MPC One - Two Years Later

welcome back to the channel my name is stephanie today we are talking about the mpc one it has officially been out for two years now and i actually jumped in right at the beginning when it first became available so i want to give a two year perspective you know i've been using it for two years i've been making videos on it obviously just give my perspective about the process and what it's been like so yeah that's what this video is going to be about i will say that this is the first mpc platform that i've jumped into i had not owned any of the previous generations so take that for what it is in the past i've been heavily daw-based and obviously dabbled with hardware-based you know dallas setups with things like the octatrack and uh dig attack and all that type of stuff it's been an interesting journey learning the platform of what akai has built for this current generation of nbc and you know there's a lot of pros and there's some cons as well for sure so hopefully this video can help illuminate uh some of those perspectives that could help you decide whether or not you want a piece of gear like this in your studio so my main usage to date has been a hardware hub for the mpc one i am a big fan of grabbing several pieces of gear chaining them all together and then making jams you know beats songs that type of stuff out of them and that perspective it has been very very good it's basically become my main hardware-based platform at this point you know for a while i was doing a lot of stuff with the digi tank and uh the octatrack uh but over the past year i've realized that the flexibility that is afforded with the mpc platform has just been so good that i i end up missing the the things that i have available to it even though i might be missing some other stuff in those other platforms and also after purchasing the mc1 i did end up getting a live too as well because i like the features so much of the mpc one that i thought it would be great to have another npc and also have the battery speakers and that type of stuff and the additional output so i have kind of been piggybacking back and forth between like live two npc one you know the live two might be like out of the studio somewhere else for like a month or something like that and then vice versa ends up flipping like i might bring the mpc one to a different location for a little small installation to work on stuff again very hardware based focused type of productions that have been done with the npcs that i've got that's not to say that i don't still use daw because i definitely like ableton and i've been curious about bit wig and all that stuff so i i'm not like a purist in that sense like i like different workflows and i like experiencing what they have to offer for me from a creative perspective and i definitely look at the mpc platform as another creative brush when it comes to creating things obviously so you can use it basically standalone obviously without any additional hardware i would say for the sounds themselves with like the plugins i think they do a pretty good job i'm not blown away by the sounds uh like the synth sounds and stuff like that but they definitely get the job done if you need something in a pinch so if you want to just take the box by itself and use it you know in a hotel or something like that like totally usable for that also if you have a bunch of samples you've already pre-loaded onto your npc then even better because obviously it is a sampling beast at least in my opinion i think it's a sampling beast in particular the multi-sampling of instruments it's been really awesome being able to just hook up another like say analog synth or something like that multi-sampling a a patch that i've created and then having it available in the npc that has been really really cool real quick if you are enjoying this video a like subscribe and comment below definitely helps out uh we also just recently launched a patreon so if you'd like to support us even further on there we will be dropping some multi-samples and loops and various things for the npc we plan on doing that with each video as it seems fit so thank you very much if you do end up supporting us on there so again as a sampler amazing to be able to just grab stuff really quick and then uh slice it up put in the pads and all that and then the multi-sampling feature which is right here be able to auto sample that's been really really cool you can even like multi-sample stuff that's in the npc as well so you have several synthesizers loaded up with a bunch of plug-ins and you want to convert those to multi-samples like you can do that in this box as well in terms of portability it is unfortunate that akai did not put a battery into this uh the mpc live 2 has a battery of the two boxes i think the mpc one should have been the one to get a battery but alas it doesn't you can get a external battery and hook it up into the power supply i haven't done that yet but i know a lot of people have mentioned that so you know just do a quick google search if you're looking for stuff like that because you can get an external battery to hook up to it my feeling on that is like well now you're dealing with two pieces of gear so it's not something you just you know pick up and go with if you look at something like the synthesizer on that deluge which i do not own that has a battery built into it so it's really good pick up and go type of setup with a different workflow obviously so it would have been