Our first sample pack Phrases Vol 1 is officially out! Get 25% off now until the end of September teftyandmeems.com/discount/PHRASES Thank you for the support! ❤❤❤
Hey man! Thanks a lot for the efforts you put into these videos. I've been producing with MPC One for years now and now want to use it in the Live situation. I can't make it work to get LED indications on my midi Controllers: Arturia Keylab, Akai midimix and Kork Nano Control. I can map everything, both feders and knobs but when I want to use Rec Arm or mute there is no light indication whatsoever. Do you know if there is a way to make it work or if its just a basic software limitation Akai guys have not thought of? Cheers!
When you plug a class-compliant USB audio interface plugged into Native Instruments Maschine+, IF it actually connects, the Maschine+ displays the input, processing, output, and total latency figures.
Just to comment on this way in the future, but the hint of latency that’s added when using a usb audio interface through the MPC’s is actually caused by the inherent latency caused by audio conversion! (Both analog to digital conversion and digital to analog conversion will always always ALWAYS add a mild amount of latency. The kicker is that the amount of latency added by the conversion process (completely separate from any interface driver or protocols on the digital end of things) is that every interface adds a sliiightly different amount of latency during the conversion process. It’s the reason why industry pros say it’s really important to keep all of your drums on one interface, or the same model of interface. Otherwise there is just enough latency caused by the differences in the converters that it will cause phasing issues on extremely phase sensitive instruments like drums, where your overhead could be mixed with a close mic or something, and if there is any offset at all the phasing goes to shit. It will also happen if you are layering drum samples from two different sources, like if you were triggering an analog drum machine as well as samples in the MPC. In my opinion the most apparent difference between amateur artists/producers and industry professionals is the phase alignment of their drum sounds. Almost every local indie psyche rock album recorded in a dudes garage with a bunch of cheap mics thrown up at random distances around the kit will have a super thin, washed out, almost metallic sound because of the phase cancellation removing most of your fundamental frequencies or harmonics! Only posting this because I am a consultant for a studio and it took me months and months of reading to get to the bottom of why some recordings sound so thin.
On another note, did you wind up figuring out a way to implement an audio interface with the MPC so that the latency wasn’t an issue? I’ve got a live and am considering a Tascam Model 16 to expand the I/o and go completely computerless with my rig, but I’m hesitant to invest in the Tascam if it’s just going to leave me with the same level of latency I get with my computer and Ableton/logic. Love your videos btw dude! It’s nice to see synthtuber gear junkies who use their wicked sick gear for actually creating music as opposed to just GASing people up!
i've never been a Beet Box guy but when MPC released this new Update 2.10 I knew this was a dream come true I bought the MPC X 2 weeks ago and together with my Kronos and Prologue all of my of Prayers have been answered (No Interface needed) These three pieces of kit along with an Electric guitar and Bass My "One Man Band" dreams are all true now P.S. Try bouncing your midi tracks to the Sample Pool after your tweaks............WOW JUST WOW Also, the Tascam Model 12 has no latency that I have found anyways Regards, Rick
After decades of the tape paradigm I'm loving the MPC. I love being able to swap stuff around and try alternative arrangements on the fly. I also record and chop samples of my own playing. The only thing on my wishlist is for Akai to add the ability to trigger sampling after the count-in to be able to sample in sync without having to mess around with the looper or audio tracks.
There’s a definite latency from my MPC’s MIDI out for some reason, try trigger a single snare for instance from a sequence to an external drum machine. Then bounce it to an audio track. Zoom into it and you’ll see quite a bit of latency introduced.
Wow.. 😂 that gear !! Are you making audio tracks for the Hadron Collider? I’m sure Quincy Jones didn’t have all that when making Thriller for MJ.. 🥴 Great videos to watch, thank you 🤗
nice vid; great tests as well! Have you tried the Akai Force? It's expected that the 2.10 update will come over to the Force as well. It's moreso a Push 2 x MPC lovechild I guess. The Force does have a pre-amp for instance.
