I just copped a new MPC 1000 and......

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:32 pm

live will always be great for arranging and re-arranging

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:42 pm

deckme(N)tal wrote:

i only used fruity loops midi...and it better than live one...in terms of timing strictly
i dunno about pro tools, reason or logic...

that's were one of logic's real strength comes through, the midi resolution is so ultrafine that it captures evrey slightest nuance of your human groove. or for that respect of your mpc groove.

if you record it into live i would do it as audio. to capture it in full truth.

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:54 pm

so say I use an mpc to create grooves....and use logic and its alleged midi-supremecy to record those grooves in midi. Now I save it as a midi file, through logic....so far we have not lost the subtleties and nuances of your original mpc groove , right ? ....now I open the midi file as a midiclip at the original tempo in live....I assume live wont somehow 'taint' the midi file with some kind of lower resolution quantisation or something ?

also, can someone tell me this, can you save your mpc grooves as midi files within the mpc itself, and then pass it to your computer as a data file via compactflash, usb, etc

if so, will live somehow 'taint' the nuances with a lower res midi quantisation etc etc ?

this may or may not seem like a dumb question....just there are alot of midi allegations floating around...

snowtires · Post by **snowtires** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:03 pm

RopeyPunter wrote:so say I use an mpc to create grooves....and use logic and its alleged midi-supremecy to record those grooves in midi. Now I save it as a midi file, through logic....so far we have not lost the subtleties and nuances of your original mpc groove , right ? ....now I open the midi file as a midiclip at the original tempo in live....I assume live wont somehow 'taint' the midi file with some kind of lower resolution quantisation or something ?

also, can someone tell me this, can you save your mpc grooves as midi files within the mpc itself, and then pass it to your computer as a data file via compactflash, usb, etc

if so, will live somehow 'taint' the nuances with a lower res midi quantisation etc etc ?

this may or may not seem like a dumb question....just there are alot of midi allegations floating around...

you know, i've tried that (saving a midi file on the mpc and putting it into live) and it ALWAYS comes out messed up. maybe it's just my mpc, but every time i did it, the files were missing notes, velocity cues, etc. BUT, the opposite (midi file from live to mpc) worked fine. so that leads me to believe that there's something messed up with the midi file structure of the mpc.

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 6:13 pm

surely you were making some mistake ? ... a bug that large would be surely seen as a huge flaw and fixed ASAP right ?

snowtires · Post by **snowtires** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:24 pm

RopeyPunter wrote:surely you were making some mistake ? ... a bug that large would be surely seen as a huge flaw and fixed ASAP right ?

that's exactly what i thought, 'i must be doing something wrong.' so i tried every thing i could possibly think of and it still didn't work. i dunno, maybe my mpc has something wrong with it, but it seemed to have no problem playing back parts on my keyboard. the only time i got a problem was when i took the mpc midi file and put it into a computer. if i was making a mistake, i made it like 50 times in a row.

bermudagold · Post by **bermudagold** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:39 pm

the way i understand it,...and this far from gospel.....there are three issues

1) the mpc sound.....the sound people here and revere comes from the ad/da converters in the box that provide a certain sound to your samples that people instantly like....with no tweaking.....people originally thought it was just the mpc lower bit rate and if you used a bit reducer and a compressor in a software DAW like LIVE,...u could achieve this sound.....but most people i know and countless posters on forums say they cant acheive this and thats because u cant emulate akais converters.....,could you with bit reducers, compression, eq, and the analog warmer plugs (saturation{to mimic tape}, artificial harmonics{to mimic vinyl}, amplification overdrive{to mimic pre/power amps}, and delayed phase adjustment of left and right channels{to mimic hardware maximiser/exciters like BBE}; eventually accomplish this in live or another daw?.....maybe.....but people have chosen rather than spend all that time, money, and clock cycles chasing that elusive sound when they can get it from an mpc instantly.......and lots of people want that sound,..can hear it in a blind test.....there is something psychoacoustically pleasing about it.....so if u wanna use both i would record audio into live and not try and bounce midi.....see point 2

2) there is the timing/groove issue.....since daw are sample accurate,...it is probably the mpc timing that is indeed off/strange/special....or some combination of the above.....it gives extra groove to peoples music that apparently wasnt played in......people believe this is because (and i dont know if the new ones have this)....the old ones you werent visually accurately cutting ur samples......so every sample would have a different amount of dead space at the beginning and end of ur sample.....leading to a sort of forced swing as hits would be alternate from being a lil late to a lil early......could u acheive this in a daw?.....u can play in swing/groove because it is a feel,...but u have to have talent(the feel)......the box is not going to add something interesting to it for u by itself ....like the mpc can.....again for many the mpc is an easier route.......again some developers have talked about emulating this with an algorithm to randomly or intelligently add a varying amount of dead space to the beginning or end of samples in a daw before u lay down the pattern with ur piano keyboard or pad midi controller.