nice if they put a battery in here and maybe a npc one mark ii in the future could include stuff like that in fact things that i would like to see in the future if they were to modify the hardware is at least one more stereo pair of an output because right now if you wanted to say patch in an effects pedal or something you wouldn't be able to send out separate pieces of audio while your drums are still going into an effects pedal on the router back in there's only a stereo out and stereo in that you can utilize with that so that would be nice in the future also no wi-fi as well i think that's kind of one of those things where it was a cost savings type of thing for this platform but when you look at over the past two years of what has been updated with firmware and all that i think akai has done a pretty awesome job it's not perfect by any means but it's definitely been an awesome job because before when i first bought this there was no uh midi over usb there was no audio interface support or anything like that those were kind of like pipe dreams it was like oh man it would be amazing if this supported an audio interface so in terms of software firmware support it's been really awesome to see how much innovation has happened on this platform but with those firmware updates it has not been all roses and stuff there's been a lot of bugs actually and they have not been fixed like there's well i mean they've obviously been fixing some bugs but there has been bugs that have been introduced with say like 2.10 and all that that just have not been fixed in fact i did a video on the q link um setting up q link so you can do real time mapping and like uh effects control and all that for performances and to this day they still haven't fixed a bug where those don't get saved right now at least i think to this day correct me if i'm wrong which is unfortunate because it's such a cool platform with really great utility and you know complexity and then to have those type of bugs show up and not get fixed relatively quickly it's it's like i said it's unfortunate when did 2.10 come out came out around july so or it says july 20th or something like that so nbc 2.10 july 20th i'm currently recording this in february of 2022 so we're looking over six months later we still haven't seen a bug patch for a lot of features the audio interface support has been really great to have as an option but there's definitely been times where weird things have happened in the software and the platform if you're doing a lot of professional projects that can definitely make you nervous you know especially live if you're doing a live performance it makes your trust in the hardware a little shaky knowing that there's like these bugs that could possibly show up bugs happen i mean firmware is a reality now in today's day and age with the way like chips are being programmed and all that for these really cool devices bugs happen you know so while i wish akai would update their bugs faster i don't fault them in saying like oh there shouldn't be any bugs or anything like that like these things are complex and people are writing them and you know mistakes are made and all that so i totally get that speaking of software there is the npc software as well there where you can hook up your hardware make it a controller essentially for the the computer and then have access to uh an unlimited version of the mpc platform right there i personally don't use it because i actually i like using ableton and when i want to switch over to a computer i usually like to switch platforms so npc i'm in like writing slash jamming type of mode and then when i want to finish something or like do overdubs or you know make a mix i like transferring things to ableton to do a finished mix and also i have a suite of analog gear so i prefer using my analog gear when i'm officially finishing something one thing that is nice though about the mpc software is it technically gets rid of the limitations that you have via the hardware version for instance there's only eight audio tracks that are available in the hardware version so if you go to the audio side you'll see just like you can only do up to eight tracks right there there's also only a five minute limit to the audio tracks on the hardware version so if you don't want those limits you got to use the mpc software and if you want to use like vst plugins or stuff like that you got to use the nbc software for that it's nice that there is the option so if you do a really complex arrangement on the hardware and then you need to take it a step further and you don't want to change platforms it's really nice that the uh the software version exists so you can do that if you want also another thing that was updated from firmware updates that did not exist when i first got the mpc one was the ability to uh read the sd card while plugged in as a standalone or as a controller to the computer so now when you save your project onto the sd card and you plug it in the computer and then you go to controller mode a drive pops up go to that drive automatically open up your session so nice yeah i got to come back to the audio stuff because um i will say as much as i like this platform and what they've done with the way the the programs are arranged and all that i think a glaring issue is the way audio has been implemented because it's essentially a separate side of the way things are working so you have the midi side which you know you can load up drums on the pads slices and