I love my OT but the only thing I miss is multisample/polyphony.
I’m a big sample guy often I don’t even midi record my synth but I sample a snippet and you know how things goes in the OT.
But I miss lay down chord or no monophonic sound. Of course I can always find sample and work with it but sometimes it’s just easier play what’s in your head.
In the past I used Maschine/Ableton and I made tons of multisample myself to save synth patch and make poly but I don’t want do that on the computer anymore, somehow things get losted I prefer have my packs on different box because I carefully select what goes where and I can keep it forever.
I know multisample are powerful in a DAW but honestly I don’t need all that power and I just don’t like working with the mouse. I do boombap, acid techno,tekno and whothatfuckknows sometimes. The sound will get fucked up anyway and mainly my OT receive 12bit sample.
The MPC structure with 4 layers of velocity and velocity modulation seems appropriate for what I’m looking for but these new MPC rely so much on the touchscreen that I’ll find easier working with a mouse. I enjoyed Tal Sampler, seriously that sampler is coded nicely.
So what’s the alternative? Is there anything out there that I can easily program my multisample with knobs and buttons? If not what do you think about rompler?
Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.
I don’t hate DAW I just don’t find inspiring working with mouse and keyboard, I love for finish my track but not for composing. I loved Maschine because it gave me the power of the computer without even looking at it.
I’m more or less in the same boat. Was thinking about Maschine Mk3 as a nice source of sounds and chord progressions for my OT but not too hot about returning ITB. Not too hot about the new Mpc’s either. Mc707 / 101 is a good candidate for everything poly / Roland / rompler, seriously considering getting a 101.
I like the mc707 design and the Zencore but what bugs me is that in the main settings you can use the 4 encoders but when you got deep in the settings they give you 1 encoder to control everything.
Honestly who that fuck design these box?
Yeah, deep editing looks a bit like a chore. Many peeps recommand getting the 101 instead. Sure, you lose deep editing but you gain immediacy… and you can always mess the sound to hell and back with the OT.
I didn’t look much into the 101 but the pads don’t feel playable and I think I’ll get bored of switching constantly what the encoders do just to change the envelope for example.
Does the 101 has scale and chord mode?
I love the sequencer+pads combo on the 707 I think every box should have that or like Ableton Push/Akai Force instead of 16 buttons doing everything. Especially for editing is the best solution if you don’t want your box to have a piano roll style, which is awful.
After +10 years of doing music I still can’t visualise notes, it’s all crowded and it’s such a mess for my mind that I end up re-record what I want.
Instead holding your step and get your note highlighted is so intuitive, at least for me.
I could see an mc101 with a keyboard if accept the same sort of sequence=holding a step and input your notes but we just a pair of output I can’t see how am I going to mangle in my OT. Even if it got usb audio I hate doing AD DA conversion because I can’t be bother with latency and it fails the idea of a live set up.
Have you noticed that the new MPCs have “autosampling”. I do that quite often. Create a patch on the synth and let the MPC create a new multisample instrument by itself …
Edit: BTW the 1010 Blackbox supports “autosampling” as well, it’s called “multisampling” there …
Why not pair the OT with any polyphonic hardware sampler? You could pick up an old EMU or AKAI rack unit off eBay for cheap, then use the OT to sequence it via MIDI. Let the OT handle fx and one shot samples, and use the other unit to do all your polyphonic stuff, run it back into the OT to a THRU machine and process it there.
How do you find the mpc500?
I read negative comments about it but so about the OT
I was thinking about it also for its portability.
Yeah it’s really nice but I’m not sure I can justify the price when I can do the same if not better with a vst.
See I really like the features of the new MPC but the touchscreen man. Honestly I saw people trying to select note and stuff, I was faster doing that with Maschine MK1(of course using the pc screen) I don’t know why people complain about it. Muscle memory+buttons is so easy compared to touchscreen. At that point what’s faster with touchscreen is faster with the mouse.
Not a fun of OT poly sequencer
But definitely it can be a nice addition especially for form factor and price.
