What to buy INSTEAD of the new MPCs

hello my name is jorb i love gear welcome back this is the second episode of the only thing i would really consider to be an actual series on my channel this is redirect your gas not buy that if you aren't familiar with the term gas it's a common affliction for those of us in the music making community it stands for gear acquisition syndrome this constant chase of a new piece of gear even if we have plenty already often biased towards brand new gear because that's the sort of thing you're getting advertised that's what's influencers when sonic state puts out a review when sound on sound puts out a review that's the thing we're reading we're thinking about we're excited about and it's new technology everybody's excited about new technology the goal of the series is to try and take a step back from those shiny new pieces of gear and realize that anything available new any of the jobs you can do on a brand new piece of gear i promise you with a few very specific exceptions is capable of being handled by an older piece of gear that's already available on the used market so in this series we look at some sleek brand new pieces of gear today it's going to be sort of a product family all the brand new npcs when i say that i mean the mpc one the live and live two and the very very expensive mpcx we're going to try and define the jobs they can cover what you might want to accomplish by buying one and talk about other options in that same product category gear that can do the same jobs as these things were all lusting over that sound good good if you are subscribed really appreciate you being here i think i just watched it tick over four thousand and two hundred people can't believe it it every new threshold feels like it was never going to happen so cheers and thank you very very much sincerely for that if you're new which is most of you first of all welcome i encourage you to look around my channel a bit uh see if there's anything else that might interest you the first episode of redirect your gas i cover a lot of the heavy hitters uh but if you like what you see there at any point during this video think to yourself wow i love gear too i i then i really hope you subscribe okay if at any point you think of something i didn't mention that you want to mention put in the comments and everybody who's watching this if i didn't say something you thought would be a good alternative see if somebody else mentioned in the comments i want all of us to be talking about this i want all of us to be saying uh you know i don't think that's a good replacement ah you know think about this instead this is even older and it does what i want all that i want to see all that in the comments people helping each other get good deals people helping each other discover gear that will help them be creative that will enable their creativity that's what this is all about whatever you want to do you can achieve it at a lower price point than you think okay shall we begin so when i say the new npc's i mean the one which we can see used prices are about six hundred dollars the original live which is kind of close to there that 650 is a bit of an anomaly uh but if your patient make offers and go in places like ebay you can probably get around six the live two which hasn't quite gotten cheap yet especially the special colorways 900 plus is what you're looking at for those and the completely out of most people's price range mpcx they all share the same software the differences mostly pertain to form factor number one uh they're i o options and the live series has rechargeable batteries and the two has a speaker they're very powerful hardware setup brains an undeniable legacy in hip-hop and they're about as close to a daw in a box as you can get these days with used prices varying from about 600 on the one to 1400 on the x i'm gonna use 600 as my cutoff for getting into that workflow right pretty much the least expensive way you can get the modern mpc workflow is a used one and that's around 600 so i'm going to consider that our cutoff for something being a better deal so everything i'm going to talk about is going to be less than 600 dollars i am i've alive too i really do love it a lot i upgraded from an mpc 1000 i have a video i'm very proud of talking about what that was like but i know that alive too is not realistic for a lot of people and frankly it's too expensive for me in my tastes but it worked out at the time and if i'm unemployed now and if i was at the time i would not have bought the live two so i totally understand that it doesn't make sense for most people and and it's hard for me to recommend it when i know the workflow is available for only 600 and not the 1100 i think that i paid so if you're dead set on these new mps npcs and you want to keep the budget as low as you can i really recommend use design and pc one or pretty sporadically used live ones will go for around 500 maybe 600 there's always some broken ones showing up only mess with those if you're really confident but people are looking for the live too not really the live one and if their budget's that low there they know about the mpc one they're thinking about the mpc one so places like ebay maybe local classifieds you can get pretty good deals on the live one uh the difference between the live one and live two live two has some more face buttons sort of hot keys but not any different features right the software is all the same it's just how you get there might take an extra step uh and it has the monitors built in the speaker built in uh if you can live without that you can save several hundred dollars to have more or less the same experience as a live tube uh but if you're comfortable staying plugged into the wall definitely go with the one or honorable mention again the akai force which akai doesn't seem super