I just got back into synthesis after a long hiatus but I'm still a beginner. I don't want to shell out the money for a huge rig and want to keep things compact as well. Would the MPC be good to use as a brain for my synth and live shows? Thanks for all the vids!
Nice gear! Good info too! Was going to get a Motu M2. So that was nice to know. Wanted to get that Pro3 and Behringer Model D, too! How are you liking them?
This was great… got my new mpc one still in the shipping box… it arrived a day ago… I drooled when you flashed up the outboard gear… that’s some serious stuff! Do you record/produce other work? Would love to learn more about the studio as well… thanks to you both.
Congrats on the MPC One! Been in and out of pro music production for two decades and collecting bits and pieces of gear over time. We also don't advertise and try to book new clients. Just work via word of mouth as things come. Thanks for watching!
That update tip is worth gold, when NI updated their platform to delete 32 bit, I now have a lot of ableton projects that won't load cuz they can't find the plugin anymore, severely frustrating.
I bought the original MPC Live when it first came out. I updated to the MPC Live II recently. I also have a Force. It's been amazing value with all that's been added. It was so unfinished back when it was first released. I think we will probably see a new hardware platform possibly next year. I predict some paid-for synthesizers coming in the near future.
I just bought the Live 2 solely because of the update and ability to use audio interface. I have the Scarlett 18i8 with an Octopre ADAT combination. I was able to get it working with all 16 inputs coming into the MPC. I have not had much time to go beyond that. This weekend I test out the latency and see what I notice. Maybe it is something they will improve with next update. I think the update would have been much better if they would have allowed the main outs to still be active when hooked up to an audio interface. Overall impressed so far with the MPC.
Would you say a mixer like the Tascam 12 or Livetrack 8 is neede to get as little latency with a setup with a MPC one, Model D and a drumbute impact? Im looking for a good dawless setup where I can use the MPC one as the center and play around with the bass and drum without having to dive to much in the MPC
In terms of the Force, it’s very similar to MPC but it has an arranger mode as well as a ‘session like’ Ableton mode. It has the Hype synth which MPC only just got and has been receiving significant updates since it’s release. It also has the Drumsynth and others so was basically ahead of the MPC until the 2.10 update. I have no inside information but expect it to receive an update to bring it back on par with the MPC based on the experience with it so far. I have an MPC Live 2 as well for use around the house but the Force is my main sequencer/audio recorder before chucking it into Presonus. Not so popular as the MPC but priced right just above the One given it’s extra performance functionality (sessions, Octatrack like scene slider, macros knobs). Give it a go… you know you want to ;-)
@@HOLLASOUNDS the truth is a DAW and a computer is just superior in almost every way. MPC and these groove boxes and other devices just boost your imagination and inspiration and gives you a different workflow which many people are after.
Do you get any latency when external synths/drums /model 12 are connected via usb hub? Or are you only getting latency with the scarlet interface you mentioned? I want to have my model 12 and a few synths and keyboards connected via usb, hoping there wont be any latency.
Nice video. I have a soundcraft sig 10 that I use as an input mixer for my Live. I don’t use the usb as I actually want it to be as analog-y as possible and really like the sound of the mixer. It has lexicon effects (verbs and delays) which are nice to use with synths. It gives me lots of inputs, resample ability, etc.. I leave gear hooked up which is a nice bonus, but can also grab just the MPC leaving all the gear staying hooked up (sweet!). I basically sample everything (live instruments, etc.) into the Mpc and then chop into programs to build sequences to build songs. No pc used. Been using it this way for over a year now... fairly happy with it.
I have that Soundcraft as well, and the Lexicon effects are barely editable, whch is frustrating and forces me to turn to my Korg keyboard, Ultranova, and Zoom pedal for effects for gear that lack effects, or the Venom whose built-in FX are abyssmally pathetic. Would it have killed them to add a couple extra buttons to control more FX parameters? The effects are nice.
Also I think if you hook the tascam to you computer and set the buffer size then unhook and hook to your MPC that buffer size sticks. I might be wrong but I think it might work like this. Sounds to me that the tascam is set to 512ish. Set it to 128 connected to computer and re-perform the test maybe.
