no offense to anyone, but i think this is the best advice you've got.Tone Deft wrote:forget trying to sound like anything, forget the effects, forget routing to external gear, forget 'that analog sound' bullshit. just work on making clear sounding music with nice dynamics that you enjoy. you're just starting out, forget all the voodoo crap some people talk and just learn the tools, it's a pointless distraction.
IMO the MPC thing has to do with the workflow and the MPC's swing. the method by which samples are chopped and then beat out on the pads, it can sound very loose. it also has a very simple effects section so I think people don't muck with their samples as much, overthinking the sound and screwing it up. overall it's not an exact of a DAW as a computer, there's slop, lovely lovely slop.
consider this, generally speaking, music sounds better when it's louder. often sound complaints are nothing more than the output being turned down too low. google it, "louder is perceived as better." forget trying to trick your sounds to be analog, just focus on the basics, the rest will come.
you could run audio through any number of outdated hardware components... you could hit your computer with a dead cat to manipulate the audio engine. you could playback two identical pieces of audio and swear that the summing bus has colored the sound on one of them. you could stick a finger in one ear to adjust the audio, but at the end of the day focus on composing and arranging a beat, then mixing it as best you can with what you have... afterward there are 101 + plugins out there with the word "warmth" either in the name or in the description of what they do... you could add one of them to the Master (if that's what you like) or you could add one to grouped tracks or sends (what i like).
