Thanks, @chrisroland @Automageddon @PineappleDave
I’m going to have a play around with it tonight.
Looking like I won’t be sleeping tonight since it’s still 35c indoors here at 9:30pm and my house is basically an oven now. May as well have a garden MPC session instead 
My biggest gripe with it are the ridiculously unintuitive keyboard shortcuts that aren’t even customizable.
So I started mixing on the MPC tonight and I noticed a lot of the plugins sounded a bit distorted. And adjusting the pad level didn’t change it. So it seems the pad mixer adjusts level post insert, so if you don’t want your signal going into an effect as hot you have to reduce the layer level, which is pre insert. It makes a lot of the fx sound better and less distorted. But why is the MPC set up to clip everything right off the bat (well I guess it isn’t really clipping since it does everything in 32bit float but I guess the fx don’t want to see a hot signal above 0db or something)?
Here is a video I found showing what I am talking about, so you know I am not crazy lol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI7e7A065mI
I don’t know about anyone else but my enthusiasm for using my MPC One has gone way down. I almost find myself dreading turning it on and sorting through sequences. I think it’s a case of option paralysis. Bit of a shame. I find there to be slightly too many things going on in that box.
just curious do you feel the same way about the daws that you use or is that different?
Not really. I find file management much easier on the computer though. Maybe it’s just a phase, who knows. I was really productive on the MPC when I first got it.
Man, things have gotten complicated trying to figure out how I want to mix with the mpc and my daw…
I was thinking maybe I would just explode everything and export as seperate tracks to my daw, but then I realized that some effects (like compression on my drum program for example) wouldn’t get carried over correctly if things were exploded. Then there is the mother ducker, I don’t even know how that would work… hmm maybe using the mpc software is going to be the best way to do this (maybe as a vst inside my daw lol)…
Just explode/export it and use daw bus compressor, and done, dont overcomplicate things.
I ended up buying an Mpc X, after owning a Live, One, Force & Live II.
My issue with the previous models was also a lack of enthusiasm after a while.
I’d sell up & then down the road think about the spec & get sucked back in, attempting different approaches & trying out the different models.
The X has been a similar & different experience. It looks, feels & acts like a proper sequence/sampler/workstation. For me there are no down sides to the hardware. The tilt screen makes the whole experience more enjoyable, even though you don’t really use it much with the added controls. And when considering what’s available to work with i feel in awe at times. I don’t feel overwhelmed by options, but i find myself working in the same way i’ve always done & it’s boring. I’m trying to work faster…make sequences & bounce to sample/pad, then trigger those, instead of working around a main sequence. I’ve stopped quantising everything too. I’ve also stopped trying to make full tracks with it, and i’m now planning on using it as a sound/sample prep/generator for the Octatrack, as that’s where the excitement & inspiration’s currently coming from. Certainly not at a stage yet where i’d think about using them in tandem.
But using an X over the other models has opened up the MPC experience greatly. The hardware feels appropriate for what’s under the hood.
I’m always torn between different systems. I’ve always found it hard keeping things around that i’m not utilising to full effect. But i’ve also kept repeating the same buy/sell/re buy/sell again cycle.
As my son gets older i’m less inclined to sell certain things. If that wasn’t the case i might have my X up for sale right now, but when he’s a bit older i’d like him to have access to this stuff.
So i’m just trying to relax a little bit, do what i feel happy with on the X and on the OT. Not trying to force myself to utilise everything, as things will eventually spring to mind once fluent in the basics, etc.
I think this is very important, especially as gear gets more and more feature rich. I posted about this a year ago or so, when I read this producer’s advice, he talked about knowing your gear for the things you want to achieve, instead of knowing your gear with every bit and byte it comes with. Triggered a discussion on here — some that feel you have to know every feature and use it otherwise you’re just gassing didn’t like the take.
But I think this is key. I’m learning flamenco guitar on my classical…that involves a lot of technique specific to flamenco. I’m not learning blues or country or neo-soul on my guitar, so arguably I’m not using “its full potential”, but that’s not the point — the point is to make music and make it with gear that I master enough to express the thing I want to express as competently as possible.
One of my “issues” with this MPC line is that it does soooo much! Great for those who want an all-in-one-box, and good for me too once I managed to discipline myself to use only what I need/want on my X and Live — this is a real thing though (“too many” features in a box etc).
Also, I like a comment @Fin25 made, to not knowing your gear completely, so you’re always discovering and keeping things exciting.