interested in supporting the same way they do the npcs um because of that and just weird branding not putting npc on it when it runs all the same software seems like a miss uh their used prices are way lower than those were at launch so you can see those show up for 700 or 600 if you really value the better i o the different interface the focus on clip launching over the mpc one and again are comfortable staying plugged into the wall alrighty that was fun but let's move on to alternatives the first use case i see is somebody using it for more or less all its features you want this to be what you're making music on i'll say groov box i think the npcs are a little bit more than that but in general you want to sit down one piece of hardware and make a song and the first thing i really want to recommend is the mpc 1000 i had one it was the only sequencer the only sampler i used for five years i do not regret that at all it was totally capable and i could still be using it today without any complaints but because the used prices are so close to what you can get for a used mpc one i find it kind of hard to recommend bottoming out around 450 especially considering that they can have hard drives installed more ram aftermarket operating systems pricing can be difficult and you need to do some research on any individual one any individual listing you see come up you can get essentially all the same jobs covered as a used npc one uh with the exception of instrument plug-ins flexible effects and flexible effects routings uh cv compatibility really but really it's the same jobs dramatically modernized on the mpc one or any of the other modern ones and for a difference of around or less than 100 in some cases these are more expensive ones that have been upgraded or customized and i do still love mine and help me make a lot of music ah but i can't recommend it at that price i can't really recommend it unless you get a crazy deal unless you really want to use a 1000 because you like the vibe of something older which i totally understand and respect but if you're lucky and patient and can fix one or are not afraid to do the research to buy ram or install jj os none of it's really that hard but it does take time you can totally make it happen for less but ricky tina's has sort of blown the prices up i know it's changed recently but uh i straight up think we can trace the price jump and one thousands back to him because he did a great job of demonstrating it all to his credit okay you're probably familiar with this one the sp404 it's older again really the prices we're seeing give a lot more credibility to how good of a deal used mpc one is it's it's hard to just look at these things as spec sheets because they aren't they're instruments and the way you interact with them is different and the music they're going to bring out of you is different right but if you don't have an allegiance to a brand or a workflow and you sit down and say i have 500 i want to buy something that i can make music on are you going to buy something with limited polyphony and low memory that runs on compact flash cards or are you going to get something with usb ports that you can plug into your computer and has software integration you know what i mean if you don't have any allegiance and you aren't like and you aren't after like the lo-fi thing i find it hard to recommend this if the npc was on your plate at all now taking a step back the 404 is very unique and because of the limitations on memory and polyphony resampling is the way a lot of people make beats and that workflow combined with its performance effects working with the 404 is completely unique and if you have an interest in trying that or whatever else you're doing is kind of stagnant getting something like this that's limited kind of dramatically can be a really really cool way to change your workflow to change the way you think change the way you sit down and make music and i don't think that is valueless but you need to think about it in a different scale from i want to sit down and make a song what am i going to buy if you're in the lofi thing totally consider it it'll it'll pull that out of you easier you can do that and you can get that on the modern mpc's but something like this can only be that it can only make music like that and i think that is special okay so those are out of the way how about something a lot more modern and more well it's literally called the groove box on the product page more like a groov box so closer in functionality overall to the sort of modern features you're going to get on all the new npcs you have seen it already on your screen this is roland's mc101 and it dropped in price a lot since they came out used around 360 maybe 400 ish yeah that's what i remember uh i don't have any personal experience with one but i can tell you four polyphonic tracks i think it's the zen core synth engine which originally was in rowan's keytars and you'll find in the roland x and the roland xm which i have played and sounds super good they do sample playback and sample editing i think they can do some midi sequencing uh this is like the little brother version of the mc707 i think they're very cool interesting little package from roland i don't have many more specific thoughts so i won't harp on about what i think is interesting or not i like having physical faders on the front for the four tracks but what i will do is direct you to my man gabe miller the groove box king of wherever he's from god bless him if you're ever wondering about a groove box released in the last two three years gabe miller has it and he has very very comprehensive thoughts on it so his video is in the description uh hilariously i hear gabe miller say it all the time his brain works the way the innovation circuit works uh the original innovation circuit can be had between 200 and 250 