I have this setup around the MPC one as a music hobbyist. Got the Tascam Model 12, Microfreak, Minilogue. I used MPC midi cable to Connect USB to laptop. That way I can still stay standalone and run VSTs like Komplete Kontrol and Arturia Pigment, just like any other sound module. Laptop audio signal back to Mixer/MPC using a Scarlett solo. I have a MBook Pro Intel 2014. The laptop CPU usage is much lower than running MPC software + VST. It’s another way to rig it up semi permanently and add/remove gear. Haven’t noticed the delay on the Tascam 12 but I am no professional like you. This could be improved in the next update I hope. For a newbie like me and from a Guitar only background, the MPC is such a great computer as you rightfully said. I work on laptop all day so no way I want to spend more time on the same device for music. I love being more hands-on with knobs and live playing. Then go in Controller mode, load the project from the SD card and finish the project just with the laptop for mixing, exporting… great video as usual. Love your stuff.
@@TeftyMeems make that 3 for the Model 12, it's a great mixer, by the way MPC v3 is the Force software which has an arranger and the hardware supports phantom power and instrument inputs. Eventually they MPC line will get the arranger from the Force but they don't want to break the sequence/track workflow. You may prefer the Model 16 or 24 though which have an analogue signal chain where as the Model 12 hits the ADC before the compressor and eq.
Thank you for making this video! I was specifically interested in hooking the 18i20 up to my MPC one for real-time multiFX. The 10ms round trip latency rules that out.
Does hooking up the focusrite interface to the MPC via USB override the mixing/routing that has been configured via the focusrite control software? I had this happen to me. I set up focusrite control via my PC and then swapped USB to MPC and found that it have same internal routing. When I disconnected the usb between mpc and focusrite, the focusrite routing settings went back to how I had configured them.
I have a 10 port usb hub for connecting most of my synths, but I would like to connect more via usb instead of midi. Can you recommend a larger usb hub or would it be better to split the usb and use two hubs with a Y-splitter instead?
Great video! One note though, for me it's crystal clear that the fault is on MOTU about audio interfaces. AKAI needs to rely on the portion that is actually open source, and won't be able to make work devices that only work on Windows/Mac without tremendous hassle. On top of that, most audio interfaces manufacturers manage to make this work, and MOTU has a long reputation of crafting horrible drivers (I used one under windows years ago and will never ever buy MOTU again). So yeah, it's a shame, but the shame is on MOTU, not AKAI, here :)
A DAW with a backlit pad computer can never be the ultimate dawless, and for me it's still a DAW computer that doesn't come out of the ground. Really a good Dawless for my way of understanding is everything that is outside of a DAW. In other words, when I look in a store for a Dawless machine I always look for it to be a machine without plugins, and without a multichannel environment with Cubase-like line time. The Korg Nautilus is a Dawles, Roland Fantom 06, Kurzweil K2500, korg kross 2. But also an MC-707 that has its own internal synthesizer engines of the machine and a sampler to sample external audio, ideal to use as if it were an E-mu SP1200 sampler with faders and backlit pads for finger drumming similar to the electribe 2, but with the great advantage of having graphic displays on the screen. An MPC One or Live is not a Dawless, Maschine Plus is not a Dawless either and I consider these more computers in the form of a pad sampler and with a dedicated DAW to manage it. It's just my way of seeing it, you don't have to agree, but I know that if I want to get out of the environment and environment of a Cubase, Logic or Reason, I simply need to have more dedicated and not so standard things.
Thanks so much or this type of review, this is exactly what I needed to hear. I also have several MOTU interfaces (one AVB), and was super psyched to get them up and running...but was having major issues. You saved me from GAS and disappointment, I was ready to pull the trigger on a Tascam 12, but the latency issue would have definitely plagued me!
Testy. Thanks for your videos they help me, I can only do the occasional hthing on the mpc but I can play analogue synths I’m loving your elektron gear, can I use the elektron samples for fillers etc.
