Its the music that counts, not the runway. 
Nice setup though.
You are correct. I do have to admit that those two by themselves look like a beautiful and elegant solution. The symmetry cannot be denied!
Yeah, I don’t worry too much about the ‘DAW in a box’ issue. A DAW in a box actually sounds great to me, if it can do it in a well thought out package that doesn’t overcomplicate things, and I think the MPCs make a decent job of that. You could remove the touchscreen and relegate its functions to knobs and buttons, but to what end? Identify the features that make it a ‘DAW in a box’ and get rid of those, and what have you achieved, other than making it less functional?
Going DAW-free is only worthwhile if it improves your enjoyment of making music. If you start to get puritanical about it - as with anything - I think it’s going to have a negative effect. The key is to be able to identify when that’s happening, work out why, and fix it. If the fix involves bringing a DAW into the equation, or redefining what ‘dawless’ means to you, well, they both sound preferable to being frustrated or losing interest.
I did ponder for a good while about the MPC One, because I wasn’t sold on the Live when it appeared and I did wonder if the touchscreen was over-egging the pudding. I had absolutely no interest in the earlier hybrid MPCs, and wondered if this was just a poorly thought-out extension of those. But with the One I gradually came round to seeing the advantages and potential of its various features, and gave it a try, and it worked out. I could do a whole lot more with a laptop, controller and DAW, but experience suggests I’d actually do less. So I’ll worry about it when I stop enjoying it.
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Good thoughts Nick. Thank you. As I have been reading the replies on this post and doing some more searches through the forums here and elsewhere, I am beginning to see the advantages of keeping the MPC One and using it along with the A4 and Model:Samples. I can also see spending a few months just learning the A4, plus then learning how to integrate it with what I have already. I do not live by the music I create, and most of the time, I don’t even save my creations. I am more interested in the “how on earth did I get to this very cool place after three hours of turning knobs and making midi and audio connections between my machines.” So, I look forward to how the A4 will fit into that. I do think I will like the workflow of the A4 better than the MPC One and I can also see myself not really using the Model:Samples much, except maybe for some extra drum tracks to go with the A4 and MPC One, though, so I can see myself later this year contemplating my next Elektron product. There seems to be something strange, but also indescribably immersive about the Elektron workflow, even though I have only just barely touched the surface with the Model:Samples.
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I don’t record or save very much either, but that was the same when I was mainly using a DAW, so it’s just me. The One should be a great companion to the A4 - I have a Mk1 A4 and they sync up very nicely, and there’s a lot you can do with the combo - the MPC’s effects add a lot of options, its chord modes work nicely if you have polyphony enabled, and recording long A4 jams to either samples or audio tracks and picking out the highlights works well. Building up a drum kit from A4 sounds is quick and great fun. I can’t speak for the Model:Samples, but I’d certainly recommend hooking up the A4 to the One and exploring what it has to offer.
Your posts have reminded me of some videos I watched a while back after purchasing the MPC One about integration with other hardware. I just looked at one their videos and now can see that, specifically, this guy uses his MPC One as a “hardware hub” (e.g. DAWless) for a bunch of Elektron stuff as well as other stuff, so I guess I should rewatch these videos after I get my head around the A4. Maybe you’ve seen his stuff, but in case you haven’t, he’s pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVt7cZnFCWk
The Lives strongest points are it’s midi brain capabilities & sampling. Having all audio ran into a mixer and back into the mpc is a good way to record and master within the MPC.
I have been experimenting with creating new instruments based on samples running into the audio in connections on the MPC. One thing that makes it particularly fun is that I have created these crazy huge sounds based on various mixes with multiple synthesizers all running simultaneously through my mixer to its auxiliary resends, along with varying levels of effects on the instruments Through a couple of really nice outboard effects processors I have connected to my mix. I haven’t yet figured out how to make the sounds very usable in the MPC, because I end up getting quite a bit of clipping. There must be something I’m doing wrong with the audio settings in the MPC. Still very fun experimentation though.
I just bought the MPC Bible based on the recommendation of someone in a different thread on this forum. I plan to take a look at the nitty-gritty of slicing and dicing samples on the MPC and then seeing if I can use those to augment the sounds and patterns I will create on the A4. I am super excited by all of this!
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FYI, it looks like I have been using two different accounts to post to this forum. I must’ve had an old user account stored away in my iPhone, and then created a new account a couple of days ago on my MacBook. Hopefully, I have straighten this all out.