I have never actually owned a moog…
It sounds really good though. Like what I imagine a moog sounds like…
There is something to real analog though that I don’t think any of these emulations will ever have… like a heft and presence.
Is this the case? I’ve ditched costly ‘expandable’ plugin systems for his very reason. I have no qualms with for-pay add-ons, but I don’t want to scroll through what amounts to advertisements just to get to the bits I want to use. I certainly don’t want it taking up space on my device.
I have recently been thinking of getting another MPC, and while this wouldn’t be a total deal-killer for me, it would sit near the top of the ‘cons’ column.
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I bet they are going to fill the Mpcs up with this stuff, and then come out with a series that doesn’t have any of it for us to go crazy over
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Akai is trolling the Internet forum synth enthusiasts
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I hope they turn the UI into something this in the future:
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Sorry, what does it say about cats?
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Been having some fun with the new Air Flavor Pro plug-in on the MPC and here are some nice Loops for you. A Pad, a little Melody and some gritty Drums: iCloud
And here are the Clean loops with out the insert effects:
I actually think it’s pretty funny, Akai trying to sell us our hats with Flavor “Pro”…
I mean, we already have each of those FX, as separately modules, in the MPC (and yes, they are exactly the same algorithms). So, the only argument in favor of the “Pro” plugin is perhaps that you could save FX slots.
But let’s be practical here—if you count the 8 Pad FX, the 4 Send FX, the 4 FX slots per Channel, the 4 FX slots per Program, and the 4 Master FX slots; and all of that before you consider the FX baked into each of the instrument plugins, the ability to resample or flatten pads, and the fact that you can sample whatever you want from external sources, and use external FX—how many incidences of “Flavor” could one possibly need?
And it’s not like a responsible mix engineer is ever going to use all of the degradation FX within Flavor “Pro”, all at once, on every sound or track. Hell, your mix would just be a mess of white noise.
And the Moog plugin is fluff. You can achieve comparable results using TubeSynth (and I seriously doubt the coding is all that different). Never mind that Moog’s own iOS app is cheaper and better. And so on…
Anyway, I was only joking with you originally; but seriously, the MPC is a sampler/sequencer, not a DAW. To which end, if you think of it as the drum machine that it was designed to be, it’s incredible really.
I’ve never bought any of their sample packs, or even used the factory content for that matter (the first thing I did was turn off the start-up dialogue, and haven’t thought about it since), and I still think I’m getting my money’s worth out of the MPC. It’s at my mercy, not the other way around.
Don’t let their marketing ruin your experience—Flavor “Pro” is just a cash-grab.
Cheers!
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Yes please
Amen and Amen…
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Hey everyone,
I’m a few months in owning the MPC Live 2 and it continues to blow me away how awesome it is.
But…
anyone else think the sample edit looping system sucks??
I’ve been using the Autosampler to capture some synths I’m gonna sell and it rocks except when I try to use the looping setting.
It’s crazy that you have to enable loop in sample edit before it works in the sample lauers.
I’m super bummed there isn’t a separate “end” like my Vsynth XT has, which is imo necessary. If I want to loop the middle section of a sample, I cant use the tail I recorded (prefer to use that when sampling stuff that has filter mod in it).
And lastly, I can’t edit the loop for multiple key groups, just one at a time. The amount of time it would take makes me start thinking I should just keep all my synths.
Any tips or workflows I’m completely missing?
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It has been a while since I’ve had an MPC, but if I recall, imported samples with embedded loop meta data before the tail may not suffer this same fate. That may have changed at some point, but I recall feeling the same way you do, only to be relieved when discovering this.
Really? That’s interesting! I’ll have to check that out.
I suppose I could use Logic’s autosampler and see what happens
Cheers!
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Yup. It surprised me. It was a few firmware’s back, so hopefully it wasn’t ‘fixed’ since. I wish I could remember the particulars (file format I was using, etc). But it was too long ago.
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Good and thoughtful post, well done.
Yeah, if you consider it as a sequencer and a drum machine, it’s one hell of a sequencer and drum machine. But I’ve been using it as my main DAW and I can’t help but feeling that their recent moves make me think of it differently. Like I chose an inferior DAW that I have to invest more in to get it on par with the other DAW I already purchased for a third of the price of the MPC.
If I do try to think of it as a sequencer and drum machine, I guess the problem then becomes that I don’t really need a drum machine in the first place. I just need a platform to make music on that is 1) fun to use and 2) produces great results. The MPC checks the first box but compromises on the second. The other DAW I have has the compromise reversed instead.
I’m not convinced I need two DAWs and if one forces me to also use the other to get to the finish line, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just use that other daw from start to finish.
it’s definitely inferior as a daw, if it wasn’t I don’t think most would buy it, I’m only speaking in the hardware vein though, I don’t know how good the mpc software is I don’t have it installed, it might be great
Wait, how do you know that flavor pro is just a combination of things also in there? I’m just curious how you could know that they are the same algorithm? It seemed to me to sound different then what we had before, but I’m no expert…
FTFY 
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It’s similar to the GUI from the MPC on your PC with some plus here and there … you can use your vst in the effect-slots which makes it to an enhanced production environment … but the design is horrible … i don’t know what AKAI was thinking about when they developed it … my experience is that it doesn’t invite me to use it - i found it to be counterintuitive
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I find that when i use the MPC as a controller for the MPC Desktop software it’s a pretty nice experience. When i use the app by itself i am left a little less than inspired for sure…but together boy howdy it is cool to play Pigments and Augmented Grand Piano from Arturia with the MPC. It’s a wonderful experience.
What’s cool is being able to finish a track with my VST power tools all while using the MPC for a majority of the duties and the mouse for some finer details.
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