and appreciate your thoughts months on. Great you’re getting on well with the PT and it’s serving you well
yea i’m not one for buying and selling back n forth but in this case it may make sense
cheers appreciate your insights . Yea in the PT i can see some weaknesses, which like I say i’m happy in the first instance to look past, for something different, but they may grind on me as time goes on. I’m achieving a lot of what it can do in renoise currently, so it’s really only about going from screen to sofa :-s The Akai like you say has the depth and is a complete in a box solution… can even imagine plugging in guitar and doing more ‘songy’ stuff with it too. but yea did have to check it could do some mad jungle breaks and ambient stuff too… which I’ve found it can and very competently. Hmm definitely food for thought
…the only option to go otb but still achieve kind of itb results are mpc’s…
…and they are the perfect other side of cool hardware sequencing to swedish step plocking…
no actual roland device is that versatile…and never was…
with the mpc one, u finally get the real mpc workflow again, since they finally added all real buttons back to their timeless concept, which gives u the option to avaoid most of the touch touch only approach, if u whish so…
The MPC can definitely handle ambient and jungle, though it’s fair to say the Tracker is more tuned to fast/intricate d’n’b style composition - very quick to add rolls, rushes and reversals within a pattern. The MPC’s strongest suit here is probably clip mode with the quantise properly set up - you can create break variations quickly there. But fast microscopic surgery is where trackers excel generally, and the Polyend is no exception there.
For guitar, you can construct a track on the MPC in song mode, export it to a sequence and then record an audio track (eight of them) alongside it. Or just sample in 20 minutes of noodling and chop it up afterwards, or use the looper… and then get creative with the effect inserts and sends… but I think audio tracks are really the intended solution for that. The only thing I wish you could do is record an audio track that’s longer than the sequence (e.g. a 64-bar audio track over an 8-bar sequence), but that’s not the way they do it. You can easily expand the 8 bars to 64 and do it that way, but it gets a bit messy with automation data, so the song conversion is the easiest route, I think. But as is often the case, there are multiple solutions, which increases the chance of finding one that works for you.
I highly recommend the Akai Force, and a used one can be had for less than a new MPC One. It is currently, and certainly will be in the future, on another level than both.
I have wondered if I should have gone with the Force instead of the One, but I felt it went a bit further than I wanted in terms of the physical interface - I didn’t really want lots of tiny pads. I’d be very happy if the arranger mode made it over to the MPC, though, because that’d be very convenient. Certainly if you’re looking at the MPCs, the Force is well worth lobbing into the mix.
but since their big rebrand, akai is not akai anymore…
and owned one of the worst reputations when it comes to firmware updates and operating system cleverness, not to say dumbness, in the whole music gear industry and it’s history…
for many many good good reasons…
it took them years to get their “new” mpc soft backend half way straight…
with quite some lack still up to day on long made promises…
and when their relaunch was still fresh, it needed even an xtra, free lance developer to create an alternative firmware, the famous jjos, to get their products finally fly for real again…
a one shot product like the force won’t be the big exeption…
but hey, if u guys are happy with what u got and already paid for, all’s fine, i guess…
Let’s start with Jj, he was an Akai employee not a freelancer, he left with the source code and released his own.
The firmware updates on the force and mpc, for example, have been excellent over the past year or so, promises are being delivered, and I think there is a good possibility the future is extremely bright.
However, if it makes you feel any better, 1.5 years ago I would have agreed with you 100%. Now, however, it’s clear to me that the Force is by far the premier groovebox out there, elektron not included. I base that on the fact that I’ve owned and used pretty much every other product in the category.
. Yea in the PT i can see some weaknesses, which like I say i’m happy in the first instance to look past, for something different, but they may grind on me as time goes on. I’m achieving a lot of what it can do in renoise currently, so it’s really only about going from screen to sofa :-s The Akai like you say has the depth and is a complete in a box solution… can even imagine plugging in guitar and doing more ‘songy’ stuff with it too. but yea did have to check it could do some mad jungle breaks and ambient stuff too… which I’ve found it can and very competently. Hmm definitely food for thought 