Not sure I’m understanding the question. Can you use Elektron gear samples in a setup? Absolutely. Can Elektron gear play nicely with MPC setups? Absolutely!
@@TeftyMeems hiya yeah I’m sorry Tefty I meant the elektron model samples too got a fair bit of gear like yourself am a newbie though dj d all my life , I find analogue somewhat easier as just as I get going on mpc one I’m jamming then I lose it hhmmm
I'm curious how you handle clock/reset sync with modular? This was weird for me with the live 2 and I ultimately returned it (2 weeks before the 2.10 update) but I'm curious if there was an update to that. Do you use it as master clock and send clock to something like pams?
I usually make 1 track a click (1/64 notes) or hook up my cv.ocd module that has one of the outputs programmed to be a high resolution clock out. It's not as elegant as a USB-Midi clock from one cable, but then again it's modular.
Currently I use a Yamaha LS9 console with an Audinate Dante network card which I hooked up with my iMac via a cat6 ethernet cable, this give me 16 audio channels and works perfect with protools and other DAWs , is there a way to get this to work with the MPC One ?
Regarding updating : Some ask me - "have you updated to Win 11 yet"? No - why would I? I have a banging i9 9900K, 32 Gigs of ram, plenty of ssd's, and it runs superb and flawlesly. WHY would I spend time on doing that? There's no point. I wanna make, mix and master music - not set up a computer. // Sonic Peak Studio - Copenhagen
Great news on the sample pack. Yes, had the same problem with the audio interface :D Doing everything now in standalone mode and use Ableton Live for recording the external gear. And then i use the MPC as a plugin in Ableton for mixing. As i am new to the MPC workflow, i'm still trying to find the best way to stay away from the PC as long as possible :D
The advice you gave at the end is so vital for productivity. A/V folks need to hold off on fresh releases, no need to beta test for the companies. They already have a sizable portion of their audience who do exactly that every time out.
Best machine I’ve ever owned , the MPC live 2 is cool and all, but what’s the point , your not going to leave the house with a piece of gear that costs so much, the MPC one is perfect
Wow & Damn. After watching this vid, I tested the clock latency and BAM.....its slightly off. Thats a real let down, because my intentions was to use my MPC One via usb audio, while using the midi clock with other gear LIVE. That won't work because the slight off timing is noticeable.
I did not know that they did that with the SD card. That was one of my Turn off to. Having to take the SD card out for it to read on my computer sucked. No a deal breaker of course cause I absolutely love the mpc one. Thanks for sharing that.
The turm Dawless is actually more a definition of no computer music production. If I had a laptop I can make music without a actual DAW software. So by that definition the MPC is a computer and its operating system is a DAW so in My opinion it's not Dawless jamming to use the MPC1 or 2 or X.
I don’t know if I was doing something wrong when I had the akai force, but when I plugged in a mic and used the preamp it sounded terrible. Like it was maybe a junky pre. My irig pro sounds significantly better.
I really have never been all that happy about computer stuff.... I have been a fully hardware based guy for many years..... I used an mpc 2000 when they came out.... ...fast forward 2022..... I am still not computer friendly... not do I want to be. But my preference is an MPC 4000..... it is awesome for my needs and does not require a computer as it was AKAI's last stand alone mpc that did the job..... right.
Would using the ADAT out from the MOTU into a more class compliant interface fix the compatibility issue while giving you access to your preferred interface?
I just received mine this week, I love it since day one, but it is a bit hard to used 😕 I never own a mpc before. I get this machine to use it as drum machine and sampling also. P.S I connected my mpc to zoom l12 digital mixer and works fine without any delays.
Congrats on the MPC! It can take a bit to get use to it. It definitely didn't click for me right away, and I'm still learning lots of new tricks with it! Cheers
But overall there still doesn’t seem to be a way (and if I’m wrong PLEASE help me out here) to stream audio over usb with separated tracks in real time, like a Roland MC707 etc. Am i just missing something?