3) then there is of course always placebo

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:59 pm

bermudagold wrote:...so if u wanna use both i would record audio into live and not try and bounce midi.....see point 2

well, if the rumours are true and the mpc does a more pleasing job of quantising and reading/writing the midi you create when you hit those pads....i'd definatly want to bounce to midi and use it in the computer realm of vsts and modular environments...
definatly. When I'm bored and unenthused I'm definatly more productive with more 'tactile' composing....

as for the mpc 'sound' ...well that's interesting, but what really interests me about the mpc range is making grooves which I can use inside a computer, a close second to that would be as a hardware sampler

I guess no one has a conclusive answer on taking/saving midi grooves on an mpc and transporting them to a computer......are the nuances lost ? or is it just live's 'bad midi timing' that taints the midi groove ? whats live's midi resolution ? what's logics? whats an mpc's ?

bermudagold · Post by **bermudagold** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:16 pm

I dont think there is anything inherently bad about lives timing.....as far as resolution...i think the unit is ppq? or whatever......i dont know the number for live or the mpc...would be good thing to find out.....supposedly logic has the highest of the popular daw.....998?....that is maybe the number i remember.....should be easy to look up.....someone can correct this.....but to me if u just want the groove....play it in with live.....cause if ur using the mpc to drive a drum softsynth?.....then the theory of groove coming from the difference in sample cutting will be lost......other than midi latency that you would have with any controller,....not sure if you would notice the difference......would be a good test......but like i said most people want that sound more than anything.....it would be pretty expensive to use as a midi controller

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 4:29 pm

bermudagold wrote:I dont think there is anything inherently bad about lives timing.....as far as resolution...i think the unit is ppq? or whatever......i dont know the number for live or the mpc...would be good thing to find out.....supposedly logic has the highest of the popular daw.....998?....that is maybe the number i remember.....should be easy to look up.....someone can correct this.....but to me if u just want the groove....play it in with live.....cause if ur using the mpc to drive a drum softsynth?.....then the theory of groove coming from the difference in sample cutting will be lost......other than midi latency that you would have with any controller,....not sure if you would notice the difference......would be a good test......but like i said most people want that sound more than anything.....it would be pretty expensive to use as a midi controller

I dont know if there is anything bad about live's timing, but its certainly mentioned quite a bit. It makes sense to me that if mpc has a higher resolution for reading/writing midi notes then the rumours are probably closer to truth than fiction. Course I dont know which has a higher res, if at all .... hopefully someone will discover this and let us know.

I dont believe in your idea that the groove in an mpc is created by the samples having extra blank space at the beginning etc....although its an interesting Idea I might implement in a maxpatch someday in the bookdwelling future, just to see what happens. Why would they create the groove using something as unpredictable as blank spaces at the beginnings of samples, considering you will want to change/edit samplers and maintain the groove .... if you're idea were true, maybe the mpc adds its own blank bits of audio in the background processes ...but I still dont see why they'd compensate in this way, instead of just maintaining the samples integrity and writing the groove in the midi rather than this sample method you mention.

an over priced midi controller ? ...depends on how YOU use it, right ? I'd use it to create grooves by feeling them (rather then drawing them)...and then send to the computer for arranging and re-arranging, eq's & fx. second to that as a performance sampler.

of course, that's only if live doesnt somehow 'taint' the midi with a lower resolution.....in which case, perhaps taking the midi to logic rendering to audio THEN taking to live for performing and re-arranging...

I guess its time to check out an mpc forum?

bermudagold · Post by **bermudagold** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:04 pm

the old school cats were sampling directly into the box, and cutting the sample in the box without visuals, there were no computers.....hence the theory.....if ur gonna load in samples cut perfectly in a software audio editor, that would render the theory null and void.....that is the test......sample into the mpc both ways.....have it play the same pattern and see if there is a difference and which one "grooves" better to you...that will test that theory.....then take the sample set cut in software,..load in impulse or something and play the same pattern.....then load up another impulse track with those software cut samples and use the exported midi file from the mpc.....listen side by side....that will give you insight into whether and what the mpc is doing to the midi thats not sample cut related....answering the second question......i doubt the midi resolution in the mpc is higher than lives but would be interesting to know......I can play swing and grrove and lives swing/groove works decent......i'd rather have the sound

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:11 pm

well...lets hope someone with an mpc tells us whats up...

bermudagold · Post by **bermudagold** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:21 pm

should be simple test for one of the guys in this thread......been meaning to do this myself for a while.....but none of my boys wit mpc's are in the immediate area......a cat i know did something similar and found the timing to be virtually identical with software cut samples when laid in mpc versus a daw...to even his mild surprise......but his comparison was using logic which may have a higher midi resolution than live so.....still could benefit from some tests

HD1 · Post by **HD1** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:28 pm

ya...but lets not forget something, we dont want to test the timing of using the grid of either live or mpc ...like drawing a four four beat in both wont proove anything...at least with respect to what I'm concerned with. I'm talking about how the mpc reads/writes midi (velocity, note & timing) from tapping its pads, and if that EXACT midi groove can be imported and used on a computer...either logic or live, without the midi being tainted.

i'm sure in some respects the mpc is no different then drum programming with live, that is....using the grids and drawing the notes. ......thats kinda pointless tho, buying an mpc to draw the notes in ...well in this context anyways

blakbeltjonez · Post by **blakbeltjonez** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 8:33 pm

i can't bring myself to get rid of my MPC2000..... there's something about the sound and feel (the older Akai MPC/S-series samplers main outs have a certain sound ).....even when i work on the same project in Live and the MPC to see what works better, they don't sound or feel quite the same and i'm always having to adjust things a bit that are flown back and forth.

i find that both can be very tight, in different ways if that makes any sense. i prefer the weight of the MPC's sound, the sequencer and in particular the swing of it, and the overall way it makes you work - but there's no denying the convenience, flexibility and sound shaping power of Live. in that respect the MPC is pretty limited.