dollars i think it's really hard to not consider that they're small all-in-one group boxes an insane amount of support they were super popular when they came out they still are sound packs all over tutorials all over uh bobeats does a bunch rickytinez uses them they're super super competitively priced i think they're a wonderful wonderful choice easy to research easy to recommend but other than the original circuit there is also the circuit tracks which ricky tina's at nomcon just referred to this as circuit 2 and the circuit rhythm and the circuit rhythm is focused on sampling and not the synthesis okay so the prices for the two new ones the tracks and the rhythm uh between 350 and 400 i have it on screen i don't know why i have to try and remember yeah exactly between 350 and 400 they're still pretty new and they're still going pretty fast so if you see a good deal there's a good chance it won't be there by the time you uh get back home you know what i'm saying uh but the original circuit can be had between two and three hundred to like completely dramatically oversimplify the differences uh this original circuit is six tracks four sample based drum tracks and two synth tracks which can output polyphonic midi uh and what you gain in the circuit tracks the circuit two colloquially two more six voice midi tracks in addition to the ones that can be plugged into the synth engine the built-in synth engine uh and you have the same four sample based drum tracks so we're up to eight tracks there are totally more differences than that uh but the circuit rhythm it's all eight monophonic sample based drum tracks so you can sequence midi out of those uh and it can have pitch information but it's only monophonic it can't be polyphonic track so if you're trying to sequence midi you can be kinda limited if you're trying to use the circuit rhythm tracks can do a great job original circuit can do a great job with two tracks on the original and four tracks if you mute the synth tracks on the circuit tracks name it something else i'm saying tracks too much so if you don't need any external midi sequencing think about the rhythm if you do need external midi sequencing think about the tracks if you're wading into this and your price range might be a little lower the original circuit is still a ripon choice and really really powerful so there are a ton of more differences between them do not take anything i said as definitive or the end of it do your own research but it's really hard to not recommend the circuit and i promise you they're available used constantly especially now when people are upgrading to the circuit tracks and circuit rhythm okay i think they're all kick-ass i'll summarize that way as we move on we're getting a little further away from the complete power of the modern npcs okay and there's a chance that all you want to do you already have your midi sequencing handled somewhere or you loop audio or you're working in a daw and you just want to try a drum machine a sample based drum machine okay and the first thing i think of is the electron model samples for being very affordable i know they're just available like some fire sale from electron 250 new i don't know if that's still going on but it's hands-on control it's not per function of samples which is really fun to manipulate and learn tricks of sampling in general if i change the speed if i change the start point things like that with electrons really really powerful sequencing so even if there's only six tracks and you can only have one sample per track electron parameter locks lets you change that sample per step and not just that sample per step that's an easy way to say think about how powerful that can be any parameter you can change per step that's amazing a friend of mine just got one i really want to try it he seems to like it a lot and i feel like after we saw this price drop we're going to see him in more people's hands super super cool okay you've probably heard of it it's hard to not recommend the volca sample it really impressed me not super high fidelity hard to put samples on the version one version two's a little better you can get them for about a hundred bucks all day and again if you're just curious about i want to manipulate samples i want to know what it's like to make music by manipulating samples what a great way to try it less than a hundred dollars runs on batteries put it in your pocket put it in your backpack super cheap super dope i can't imagine selling mine in case i'm ever in a situation where i need a really tiny sampler it's a hundred bucks i'll lose 15 of that to reverb and shipping when i try and move it anyway so might as well hold on to it right okay not much more to say about it the roland tr6s you can look at it you can see shares of dna with that mc101 uh but this is focused on being a drum machine and they've again gone lower in price since once they came out i don't know why i think all the arya stuff ira stuff from roland with like that green livery people are not about it they got a little better by changing the colors of the lights by default on these modern ones but i could talk about that forever around 300 compact little drum machine i don't have any personal experience with them but i would love to relend if you want to send me one i will make content six tracks runs on batteries uh i think it does virtual analog i don't know if it's the acb of the boutiques but it'll do virtual analog representations of vintage roll and drum machines how cool is that also has sample editing will playback samples in concept i love the tr6s it's like a little supplementary drum machine when you already have your midi sequence somewhere else but i haven't tried one because i've had an mpc forever so if you guys have a good experience with the tr-6s you let me know okay our last round will be even faster