@@TeftyMeems I’m a total noob to the MPC world (and also to ableton). Bought an MPC a few months ago. Love the update but am still really struggling to learn stuff. So honestly, I have no idea. I have seen how to enable that (from RU-vid) in settings but I’m not sure how to connect it to Ableton in real time rather than export as a session or explode my stems into the ableton clip grid. Again, if there’s a way, I’m completely clueless.
6:44 the average human bio factor dictates that most of us cannot perceive discrete events that occur less than 50 milliseconds apart, or at approximately 20 times per second (Hz). 5-8 ms is far below that. you can definitely 'feel' a difference below 30-40 milliseconds, and somewhere between 10 and 20 is still a noticeable lag. but considering marketers will call about anything less than 5 milliseconds 'zero latency', 5-8 ms total I/O latency is nothing to worry about. a musician of average talent can easily compensate and track an analogue instrument with 8 milliseconds of delay between the mic and their headphones. not that we should trust the word of marketers, but these numbers are generally reliable rubrics. just thought I might provide some further technical context for the less experienced of us out there. source: my undergraduate degree in Soundscape and Electro-Acoustics and subsequent certification as an audio engineer
2.10 broke a pretty important part of the workflow for me - chaining sequences in song mode and bouncing that to a single long sequence for final arrangement no longer loops tracks that are shorter than the parent sequence length. Tefty, you're one of the few people using midi over ethernet - if you get chance could you please try constantly changing main page transpose value on an ethernet midi track and let me know if it stops sending midi for you too. Every time transpose is changed it sends 128 note offs instantly which seems to quickly overwhelm the one's internal network midi for me.
Hey Paul! Bummer to hear about the workflow being broke. I use MIDI usb, not ethernet, so I don't think it's the same thing. When I get a chance, I'll try it though.
@@TeftyMeems Thanks - I'd really appreciate it if you get chance. Sorry about the assumption - I saw the ethernet cable and thought you were using midi over ethernet. I guess you're just using that for ableton link.
This new update is absolutely spectacular unfortunately for me it created a few bugs in my MPC live ll I've tried contacting AKAI but they haven't been very helpful😞
I have the small Tc Helicon blender mixer which has been a great little tool for doodling and making music on iPad for a few years now, it has a tiny foot print taking up hardly any space at all it keeps itself to itself hiding on small riser at the back of my desk, it can be configured upto 12 in 8 out usb channel audio mixer which has been great for working with Cubasis or virtual synths and hooking up external midi gear so I was really pleased to hear about the Mpc usb audio update and thought can’t wait to try it out but alas …No.. it doesn’t work Mpc one displays a message saying “device might not be 24bit “ although tc website says device is, I’ve tried every possible setting but it’s having non of it.. it is class compliant just not compliant enough… 🙄
2.10 is the reason to finally sell my motu avb setup and replace it with a Midas 32 board. Motu has some weird problems themselves. Their support is even worse than that of AKAI. They are so bad at updating their drivers. It took motu almost a year to update the Mac driver. So I could not update macOS for a very long time. Not to speak of the last update for the 16A firmware. Which was in idk ... 2019? That's so bad for a product that is still sold to this day! Their statement that they support universal audio when they don't really do it was the tipping point. Also I had the 16A crash badly a couple of times when I tried to route an audio channel through Zoom for some remote performance. I mostly ditched all DAWs and went MPC X Standalone only a while ago. Lost loads of projects due to vst-daw incompatibilities after updates. Yeah Ableton and Elektron ... I look at you!! 99% of my gear is HW anyway. I work a full-time job as a dev. I am pushing a mouse all day. So Mouse/keyboard-music is the least se*y thing I can imagine anyway. Also, if I use the Mac software of even Ableton for some reason I have a 1:1 mapping of my interface channels between standalone and DAW-based. Before 2.10 it was impossible to work on a track in standalone, then bring up the daw for some tweaks. Because IO-Channel layout was different. Haven't felt the need to use a DAW yet. But it should be possible without ripping out my hair now?
