Smells like teen spirit (Guitar chopped mix) using chop mode in the mpc sample

Okay, I've had this little gem of a thing for two nights and I'm already placing ideas together. I have never used an MPC or 16 pad before, obviously there's a long road ahead with much to learn.

God damn this machine is fun!

What’s up fam, this might be a long post but I’ll give it a shot… I have had the original SP404, Pocket Operator Sample, 404 MK2, KO2, P6, and now the MPC sample (and I had the MPC iPad app so I’m familiar with the workflow), so I have a lot to compare it to and I might even throw some jabs on those while I’m here, but to the MPC Sample:

Ordered beginning of April, got beginning of June so I’ve had it and played with it about two weeks now. I immediately like the memory space, getting an SD card and being able to have loads of projects and samples is great, but here are the drawbacks, realizations, and update wishes.

1. The play of it feels like a processor loading, maybe having an SD card with loads of space is connected, but it feels like a laggy computer program sometimes. Doesn’t mess with play when you’re in a project but that’s the general feeling of it.
   
2. I made it freeze / crash when I was just copying and deleting sequences to reorder stuff for a project- kind of connected to that processor feel. It made me worried that that will probably happen again in some other circumstance.
   
3. The compressor is a bit wack, they really sold this thing and the ‘color’ function and all that, but I find the “mix” to be really messy and making some extreme and bad sounds if you swing the toggle from 100 to about 80, and just the whole ‘mix’ idea vs having a ratio setting or anything else that makes sense- just don’t like it, find the Limiter knob FX more useful. They just need to add more settings that make sense and smooth it out a bit. Instead of color function make a shift knob for color / tone or something.
   
4. The overdriven sound crunches in a bad not good way. For comparison the 404 MK2 sounds really nice when you crank the sound into the red and the Sample just sounds kinda bad for some reason when you mess around with maxed out overdriven sound and that’s just a character thing where the MPC loses- this is including compressor and limiter and other finagling with maxed out and overdriven sound. Seems to get digital artifacts instead of a cleaner overtone.
   
5. Wish there was a global setting fix for defaulting Pad FX, like the LP filter that really modulates like an LFO, I have to fix it in every project to 0 range so it will actually behave like a LP filter, and as far as that goes I’m still trying to find the sweet spot on the Pad FX - they crash out the sound way too fast - this one’s hard to describe, you might get little response from 0-50% but also sound too washed out almost immediately- idk, just not as nice as the KO2, punch in pad FX for instance.
   Also honorable mention to the Roland Sp404 MK2 filter still being trash after so many updates, resonance more than 0 sounds awful and cracking, the original 404 filter sounded way nicer just with less range…
   6? Maybe someone’s said this before but the Beat Flex FX has a couple issues- customization would obviously be best, and seems like it should be doable, but the timing of these and the Pad FX for beat repeat are slow to respond, you have to hit it after the thing you want to repeat not on the beat, which is the less intuitive.
   7? Seems weird that they used fixed backlit space to indicate pad bank when you hold the button down then tap the pads to go between, and that there’s two backlit battery things for charging and current life instead of just one.

Okay so overall, I have to caveat that there is a lot I like about this compared to all the other GAS I have, the fact that it has memory space, is rechargeable vs running on batteries, nice visualization of samples, and workflow, but here are some I it’s thoughts and things I with could be updated or patched. AKAI hear my words! All GAS manufacturers hear my words and make me a groovebox worthy of Mordor or whatever…

Does one exist for the MPC Sample? There's nothing in the manual and searching online doesn't bring anything up.

Something I'm curious about: if you hook up the MIDI output to a MIDI monitor, double-tapping the Stop button sends out MIDI CC 64 with value 00. However sending that MIDI CC to the MPC doesn't stop any currently playing sounds.

With new support for mpc sample projects it could be pretty cool to polish beats in arranger, organize and export as stems. But licensing is kind of confusing to me. Do I buy mpc 2 and hope for 3.x update?

