I have no experience with the MFB 501, so I don’t have a specific response or time to read that manual, but it is not common to use CC to trigger voices. The standard is to use different notes. Could ofc. be the case here but it sounds odd to me…
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Maybe it would just be simpler if I multisampled the thing? The 501 manual is confusing to me and I’m generally confused to begin with.
Same here, it’s cavernous, very decent bag…
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That’s the one I have too. Perfect backpack.
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Quick question - I’ve never really used the MPC for sampling but I’m wanting to sample some drum one-shots later.
What’s the best way to do that? Should I just record them all into long sample, then split it somehow, or is there anything built-in for sampling & trimming one-shots?
in theory you could do it either way – one drum sample per pad or just let the sampler run while you trigger each drum hit and then chop that up with individual slices assigned to individual pads.
and then each pad has up to four sample layers, i.e., four different samples per pad that can be triggered in different ways for each time the pad is struck or receives MIDI note data, e.g., velocity response to finger drumming
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I gotta replace some of the transport buttons (not the switches) on my MPC X.
Anyone have any experience with opening the box up? Very little info on how to do it out there, and MPC Stuff just wrote me that it’s work and they don’t have any instructions for this machine.
Any pointers / tips are welcome!
Thanks for backpack replies @DaGeek @Wolf-Rami @Yorgos_Arabatzis @Symian
Found an Ultimate slim for 1/3 off list price 
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So I am finishing up some of the first songs I did completely on the MPC Live II. Just going to do a bit more arranging in the MPC and they will be ready for mixing and mastering…
Which got me wondering, how much mixing you all do on the MPC before exporting your songs to a daw for final mixing/mastering?
I want a good bit of the MPC sound so I am probably going to use all the plugins I can in standalone that sound decent, but I also have a decent amount of outboard gear I might want to run stuff through and there are also some things that would make mixing a bit easier in a daw (spectrum analyzer, graphical eq, etc.).
Also, if you all are going to be exporting and mixing in a daw do you get it as close as possible in the MPC using the pad mixing, panning, etc. or do you just do it all in the daw?
A lot of options lol.
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The Mpc is built to be a sampler.
For the sampler page you have multiple options, you can record individual sounds and assign to pads one by one or you can play back a series of one shots, hold down or tap a pad each time a new sound comes in and assign them to a pad as they come. This is usually the sample slicing workflow but works great for one shots, I used it in conjunction with the Syntakt for quick sampling of my kits.
Once recorded there’s tons you can do with a sample, start from the edit sample screen and you can have some destructive processing, from trimming to changing pitch, or just have fun with the sample page, add filters, effects, layers and so forth
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Most of it, on each channel I have at least an eq and width, plus the motherducker gets used a lot.
Then I split my sounds to various busses and mix more there before going into the master section.
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If you like what you hear already, keep all the FX’s and Plugins you used on the MPC and transfer the tracks to the DAW for final tweaking and mastering. Don’t edit anything or you risk to lose that sound you like, keep all the MPC plugins that add character to the sound.
Working in a DAW is more easier and efficient.
Try to keep some headroom for tweaking/mastering.
Hope it makes sense.
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I would highly recommend learning how to use MPC Software… that’s got everything in there that you need, it can access/use your VST library, and you can keep it all in the MPC environment then (by simply saving opening your project in it).
If you did want to create stems to take into another DAW, it’s still the best way to do it, and use your device in controller mode.
I believe that MPC software is under-appreciated and mis-understood.
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I can’t get past how ugly it looks.
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This is the way… I just couldn’t get past how counter intuitive everything was, I’m under no illusions that in part it’s down to years of Ableton usage but still, some of it feels like it’s been designed to wind you up…
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I was exactly the same with it for some time, and it didn’t seem intuitive at first or relate to how I pictured the architecture/workflow of the hardware MPC, I found it frustrating… but there’s a learning hump to get over with it that is definitely worth it.
The software made me view working with audio tracks/files in a completely new light too… I’d definitely underestimated the potential of audio tracks beforehand.
Also, the Controller Mode combo is great… especially for the times when you can’t figure out how to do something on the desktop and you can do it on the MPC instead.
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Just had a vision of someone in Akai with that as an objective… ‘how can we make this annoy Ableton users?.. fck it, why stop there? Let’s annoy MPC users too!’ 
If you don’t want to tap all the slices, you can record it as a long sample, and then go into sample edit --> chop mode --> and then use threshold to auto-detect the transients for you. It’ll probably get a few a little bit off, but it’s easy to go in and tweak the start and stop times. After that you can convert it to a new drum program and you’re good to go.
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Curious. With Ableton Live ALS export, does each Sequence in the MPC get exported as a Scene in Ableton?
Or. Does the MPC just export the current sequence and match up the tracks?
Thanks,
Adonis