Anyone got an Akai MPC Live?

[TheBro]

Very curious about this. Its big but I like the fact that its portable plus it can be interfaced with a pc etc or be standalone. What do you guys / girls think?

 

[BaggerMcGuirk]

Curious about this as well.  I've had an MPC 2500 for a few years, but getting it to play nice with Ableton is a chore.  The price tag is pretty high, so I'm still holding off for now.

[TheBro]

Looks nice though eh but as you say a bit steep price wise.

[Limo]

At this price point a laptop with Ableton Live and a pad controller makes a lot of sense.

The software is pretty much guaranteed to work better: Ableton has been at it for far longer than whoever currently owns the Akai brand. Also: VST support.

[Limo]

On 7/20/2019 at 3:49 PM, Limo said:

At this price point a laptop with Ableton Live and a pad controller makes a lot of sense.

The software is pretty much guaranteed to work better: Ableton has been at it for far longer than whoever currently owns the Akai brand. Also: VST support.

Looking if there were any threads on here about the MPC I ran into this doozy of mine … 
 

So now that I’ve had an MPC for about a year I can categorically state that the above is Wrong(tm).

As it turns out, a new MPC is a fantastic device. The sampling workflow is second to none, the sequencing is good enough and the combination of touch screen + pads and knobs is way more than the sum of its parts.

As a brain for other gear it’s ok. What it unfortunately does not do well is long audio tracks, so for that you’ll still need a DAW. Also, the on board effects are serviceable but not great. Same goes for the plug-in instruments (yes, it has those).

If you’re considering one, try to get your hands on one before you buy. The workflow is fairly specific (not so say odd, in some places). It’s very much a YMMV thing.

Finally, instead of an MPC Live, do what I did and get an MPC One. The form factor is nicer (imho), it doesn’t have a non-user-replaceable battery (these go bad after a few years) and it’s cheaper to boot. The extra features of the Live aren’t really worth the extra money, especially since you can just hook up an USB audio device for extra in / outputs.

 

 

 

 

[splesh]

I've been thinking about selling my MPC 1000 and buying a Live 2

[decibal cooper]

1 hour ago, splesh said:

I've been thinking about selling my MPC 1000 and buying a Live 2

Never used a 1000 but had a Live before (never tried Live 2). I remember liking the Live. Sample management and programming beats was a breeze and will probably be familiar to you from the 1000. With the touchscreen you can do cool stuff with the XY controller thing, it basically is a way to control internal effects by placing different parameters on an X and Y axis, very fun to mess around with when it comes to drums/percussion. I miss having an MPC, the timing and swing was really cool. I've seen on forums that people throw shade at Akai, I guess because they did not pay royalties to Roger Linn or something, but it terms of tech they seem to offer lots of new updates and bug fixes consistently, which is nice.

[exitonly]

i have a Live 1. i didn’t really gell with it unfortunately. i recently got a Push 3 and that is definitely way more my jam. I honestly feel like the workflow for trimming samples in the Push is better than the Live. It’s really annoying on the mpc when you have to switch encoder banks to trim the start/end points of a sample. 

 

I also just felt like the mpc software was a bit clunky. There’s a lot of navigating around and overall it’s a bit limited for my tastes.  it feels like a sampler that wants to be a DAW but isn’t quite there, but then it’s overly complicated as just a sampler as well. 

[e-mertz]

A bit OT, but I've considered the akai force. From what I understood it is the mpc's software but organized around a step-sequencer and cliplauncher plus an actual arranger. No 1980's style Song Mode as in the MPC. Anyone tried one of those?