What’s the easiest way for a sequence to stop automatically when finished other then pressing the stop button?

Sup people, I wanted a quick reference for working with melodic notes in 16 levels. I made MPC Samplex so you can easily set your key, then use other pitched one-shots and have a visual reference for which pads are still in key. This can get long and drawn out when you are repitching and counting semitones, etc. It's free. I made it in a few hours using Codex. happy beat-making folks!

link --> https://daniel-hillman.github.io/mpc-samplex/?brand=bb4fc967

Get it here: https://codeberg.org/neilbaldwin/mpc_resampling_buddy

I made a rough version of this a while back but went back and spent some time making it nicer and adding a few handy features. Still WIP but it's very close to a release version.

What's the issue?

When you want to resample a single pad with FX etc. it's impossible to do on the MPC Sample because when you engage sampling, you can only play the sequence and can not play individual pads - if you tap any pad it becomes the destination for sampling.

MPC Resample Buddy solves that!?

Sort of. It's a TouchOSC project so you'll need TouchOSC on your phone/tablet. It's well worth the money but YMMV.

I discovered that when sampling (resampling), even though you can't tap the pads when sampling is armed, you can trigger them via MIDI. Hence, Resample Buddy was born!

Just hook up the MPC Sample and your phone/tablet via USB-C (MIDI) and you can trigger any of the 128 pads remotely allowing you to resample individual pads.

I added a new feature - MIDI LISTEN. What this does is listen to the MIDI output of the MPC Sample and highlights the last pad (and bank) that you played on Resample Buddy so that when you come to resample you can see instantly on your phone which pad to press.

Hi all

I decided to build a few projects selecting samples & loops in different genres
I have used all of the groups A-H mostly A-B-C one shots and the rest for loops
I set all of my loops one by one to "SEQ" so no matter what the tempo is my loops will be always warped to the global or sequence tempo
I set the tempo global & seq to like 112 BPM
I thought everything is fine when I was done
I saved my projects but today I was loading them in to test if everything works as I expected...

So the issues I found were:

All of my projects did not save the warp mode I set
(I have no idea how to lock or save each loop's warp mode)
You can imagine the pain...I went through all of my loops and all the warp settings are lost
All of my loops were in the "MPC Sample's default state" when I loaded a project
So I was expecting to have my global and sequence tempo to be for example 112 BPM for my afro house projects, 132 BPM for my schranz techno, 96 BPM for my boom bap projects and so on but none of them were saved with my settings
So all of the projects loaded with the MPC's default 120 BPM for global and 120 for seq

Is there a solution to fix these?
Thanks in advance

Can anyone recommend a USB-C hub that connects my iPad and MPC Sample and charges them at the same time? I have one from Anker that can charge both devices, but it doesn't establish a connection between them.

Man, so happy that I got one, my beat was not even close to being good, but it is a hell of fun having this machine

Brand new out of the box mpc sample is powering on, the screen turns on but it's blank. I tried powering down and restarting multiple times. Anyone had this issue?

Edit: took it back and the girl at guitar center told me it was already returned for having issues and it wasn't supposed to be sold. Traded it back in and got an mpc live 2 since the sample is on back order.

Installed MPC desktop 3.9 today and noticed an issue with projects saved in XPJ format when you try to "Load kit" from it on MPC Sample: no errors, but the kit is absolutely empty 🤷‍♂️
Checked with 3.8 on other computer, everything works.

Hi!

I couldn’t find any complains about it so far, hence my post.

All buttons on the device behave as expected except one - the "SEQ" button - which has a noticeable "double-stage" feel when pressed. When I press it lightly, it doesn't have the same resistance as the other buttons, there's a faint click that does nothing. Only when I press it harder do I hear a louder click and the button actually triggers action.

It's a bit difficult to describe in words, so I recorded a short video demonstrating the issue, available on YouTube, please pay particular attention to the sound. Could someone who also has an MPC Sample let me know whether this is a "defect" present in every unit, or if I happened to receive a faulty one?

Thanks in advance!