samples all that stuff you can load up various instruments you know like a software instrument or you can load up midi to send out to your hardware instruments or cv gates all that stuff so that's all great and it makes sense you can go to like the mute page so you can mute any of those uh those tracks right there but if you want to use some audio tracks you have to select audio and then you're in like this different audio zone that's not of what's happening on the the midi side i really hope that the future brings a change for how audio is worked with on the standalone npc version because again eight track limit like all right i can get past that eight tracks eight stereo tracks as long as i understand that that's my limit that's fine but then you have the five minute limit per track so if you want to actually multi-track your your audio you have up to five minutes and that's it now five minutes for some people or i think probably most people is going to be fine until you start thinking about what if you want to just let it roll and capture ideas and then come back to that stuff and then chop them up you only have five minutes right there now you could use the sampler and it will cap out at 20 minutes right there but you're only using one stereo input on there so if you did want to multi-track several uh several audio track type of things like let's say you had like voice you had maybe guitar and you had some synths or maybe like a drum sample or something like that you can't just let it run for half an hour or something like that while you capture ideas and honestly it's probably a hardware limitation if people are looking for this to be their only like standalone box and they don't interface with a computer ever i think that's a pretty big limitation personally on top of that the way you work with uh the audio like this interface i can get by with i'd be like all right i understand what's going on here but you can't actually export a slice of a sample for instance like if we record something right here let's say let's record this and now it's recording audio for me right here okay stop say i want to like chop this up a little bit here and there so i got three pieces right here let's say i take this middle piece and i want to uh export it as far as i'm aware there is no way to export this piece of audio directly into like a clip or a sample or something like that what i'm trying to illustrate here is the audio features are like like secondary in my opinion it's like oh here's some backing tracks well it's like well i don't i don't want to just work with backing tracks i want to be able to grab this stuff manipulate it and then like chop it around and throw it into the the midi stuff now another reason i'd actually want to export something directly out of a audio track is it is technically time aligned to the sequence so let's say i set up a sequence that's like 60 bars all right so i record audio for 60 bars right there and let's say i want to chop out bar 50 and 51 to then put them into like a clips program or chop them into like one-shot samples that are timelined to the uh the tempo well as far as i'm aware you can't do that so if i go edit like i would not be able to take this middle piece that i just chopped like i could copy this go back to main add another audio track edit audio bring the playhead back to one shift paste and i got this so there's that but then i think i'd have to go main i think i have to bounce the sequence to a sample see like there's no export this audio track right here like give me this audio track let me export it man if there is a way around this and i'm just unaware then my apologies i wish i had known it earlier but as far as i can tell with this platform i can't do what i'm trying to say that might change the future they you know the akai has been really good at listening to what people have been doing with the platforms audio tracks i want to see them more integrated with midi and then i also want to feel like i can use the audio tracks better than what it currently is so another issue that i have with this is let's say you created something that's 16 bars okay so you got like a sequence 16 bars again you want to record say like three minutes or something like that of your jam or your beat with an audio track you can't do that the audio track caps out at 16 bars right here so once it hits 16 it it's it's gonna like overlap or it'll stop or something like that illustrate the point i'll drop this back down to one bar one bar hit record edit audio there it is it's done it is not recording further past that now i've been using this for two years and i've gotten by i haven't had to use these features in in the way that i'm wanting to use them so this isn't like you know a deal breaker by any means i want to clarify that i'm just pointing out some things that i'd love to see change in the future because there's been a lot of changes in the past two years so i could see them expanding this platform even further which i'm assuming they are back to the bar sequence length type of thing i think this also is an issue for midi tracks as well because the problem with the midi tracks is that you can't have your midi tracks be like two times or three times or four times the length of the sequence so if i have a one bar sequence i cannot have a track that goes four bars now i understand like the way around that is we'll just make a four bar sequence yeah you're absolutely right but let's say you have a 16 bar sequence