I’ve never really understood why so many complain about it showing its age and being comparable to a VST from the 2000s. Honestly, so what if it is - it sounds great to my ears. That said, the presets feel a bit EDM gimmicky with too many effects added, but as a basic VA subtractive synth, it sounds great, with a great sounding filter. Very analogue-like if you ask me. Not enough to make me want to sell my Korg Minilogue XD, but certainly good enough to fit in just about any production.
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Tubesynth has always been underrated.
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I’ve been playing with the demos of both Fabric and OPX-4 and the synths sound really great. I think with these new synths you could pretty much do everything you need in Stand Alone to produce some truly beautiful work. I wish the price were lower, but hey, that’s the price of doing business these days I guess.
I wish they offered a Complete my Order option, so I could buy the OPX-4 now, and just pay the difference for the whole bundle later…since I like the OPX-4 right now…
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That’s good to know. I read upthread that their new plugins wouldn’t load on their old MPCs, but maybe Akai already addressed it or it was user error.
Well, I don’t think Roland’s prices are fair either for their VSTs and I absolutely hate subscriptions. I’m only expressing what value looks like to me, and I note that you have a different perspective.
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If my Force come back to life, i’ll try this. THANKS !
It’s a bit ironic that you bring it up as a comparison of value, longevity and hardware vs. software.
The mc-101 is a preset player with extremely limited parameters in a menu-dive-UI.
If you want to access to the synth engine you need a computer, an SD card and a 250€ plugin called Roland Cloud Zenology Pro…
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I never really used it as the old gui had a few quirks with the knob assignment which made it counter intuitive but it is a nice sounding synth and the minor changes to the gui made a difference.
Oh yeah, I didn’t say I think the MC-101 is worth it, I just said it made me appreciate it more. I agree with all your points against the MC-101 but I’d rather hold on to it for my moderate appetite for string ensembles, piano sounds and Juno/Jupiter synth leads and pads than to shell out $500 for the MPC equivalent in this case. Not convinced I’ll keep the MC-101 for much longer though, unless I actually do end up leveraging it’s excellent presets in one of my productions.
The prices are insane imo too. So I think I"ll pick up the one I like most instead of catching them all.
Fair enough! 
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Fabric and OPx-4 are the top ones rn.
Tubesynth is good for the price wheras Hype is epic for the price. (price as in standalone)
I’d say I judged it too fast based on the presets, then never really went back to it.
The new structure of Sounds is what got me to look at it again, and it’s now presented in a way that let me see what it can do, and what it is, more easily.
The presets are still not for me.
But, strip it back, and it’s quite easy to work with and get the type of sounds I do go for.
And now it’s easier to save and share presets for it, right?
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and then you have to pay extra for the instruments.
Just noticed that soundpack prices also went up.
Cheers. They say its late fall. So a bit longer yet. I seem to enjoy gear better without screens or ones with menus in. Just keep it simple has always been my affirmation in music. 
Get yourself a harmonica then fella. 
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Ive got one. A Marine special.
I’ve just realised another flaw in the MPC probability;
I have a 3-note Cm chord stab on the 4th beat of a 1-bar loop, set to 30% probability.
I was thinking it would trigger the chord 30% of the time, but it’s triggering individual notes from the chord, to the point where you never really get the full chord triggering.
Seems a bit of a blunder this to me…
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Having some fun with the new demo synths…here’s a little 16 bar taste of things to come from this wonderful box:
One reason I love the MPC, is the ability to create new Sequences on the fly when you want to take the previous instruments to brand new places…really liking the vibe of this direction:
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Yeah, that’s what the previous poster in my reply discovered. Definitely not how it ought to work by default, even if it does have some creative potential. I suppose probability is hard when chords are simply notes that start at the same time - it needs a way to group them into a chord unit and treat it separately. The notes could be assigned ‘prev’ conditions in the list editor, for example, or the sequencer could record the root note and chord info as a single unit, recorded from chord mode or programmed as a separate parameter - which would also allow us to swap chords easily - but none of that is part of the existing workflow.
I guess the simplest working solution is to resample the chord and assign the sample probability, but then you start mixing tracks and it gets messy.
Works perfectly for drums and single hits, of course, but the MPC is a lot more than that now.
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I’m pretty sure on the MPC there’s an option in settings to choose whether to instant mute or not. I know force is different but have a dig in your settings, might share it
For a few months I tried using the MC-101 as a preset machine for that classic Roland sounds in combination with the MPC… Was not going well for my taste.
The MC-101 itself has a lot of good sounds, but the need for menu diving into a 2-row LCD was just too much for me. That plus the limited sound editing abilities and weird implementation of MIDI prog changes made me sell the MC after a while.
If you want to use it as a groovebox alone it’s probably a very good device. As a preset machine, not so much IMO.
If the new plugins can do maybe 50-70% of the sounds the MC achieve, I will happily buy them.
It’s also a workflow plus that the plugins are integrated into the MPC ecosystem. You don’t need another devices and physical connections etc.
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