It has its downsides, for sure, but I use it with my Virus TI in multi mode, and I regularly write full tracks with tons of polyphony all sequenced on the OT. It’s very doable.
Cheap, does the job, 64 voices poly, midi overdub with direct quantization or not, multi sample.
Mutes state feedback is bad.
Afaik you can’t control mutes via midi.
Not much midi modulation possible unless using velocity mods (pitch, filter…).
Pads are not great, so are MPC1000’s, AR’s.
I had a MPC 2000, then a MPC 1000, sold for OT, bought another MPC1000 Black with JJOS to compensate OT limitations but I didn’t use it!
Not intuitive at all. Sold.
MPC 500 is super simple in comparison, making patches with the free soft.
Really enjoyed generative drums with OT’s arp playing an Indian MPC kit.
The touch screen is very sensitive. I can do many things faster on it, if I compare it with a mouse. But it depends on the case and workflow. I have the MPC to work completely OTB. But I have the X, the 16 Q-Links are very useful organized, and I use the knobs more than the screen
What about replace with mpcstuff pads? Does the mute feedback and playability improve?
I see MPC velocity modulation as a tool to make the sample sound more organic or to accentuate certain aspect.
Does it have an lfo at all?
Those Tabla Gen sound so good man, good job!
I never try an MPC but I tried an iPad, awful experience I just can’t gel with it. Certain things are not bad but working mainly with touchscreen is a no for me.
On the other hand I like the MPC X, the 16 Qlink with screen are fantastic. I like the buttons under the screen and the navigation arrow like the old one.
I’m just not sure if it’s worth the money.
In my set up I use Ableton Live as a multitrack recorder and for final mixing, I just don’t like to tweak sounds in a DAW with mouse/keyboard but I think DAW are stronger to arrange your track and mixing.
But I can see an OT+MPC X+Behringer x32 for a powerful and not too expensive OTB set up.
I wish the MPC X had more inputs or the possibility to expand it but I see why they decide for 8 outputs instead of inputs.
No LFO on the mpc500. It’s super barebones option wise. Can do some rad stuff with the 4 layers per pad and velocity mod / switching tho. Worst con IMO: the filters are horrendous, they bring all sort of shitty ringing but that seems to vary from one 500 to another.
The worth of a tool is very depending on our workflow and how it supports this workflow. I have a MPC 5000 already, loved it and the X is a real improvement in so many ways, which I missed on the 5000. For me it was the right thing to become my OTB master.
Considering the technical and built quality I would say that its price is justified. It’s a highly specialized kind of notebook after all. And it’s ironically a kind of ITB solution, which substitutes an ITB, if that makes sense
Just chiming in with no real info other than I hate touch screens too and would prefer dedicated buttons. However, in my forced journey to learn and use the MPC Live, it’s not ALL that bad. In fact having owned the MPC 500 it saves a ton of menu diving and uses its screen size as an advantage.
Another vote for MC-101, you can even load loops/sample you made on OT into it, like 16 of them on a drum kit, and have each with its own delay and reverb send and mfx on/off.
Then you have looper tracks which can also be used for timestretched stuff, and of course the tone tracks, which have 1000s of sounds plus a randomise function, for thousands more.
Yep editing the sounds is a bit menu diving, but there are so many nice starting points, you get a lot for the money.
Some nice bonuses are eq for each drum sound, the fully customisable scatter, loading in your own custom drum samples, the list goes on.
Between the 101 an OT you have a very powerful setup in a tiny footprint.
I had a 707 before but prefer the 101 personally.
Only real downside is 60 seconds shared between all looper clips, but you can load upto 6 minutes of stereo or 12 minutes mono samples into tone and/or drum tracks.
1 project in memory at a time but each of the 4 tracks can have 16 patterns, which can be combined into 128 scenes for your sections.
You can even use midi tracks in the OT to turn scatter on/off, and CC control of many parameters.
I love filter I can’t deal with bad filter.