I just had a vision of him taking the picture with the spirit of perfectionism.
“No, that’s not right. The MPC should be higher”
“Still not right…I don’t look amazed enough”
“…yes…this is…IT! My magnum opus for YT thumbnails! I no longer fear death! This is IT!”
lol, the man said he’s got 3 kids, if youtube wants to pay him more for those thumbnails he’s gonna do it… if it would’ve been me I would have put an actual goat using an mpc in the thumbnail ha!
YouTube needs more people like you 
any links to him talking about this, I gave a look but couldn’t find it, … might be wrong but I think E-A-Ski is talking about transparency when he says they don’t sound good, sounds like he prefers some character imprinted on the samples by the machine, of course I’m familiar with those sentiments but I prefer transparency in most cases…
he’s got that ear though
as an experiment, I would open a YT channel for putting gaping mouth with ms word text effect in the thumbnails for the juicy Lyra/MAX noise music, giving the videos clickbait titles and hashtags and everything, something like “I SENT A MESSAGE TO SATURN AND GOT A REPLY 
#ASMR”
just to fuck with the algorithm and to see how many views it’s getting 
that’s a good question, looks more like an ah maybe?.. something in-between
never the less he makes some good points, click on the video it doesn’t start at the beginning
I think it’s in one of the PDF files for the sound packs I bought. Let me see if I can find the quote
The new MPC X limited edition is the total opposite of what I’d want in a new MPC. 
Bring back a truly sample-focused, small/portable MPC!
Focus on samples, sampled keygroups, pitch/filter/amp envelopes, LFOs. Streamline the effects by including only some nice effects: a proper, good reverb, delay, one streamlined distortion effect rather than 8 of them, bitcrusher/lofi, drive/saturation, chorus/flanger, a consolidated mixing effect (eq, comp, hp/lp filters in one streamlined interface). No need for 50+ effects all over the place with inconsistent interfaces and overlap, just the essential ones arranged logically.
Add a granular synth engine - i.e. again, this is a sampler, so focus on that. No other soft synths are needed so throw all the others out (Hype, TubeSynth, Solina, etc).
Add a built-in mic. Make it truly small and portable, battery and usb-c powered. User-replaceable Li-ion battery please.
Then get rid of all the unnecessary stuff to make it more of a focused sampler and sequencer and much less of a DAW: strip out the looper, the clunky interface, the audio tracks, the messy mixing interface with buses, tracks, masters, etc all in separate places (just 2-3 inserts per program and 1-2 inserts per pad is more than enough). This should mean a slower/cheaper CPU can be used and less RAM is needed.
No need for serious finger drumming so miniaturize those pads down beyond SP-404 MKII size. Remove silly integrations like Splice. Miniaturize the I/O: usb-c, 3.5mm stereo in and out, midi in/out and a micro SD slot - all at the top of the device. Obviously reduce the screen size. Ideally still a touch screen because I don’t know how they’d make the sequencer easily editable otherwise, but maybe they could figure something out.
Basically an MPC without the DAW-in-a-box feel, about the size of a Polyend Tracker Mini or slightly larger like a Smpltrek.
I would buy that!
At that point why not just get like a blackbox? MPC is great because it is a whole production workstation that is beat focused… if you just want a simple sampler with pads and some effects there are many.
This is very close to the blackbox, actually. You more or less described it on point, minus a few effects, built in mic and battery (though mine actually has a battery, but that’s because I visited a conjurer to make it happen :).
I’d rather say beat enabled than beat focused 
If it were beat focused it would allow other things which are currently not possible with it, for example drawing a velocity or a pitch curve over a sequence. Blackbox is slightly simpler than that though for songwriting there’s more than enough to get started.
I’ve been waiting for you to come in with this.
I think they’re missing a trick not doing a truly portable solution myself, there’s obviously a market for small battery powered samplers, why not tap into that? I’d be down with a modern day mpc 500 format. Obviously I’d like a full set of pads, internal battery and a decent but smallish screen… and before someone pipes up with yeah but what about the mpc live og or 2, it may be portable in so much as it doesn’t need to be plugged in all the time but it’s still massive and it weighs a ton just like public enemy’s uzi…
You can do both of those things in the piano roll. You can draw a automation curve for velocity over your sequence and use the pencil to draw in a pitch curve of notes.
Yeah that’s not strictly true though is it, the 404 couldn’t be any further away from the mpc paradigm workflow wise, I’m talking about a small battery powered mpc 500 style device with all the modern hardware but the classic mpc workflow…
I think if I wanted to get close to what @djst describes right now it would be Koala on an iPad with a class compliant interface that has a mic, like the Zoom h4n.
I think the SP404mk2 is superb, but agree with @Symian that it’s quite far away from being like the MPC, or an MPC mini.
I really dig the Live 2, but it’s a brick compared to the SP.
You’re right. Sometimes, it is easy to forget the workarounds on the Blackbox: what you can’t do in pad seqs, you can do with key seqs.
There is nevertheless a price to pay for this alternative workflow: you’ll need more sequences (more precisely one per relevant drum part) and you won’t have an overview of your beat sequence.
The closest thing to a mini mpc right now and I’m guessing because I don’t use the software, is probably a surface pro tablet running the mpc software….
The sp404 or blackbox aren’t any closer to an mpc than they are an octatrack in this context… the mpc does not have a generic workflow or set of features so whatever alternative device suggested would have to have that workflow and feature set or be something better and the versalab. Mc101, etc ain’t it
Beat maker 3 or the iMPC app will not suffice either
There’s always iMaschine, loooooooool 
But on a serious note (it’s rare I have them), have you tried Beathawk?
Some people get in with it, some can’t.