than that i don't think most people's main purpose for getting a modern mpc is exclusively midi sequencing i'm pretty close to that use case but i need something to play drum machines and samples so why not use this very expensive amazing sampler i already have uh so these are pure midi sequencers these last three are prior mini sequencers they don't do anything else if you already have ways of generating your sounds and you already have something you don't need a groov box you have other hardware you just need a good midi controller the keystep pro you see them everywhere for good reason they are super super easy to use super super capable it looks like we're around 425 which is higher than i remember i'm gonna try and search for this without clicking on the product page i could have sworn they were going yeah 400 i could have sworn they were going for a little less recently maybe the cheap ones are just getting bought up because they're really nice but uh in general the flexibility with the cv outputs i think it's four four polyphonic tracks i think there's 16 voices each uh insane compatibility with its cv outs you can clock synths that might not even have midi or trigger their arpeggios or 100 other things if you don't have a good main midi keyboard and you need a good sequencer buy them both in one product okay how about a curveball classic this is the alesis mmt8 it's super gray it looks like a calculator all it can do is sequence midi nothing else okay these are available for less than 200 bones all day it's got eight tracks i don't think you can overdub i don't think you can use it as a step sequencer but you can quantize really tight it does one thing and it does it really really well sequence your midi i tried to buy one at one point on ebay and i just missed the auction because i had heard about them being super straightforward and simple and at that point time i was trying to separate my midi sequencing from my drum sequencing but in the same vein as that uh retro kits just announced this the rk08 a tiny modern feature-laden recreation of that elisa's mt8 and if you want something super super tiny there it is in context it looks like one-sixth or one-seventh of the width of a rolling boutique totally totally should consider that i'm really curious about them and i don't even need another midi sequencer i think it said six months from now in the super booth coverage which would be what which would be what april 2022 if you're watching this in the future maybe you know how much they are and you can buy one today but if you just need straight ahead midi sequencer totally worth considering okay and on to our last one this is a real sleeper okay pioneer dj and their brand torres which made like that 303 ish clone with one voice of the dave smith pro 2 uh they also made this the squid i'm gonna pull it up if you haven't heard of it and i wouldn't have known about them at all because i've never seen one actually used and i've never seen anybody talk about them but they presented them at nobcon 2019 and watching that guy run through controlling a bunch of external gear with this i cannot believe i didn't buy one i had the mpc 1000 at the time and i was thinking about upgrading i think they were like 700 new now they're used for like maybe 400 bucks which is amazing and and i'm pretty sure you'll be able to make an offer on a lot of these for less because these are not hot ticket items uh 16 tracks i think eight note polyphony it's all full of performance options the sequencer has a lot of like um generative aspects random aspects chants things like that uh cv clock din sync pioneer really said let's make the best sequencer we can they delivered and none of us bought it so if any of you have one or have tried one really please tell me what you think i'm super interested in them i would love to know if they're as good as they looked to me in 2019 all righty gamers that's all i've got this is kind of a long-winded way of saying uh the new npcs do a ton of stuff really really well and a used npc one is an insane deal if you really break down and look at what else you can get around that price range it's insane and i find it really really easy to recommend that but if your use case is you know not the entire breadth of what you can do on an npc if it's uh only one of its uh many dimensions you might save a lot of cash and maybe improve your workflow by going in a different direction and i hope this sort of showed you that other options are out there and in every category and they might work better for you so don't get too caught up in the hype do a bunch of research find out to the best your ability before you buy something if it meets your needs and it will do the things you want to do so anyway i really appreciate you watching go by squid right now my name is majoram i love gear i'm sure you do too let me know what you want to see next i'll probably do the juno next if you wanted you know think about buying these instead they fill a similar role things like that so i really like doing these i talked this whole time i got really excited i'm sure you could tell modern npcs are super sick i really like mine i'm sure if you bought one you would love it too just know that you don't have to a lot of what it can do is included in a lot of other products appreciate you watching go by squid my name has been jorb i'll see you in the next one cheers

Channel: Jorb

Views: 18,753

Rating: 4.7735848 out of 5

Keywords: jorb, loves, gear, redirect your gas, g a s, g.a.s., gear acquisition syndrome, mpc, modern, mpc one, mpc live, mpc live 2, mpc x, mpc 1000, sp 404, circuit, novation circuit, circuit tracks, circuit rhythm, mc101, tr6s, roland, mmt8, rk008, toraiz squid, keystep pro, arturia, elektron, model samples, volca sample

Id: Je3uxo4BwBQ

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021