Gear4music Guitars | 8 years ago
http://www.gear4music.com/Samplers-Sequencers/Akai/MPC
Gear4music gets a demo and talks to Akai about the new MPC Live & MPC X standalone samplers.
Video transcription:
Hi I’m Andy mac and I’m at NAMM 2017 with Gear4music. We’re going to do a video overview of the new MPC’s. The MPC live and the MPCX.
There is a lot of info out there already, so I’m just gonna kind of hit on some new things for you guys.
So, the main thing for these 2 products is the fact that they stand alone. They don’t need the capabilities of relying on a computer and that is really creating worldwide appeal with these products. It’s hitting the mass market. It’s moving the MPC into so many new categories.
We’re dealing with new electronic genres now, the tech scene, techno, deep house, everything. And all because of, really, the feature sets and the hardware.
Now, the Live is dealing with an internal battery as well, so you get 5 hours of battery life directly from the unit. So, you can literally take it on stage, travel, go on a flight, whatever you’re doing, and produce, do whatever you need to do. And it takes about 40 minutes to charge, so that will give you 5, 6 hours of battery life.
One of the key things that has really opened up the market, is that we’ve added real-time time stretching and clip launching to the workflow. And this really separates us away from everything that’s out there and gives people the functionalities that we are all using with our DAW’s, in a standalone device.
What I am going to do here, is just play you a beat that has already been made.
So, I can see all my grid and what’s going on with my beat, but now we are running audio. So now, when I am running audio tracks, I can see all my audio parts. So, we can now scroll back and I can look at my audio timeline and I can actually take this part here, select it and we could edit it, de-tune it, move back, then we can mute and then go into clip mode, so we can now look at our clips.
Time stretch in real-time, up to 121, OK, so once we’ve time stretched, we can use all the other elements of MPC, so we can program our own drums over the top. So, I can go back to another track outside of the clip launcher. We can then go back to our drums, I can pull up the drum kit and we can add all of this over our clips, so we can utilise the MPC’s drum sequencer or the clip launching with all the time stretching, so for live performances it really does set itself apart, because it is so portable.
Having that battery life and you’ve got such a responsive screen as well. The screen on this is unbelievable. As you can see how I am interacting with the screen, I can select all my notes, I am literally working so fast. Looking at all of my notes, shifting, picking stuff up, moving it around the screen.
It is pretty stunning!
Now, we move over to the X.
The main feature differences here obviously the screen size. Identical technology, it’s exactly the same. We can just scroll down, you can see, zooming in, erase. But we’ve got the OLED’s, which basically update, so whenever I am going through parameters, this will tell me visually what is going on the X.
So I can look at my levels, my panning, shift, pad scene. I can set up my different parameters of what I want the pads to do and how I want to control them. But we’ve more so, if I go into control mode, I can now start managing all of my plugins, I can start looking at Sylenth and I will see all the parameters that come up on Sylenth. It’s the same with effects. If I am using, say, Fab Filter or anything like that, I will see all the EQ curves, I will see my threshold, parameters for my compressors directly on the screen. So, it becomes like a real hands-on controller if you do want to use your computer at any point.
Also the main difference with the MPC X is that you’ve got 8 CV gates as well, so if you are in the land of modular equipment, you can use the MPC and use the sequencer parameters with your CV gate outputs, to start driving some of those modules that are out there and really kind of move it to the whole electronic scene. And this thing becomes like the central hub of your whole studio. Very independent from what’s going on inside your computer.
So MPC Live, MPCX. On-board storage 16GB SSD, USB MIDI, USB inputs for your hard drive samples, SD inputs as well. SATA connection too on both of them, for your external hard drives. Up to 2 terabytes, you can add. Time stretching and clip launching functionalities, all in real-time, along with all the other legacy features that come with the MPC.
This video was filmed live at NAMM 2017, Anaheim Convention Center, California.
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