MPC Live or Akai Force perhaps? Not much around with a graphical interface. Unsure if you can micro-time the sequencer. Nobody does p-locks/sound locks quite like Elektron either.
You folks all like the MPC’s more than the Maschine Plus or MK3.
My engineers love the 96k sample rate of the Maschine. But no touch screen –
Thanks for your thoughts –
L
The Polyend Tracker is a great case.
A great workflow but has almost no I/O for professional gear.
Same with the Deluge. Great idea but not designed really designed for recording or integrating with a professional setup.
Neither even list their sample rate.
Usable for live situations, I suppose, and prosumer applications. But difficult otherwise.
To my guys sample rate translates to headroom, translates to the ability to handle effects and manipulation down the mixing chain. I’m not an engineer but that’s how I understand it –
Deluge is 44.1k (and not the highest headroom) but still could be a decent option, especially if you’re only recording one or two sounds from it at a time
Blackbox has 3 outs and a nice EQ (not sure of sample rate) but no parameter locks or microtiming
Shout out to listing your requirements so clearly the MPCs may fit your bill … might be a game of finding the smallest compromise though
Not sure on your musical style? but I’ve blind tested sample rates for my own use and was surprised that for my music I often selected 48k over 96k sample rates. The general trend was aggressive gritty distorted noises often were selected at 48k while classical operatic samples were more often selected at the higher rate.
Maybe do a little pepsi challenge with your bandmates before you cut your options down?
Thanks for those thoughts.
Unfortunately I have limited control of this on some level. Producers. Engineers. Labels. All I have to and need to listen too –
48K is workable, but the only unit I know of that is 48K, other than Maschine, which is 96K, is Elektron in the Rytm, Digitakt, Digitone, Syntakt platforms.
The machines are, rightfully so, made for a primary audience, at the best price point possible, which is not us. That I understand.
I think there is still an opportunity for a dominant recorder, sampler, sequencer, etc. to cover all these bases without compromise.
I’m gonna put some study into the step sequencer of the Maschine. THANKS to all of you for your feedback. Much appreciated.
I hear you Chaku,
there is a mastering/production/engineering benefit to a higher sample rate, but also to a higher bit rate which you did not mention and the two do not exist in isolation. That said there is no 32bit sampler in production I am aware of.
I looked at the Maschine+ myself. Tried one out for a session but it didn’t inspire confidence. Plagued by software issues you can expect it to crash every handfull of hours. I wanted the functionality of the pads, but higher bit rate recording was only available when tethered to a PC. But when tethered the latency on the pads was so high I couldn’t drum out quantized loops live on the pads.
On the up side sample playback quality when stretching or squashing samples was better on the Maschine than a MPC. Increasing playback bpm ~50% was un-noticeable on Maschine but MPC had just noticeable artifacts. Decreasing play back speed ~50% introduced significant artifacts to the MPC where it was only just noticeable on Maschine. Interestingly the Maschine used more CPU to perform the task.
While no doubt your use is different from mine. I play live, I chop up some stuff in my laptop but do not use it much as I just don’t enjoy the UI for music, record very little & rely on hardware Fx, EQ, and compression.
“I think there is still an opportunity for a dominant recorder, sampler, sequencer, etc…”
Chakulan
A 48k 24bit OT with OB would be the cats whiskers…
I think 44.1 is still relevant in 2023…
Joking side - a lot of mixing projects are still done in 44.1 and then if a hardware bounce is being done the master can be captured at 96k 32 bit float to go to mastering if needed.
That aside, would also think laptop/Ableton/controller may be the way to go, if you can run all the plugins/virtual instruments you need at 96k without overloading your CPU too much.
There’s really no point in going beyond 48k unless you are using plugins that don’t do any oversampling. Higher sample rates don’t improve headroom, unless you are talking frequency domain “headroom” which would translate to less aliasing when producing nonlinearities. Bit depth is where dynamic headroom comes into play, but 24bit is really good enough for 99.99% of any post processing you would need to do.
the MPCs may fit your bill … might be a game of finding the smallest compromise though