That’s pretty much how I’ve been doing it for nearly 35 years. Which is also rather telling and why I’ve never made a career out of music, lol!
I touched on this over in the SP-404 thread. I think feature creep is on the rise due to the big jumps in power and storage capabilities that are now filtering through to music gear, and isn’t always as positive as it might seem. The MPC is probably the poster child for this, and I still think the One is amazing value and the best place for anyone getting into hardware to start, but I hear what you’re saying.
I think there’s a risk of these devices becoming a walled garden in the name of convenience, and I’m guitly of this myself - shall I set up a pad sound on the Digitone or JU06A, or just open up a Hype channel and not have to worry about cables and saving patches? Hype sounds great, so why not? But I think it’s healthy to use other designs and devices, and the MPC encourages a kind of monopoly of convenience that can work against that.
It’s largely a made up, nonsense worry, and is more than balanced by the sheer scope and enjoyment it offers anyone who can afford to pick up a relatively inexpensive MPC One. As someone who’s old enough to remember when rack samplers cost far more than anything Akai are currently offering, that’s not lost on me.
If I wanted to be more melodramatic for comic effect, I might compare it to being sucked into a cult, where you start to see less and less of your outside friends - which is ridiculous, but I think not without a grain of truth. Akai certainly want you in there buying new plugins instead of all that inconvenient outboard gear. Eventually there’ll be enough expensive options there that it makes far more sense to pay a subscription, and then BAM! They’ve got you in their compound preparing to repel the federal government.
We’re living in the age of YouTube and the YouTuber, instant access to all the (unfiltered) information you want.
Before this YouTube was magazines and YouTubers were the sales guys working in music stores.
So, if you want to be an MPC sales guy you need to know the majority of what the MPC does.
If you want to use the MPC as a musician/artist/hobbyist, you need to know how to make it work for you.
I like a lot of YouTubers.
I’ve never heard any YouTubers’ make music that I’m into. 
This is the start of a very slippery slope
The best rebuttal I have to my own nonsense above in the mobile phone, which I certaibly don’t want to trade for a separate phone, camera, video camera, compass, atlas, laptop etc etc. when I’m out and about.
Did I wake you up, Mr Grumpy Pants?
No, I’m camping, been up for fucking hours.
At the risk of getting me to consider the MPC again - I’m trying not to - one thing I do enjoy about a strong, all in one solution is that as much as it can handle the pedestrian part of creation, the more specific you can be about your choice of outboard gear.
I’m always tweaking and trying to find new ways of doing things, but a few things stick and remain. My Chase Bliss gear, I just don’t see them not being part of my writing, for example. No plug, vst, all in one box or whatnot will replace what they bring. But there’s lots of things going on within a strong one box contender where you just don’t need outboard gear very often. For the MPC, I can see that it rules out the need for external sequencers, most of your synth and bass needs, getting the mix into decent shape, putting a song together.
If a harware box can do that and also add some flavour of its own, then you can be specific about what to add to that. You won’t get Prophet 5 textures out of any groove box, for example. If that matters, perhaps that’s your outboard addition. You won’t get those strange Mood sounds from anywhere else but a Mood pedal, which is why I’m holding onto it. And so on.
But most of music writing is just getting shit done and a strong box can help with that, so you don’t need to turn on your wall-sized modular and power up the basement reactor just to get an eight step drum track going.
Mate, put your devices down and start foraging for lunch.
I love the mpc to death, my experience just wouldn’t be the same if it didn’t have all of the capabilities it has… you can spend a day getting lost in looping if that’s the kind of workflow you like, or if you feel nothing like that head over to the stepsequencer, or realtime sequence recording if you want to get your drum on, and in a world of lacking songmodes you’ve got many ways to get songs done, maybe you do it academically, maybe you’re vibing in the next sequence mode, maybe you’re using one big sequence, maybe you’re tying together a zillion tiny sequences of different bpms and time signatures etc… for me the mpc means you never have to stop being productive just because your vibe changed, and on top of that it combos so well with anything else like the digitakt which I love as well , or live instrumentation, or sequencing a gang of hardware synths, or , or , or, … and if you’re collabing with several friends in a room, you all don’t have to be the exact same kind of production-ist to get something worthwhile out of a session, 3 or 4 different producers can all contribute in the workflow that works /clicks for them but all on the same machine/instrument I love it…
it’s a vibe killer when you’re working on something and pass the beatmachine to the next cat and they’re like oh I don’t speak elektron or something boooo but that seldom happens with the mpc… it’s like a swiss army knife