2.10 added this irritating feature where any pad playing the same note but a different octave lights up on MIDI and plug-in tracks. So, if I have a plug-in loaded and I play an A on pad 1, any other pad that’s also an A lights up pale green. If I play a seventh chord, half my pads light up! Can’t disable it. Really irritating. Not helpful. Not even mentioned in the change log.
hybrid has always been the way man. Dawless is great for finding inspiration, but to complete a track, we'll always wind up in a daw at some point. The closest you'll get to a one cable mobile solution is a laptop with a usb dock and bitwig.
Thanks for being honest, there is no best DAW less solution simply because it is long transition from Laptop to another different packed Computer for Music Producing, it's good trend I would like to get there quickly because I don't like Windows so Music computer that offers playing, composing, recording, sound design, mixing and Mastering is another DAW in another Package
I bought the soundcraft 12 mtk for usb over audio. Using the mpc as insert Fx as well…. Zero latency (or near as). I couldn’t sense it. And I’m obsessive :D
@@TeftyMeems like I said, soundcraft seem to have it pretty good. I’m driving modular synth with it. But I was also getting good results with focusrite sapphire. So not quite sure why the difference .
1 I bet there is unlocked firmware to let you have debug console via the usb port 2 I bet if you open it there's an unpopulated 9 pin dsub footprint on the board that has a 50% chance of having debug output running all the time
Question: Can you describe in a paragraph why it's better? I have no experience with one so far. Also, do you feel like Akai updates it enough? Cheers!
Becouse it has a arrange mode and you can play in real time whole song in it. I think the Force is more opend mashine then Mpc. Im a Mpc user for years, than i got the force. It is the same concept but much more then mpc. If you use the abelton it has a abelton integration.
@@TeftyMeems if you use Ableton then you will be very comfortable with the Force. As the workflow is pretty similar in terms of clips and arrange view etc. You can save Force projects as ALS so you can open Force projects in Ableton and vice versa (with varying levels of success). All the forward thinking stuff that doesn’t fit into the MPC established workflow ends up on the Force. For example the Qlinks are vastly more powerful on the Force allowing you control multiple parameters, assigning things like touching the knob to control a parameter, assigning parameters to xy (not just the preset ones any parameter). You can assign pads as macros too. it even has modulators that you can assign to any parameter and you get about 8 of them if I remember correctly. The modulators include an LFO and envelope follower. If you like controlling external devices, the Force is where it’s at. It has all of the features of the MPC and then enhances it even more. You said you wanted phantom power on inputs , the Force has that. Imo opinion the Force is the most underrated beatbox in the market. It has pretty much all the things that you like about the MPC then does it even better. Akai plan is that the OS for Force will eventually become MPC 3.0 according one of their reps. It’s rumored that the next version of the Force OS will have disk streaming.
I think you are expecting too much from this. Especially latency. Latency exists in most gear but direct monitoring is a easy solution which I've been using for a long time. Why complain about latency? How did you expect akai to miraculously get around it with a software update?
You're missing the point. I mentioned live monitoring to fix vocal tracking issues, but if you're triggering/syncing external gear then you're always introducing a bit of latency from anything the MPC triggers. If you never use external gear, in sync with the MPC's clock, then no problems. The MPC OS doesn't compensate for the new audio interface support latency, which is how modern DAW's get around the problem.
Don't think that they couldn't do everything working long time ago, o no no for them is about money or some kind of value (crypto) and both NI and AKAI are dragging as longer they can, everything in technology is advancing and yet they can't make Music Producing computer/instrument station... common think it's not ilegal yet
I love this guy because he has Pittsburgh oscillators. That makes you 😎 in my book. But in no way this can be called a dawless experience; talking about usb and interfaces and latency. Let’s not kid ourselves, an MPC one is a computer.
you resumed everything, thx fir it., MPC new gen software is just shit, huge latency, unusable in a live situation, class compliant not working.... i sold it after two weeks trying to work with it, concidering two crashes. it's "inadmissible " to propose on the market these kind of gears, absolutly unfinished