and you want to then have something that's going to be 64 bars so then you have to jump through hoops of making everything become 64 bars and then reducing them back down to 16 bars through the beats setting like or is it track length so length right here it says sequence so now it's like beats so you have to do some calculations as to how many beats it doesn't go by bars you know maybe if it was bars i would feel better about that also maybe it's because i'm lazy so yeah hopefully i'm illustrating my point here again when you come back to long sequences you know if you've done something that's like 32 bars or if you want to record something that's 32 bars but you want to keep your drums 4 bars and you don't want to mess you don't want to mess around with that stuff it's a little bit difficult on this platform or at least you have to jump through some mental hoops to to make that happen whereas like if you look at ableton you know the clips don't have to be locked to a certain sequence length they can all run independently of a sequence length from each other so i actually would prefer to see something like that so if i could have a 4 bar drums 8 bar pad maybe a 16 bar lead then maybe like a 32 bar sparkle thing that goes in and out you know for little effects and all that and then not have to worry about making sure my drums are the right beat length you know every time i adjust the master sequence to be something like i feel like that would be nice i understand the sequence is linked to being able to create songs and export things at the right time so i do understand that the npc is set up to be focused on how many bars each sequence is but from like a hardware juggling type of perspective uh i i wish there was this option as well i feel like it would be a bit more loop friendly and again the audio side i mean i think i've illustrated my point on that but i think it's even weirder that the audio is linked to like only four bars and you only have four bars on the audio like i don't know i just i think that's strange but you know aside from that stuff i think this platform's fantastic i really do so i don't mean to like dog on it i just want to be realistic as to what my experiences have been with the the npcs which has mostly been positive honestly i've had a few crashes here and there but nothing that i haven't been able to recover from and overall stability has been good i've i've used the cv outs and that has been awesome to interface with modular i've done a few videos also on hooking it up to a tascam and again that is a fantastic setup you know if you have a tascam model 12 16 24 or one of the zoom variants something like that so you can record audio directly to an sd card on those that is a excellent setup and i highly recommend it for anyone who's looking to be mostly hardware based if you are brand new to the platform i will say that it is a relatively steep learning curve i'm sure if you used the previous npcs then you know not too bad but there is quite a bit to this platform i don't want to give the impression that it's super easy to learn you know i also want to give the impression that it's really difficult either it's relatively straightforward and then there's a lot of things that aren't straightforward like it took me a while to understand how to get to the effects sends and returns that was just a mystified piece of the software for a while for me but it is not required to know everything about this machine right out the gate in order to make music like that's the biggest takeaway from this is that you don't need to be an expert in order to get jamming you can just get a drum kit you know learn how to sample something real quick and then chop it up and that's great you could live on that for a long time without trying to get any more complex into the other features until you're ready to so i'd say don't get discouraged if you do get it the first day then go man scratching your head like i'm gonna make beats with this thing like i can barely figure this out like it takes time for a lot of these devices and again if you're brand new to this type of platform then that learning curve will be even steeper initially as you put more time into it obviously you're going to get more out of it one final note that i do want to mention is that the price has gone up over the past two years it originally launched for 700 bucks and now i think it's 900 so there's been like a a 200 increase obviously global economics and ship shortage type of stuff has put pressure on everything across the board so i'm pretty sure that is the the reason for those type of things but i do want to mention that this was a cheaper box two years ago don't really know what else to say about that aside from the chip shortage thing sucks yeah that's the video hopefully you found something useful if you did a like subscribe and a comment below would be greatly appreciated and you can also support us on patreon as well if you do sign up for the producer tier you will get some samples uh multi-samples specifically that you can load into npcs to be able to play like the model d and all that yeah that's about it i definitely recommend the mpc really enjoyed it over the past two years and looking forward to more updates and more things from akai i'll see you next time for another video deuces you

Channel: Tefty & Meems

Views: 49,423

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Id: GMgQZUGbC1A

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022