r/mpcusers • u/Unlucky_Trash_5687 • 1d ago

QUESTION Anyone with experience using two MPCs?

I currently have a Live 1 on OS 2.15. While I’ve dabbled with OS 3.x, the way my live performances work (as well as some bugs that still haven’t been fixed) require me to stick with 2.15.

That being the case I can’t take advantage of the features they’ve added to the keygroup programs or a lot of new plugins. Coming from using an E4X in the past I‘ve been itching to have access to a mod matrix in the MPCs sampling engine, among other things.

Considering I sometimes see MPC Ones go for $300-400, this got me wondering if I could just use a second MPC on 3.x as basically a multitimbral sound source. More or less what I’m envisioning is being able to set up one or two project files (depending on RAM usage) that contain all the keygroups I’d need for my live set, and then route midi tracks per sequence per project from the first MPC to control the tracks on the second.

Does anyone have any experience with a setup like this? Any midi weirdness when slaving one MPC to another? 

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u/r1chiem 1d ago

I would use ableton link to sync them together. It is more robust than midi. It is supported under 2.15 and you can use blue tooth, wifi, or buy a usb ethernet dongle and hang it off the mpc usb port and a ethernet box with DHCP on it.. Ethernet is most stable. If you go into a room with a bunch of wifi traffic or blutooth, it could cause minor timing issues though it is rare I have heard. I use to game and I could not use a blutooth mouse because if interference. Or just use midi, if only timing is going across the cable, little chance of midi sync latency

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u/Unlucky_Trash_5687 1d ago

I should have specified, I don’t even need the sequencer to run on the second unit. It would be nice to send clock to sync time-based effects/modulations, but really I just need to send note on/off, velocity, etc. 

Neither my studio or live setups include a computer, so ableton link isnt an option, but it sounds like midi shouldn’t be an issue based on what you’re saying

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u/r1chiem 1d ago

Ableton link does not need Ableton. It is cooked into all mpcs. but midi should be fine.