The return of the stand-alone MPC exceeds expectations.
Five years ago Akai Professional took the bold decision to move their MPC range to the hybrid software-plus-controller model that was proving a runaway success for Native Instruments’ Maschine. While this would appeal to a new group of beat-makers more comfortable with laptops than traditional drum machines, it left much of the existing user base yearning for a next-gen stand-alone solution. This demand never died away, in fact there’s a renewed interest in self-contained drum machines, grooveboxes, and mobile music devices in general. Akai have evidently been listening and are returning to stand-alone in a seriously ambitious way, launching two new MPCs that offer uncompromising computer-free operation, as well as a hybrid controller mode, and project transition between the two.
There are two new models. The MPC Live is designed for portability and is, on the face of it, a stand-alone version of the MPC Touch (reviewed in SOS September 2016). The MPC X is a larger, studio-based workstation that’s like a futuristic version of a Renaissance or MPC5000. I got the chance to play with both in order to make comparisons, but this review will concentrate on the Live model.
Live Here Now
With the MPC Touch, Akai introduced a new interface that combines touch and physical control elements and, as we said at the time, offers a much enhanced experience compared to the software on previous MPCs. This is the foundation for the new MPCs, both of which, like the Touch, can be used as controllers (and audio/MIDI interfaces) for the MPC software. However, they also have on-board CPUs that can run the MPC software independently.
The MPC DAW and plug-in finally hits version 2.0 alongside this hardware launch, sporting a much needed visual makeover with styling inherited back from the Touch interface. It also has some big new features, notably audio tracks, a new loop launcher Program type and modernised content browsing. Despite a great deal of tidying up, Akai have not tinkered significantly with the MPC production workflow, which will either be a relief or a disappointment depending on your perspective.
Beat Box
The MPC Live is the same size as the Touch, but a little bit deeper, and it feels chunkier as the thickness is uniform across the unit. A tough metal case — and a lot more going on inside — results in a hefty weight of 2.7kg (5.9lbs). For comparison that’s a bit more than my 15-inch laptop plus charger, or exactly the same as a Push 2. Part of the weight is the Lithium-Ion battery, which gives you up to six hours of untethered power (and from my testing that’s real hours, not Apple hours).
The MPC Live has the same front-panel layout as the Touch, except that the screen is flush with the surface instead of recessed, which feels like an improvement. The pads remain unsurpassed since I gushed about them in the MPD and Touch reviews, and I have to say I prefer the solid rubber function buttons to the hard plastic ones on the MPC X (at least on the prototype I saw).
The back panel is packed with connectivity. Audio-wise, there are six TRS outputs and a mini-jack headphone port. Stereo input is switched between two line-level TRS inputs or a pair of phonos (with ground) for direct capture from a turntable. Unlike the X model, there are no mic or instrument inputs, which I found frustrating. If you’re going to want to record vocals or guitar while out and about, or want the MPC Live to double as your main studio interface, then you’ll need to budget an extra £100$130 or so for something like a PreSonus TubePre.
At the back of the MPC Live we find a master volume control, a 3.5mm headphone socket, six quarter-inch audio outputs, a pair of phono inputs (with associated input level control, grounding post and line/phono level switch), quarter-inch audio inputs, two pairs of MIDI I/O ports, three USB ports and a socket for the external power supply.
Staying true to the MPC heritage as a studio hub, there’s a brace of full-size MIDI ins and outs. (The MPC X has really gone to town with four MIDI outs and eight CV outputs to boot). You can also connect class-compliant MIDI controllers via the USB ports. I kept a portable MIDI keyboard plugged in most of the time for playing Keygroup programs. You can even plug a computer keyboard in for easy naming. In fact, when you switch the MPC to controller mode it acts like a USB hub for the computer, so you can swap between modes without replugging! As if this isn’t enough, the unit has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities, although neither were enabled yet on my review unit. Bluetooth MIDI devices will be supported, and upcoming support for Ableton Link will allow wireless beat syncing with other devices.
The USB ports are one of several way to add storage and share files with your MPC Live. Connected USB drives simply mount and become available for Browse and Save operations. I tried both a FAT32-formatted thumb drive and Mac-formatted portable drive, both of which mounted without incident. While USB is great for moving stuff around, there are also two options for longer-term expansion of the storage. The internal flash storage is 16GB, a large chunk of which is taken up with the factory sound library and MPC OS/software, so the first thing I did was stick a 16GB SD card in the back, giving me a great place to keep my projects. However, you can go one better: there’s an internal hard drive bay (easily accessed from the bottom of the unit) where you can install a standard 2.5-inch laptop-style SATA drive. This makes it possible to keep a huge sound library right in the MPC.
Stand-alone
Working with the MPC Live in its stand-alone mode is largely indiscernible from controller mode operation, but before we get into comparisons let’s recap the basic operation. An MPC Project consists of Programs (drum kits, sampled instruments, etc) which are sequenced in Tracks. Tracks are contained in a Sequence and a Project can contain multiple Sequences. Sequences can loosely equate to ‘scenes’ in other systems, but are completely independent containers with their own tracks so can be wholly different ideas or songs. The touch interface uses multiple views to access various working modes. Most work is done in the Main view where you can flip between Sequences and Tracks, and assign Programs to Tracks. The Main view button toggles to the Track view. From either of these views you can jump to editing Track data in the MIDI grid, step sequencer or audio edit views.
The MPC Live’s front panel measures 424 x 224mm, and the touchscreen has a diagonal measurement of 176mm.
This multi-view system can be bewildering initially, but once you learn the structure and the places you need to be, you can work quickly and fluidly. This is facilitated by the effective way that the touchscreen, buttons and data wheel have been integrated to form a very pleasing way of interacting with the system. And there’s definitely a lot to be said for focusing on a single device, without having to reference a computer screen.
The touchscreen is excellent, using capacitive touch technology like your phone, rather than the resistive touch screens that rely on pressure. For example, in the MIDI Edit grid or piano roll view at default zoom I could quickly draw or select notes very accurately. Everything is very snappy. And that’s not limited to the display: one of the first things that struck me when playing with the Live was the responsiveness of drum kits. We get used to the latency inherent in computer-based DAWs, so it’s quite striking when it’s not there.
A recorded Clip Program arrangement in Edit View.
There has been some general tidying up of the screen layout, such as making the quantise and metronome features more accessible, but the first major improvement I noticed was in the Browser, which has been improved in general in MPC 2.0, and implemented nicely in the touch interface. There is a Content view that sifts the factory-installed sounds into high-level buckets: Drums, Instruments, Clips and so on. There’s also a search function now. A small but useful feature is that when you load a Program after selecting a new Track, it will assign it automatically to that Track. These are significant improvements, although there’s still no ‘audition in place’ for kits or instruments when browsing. On the test version of the software there was also no way to properly add new content Expansions to the on-board library, but Akai say this is on their to-do list.
Talking of content, the MPC’s drive is pre-loaded with the mighty Vault 2.0, Essential Instruments and MPC Clip Expansion packs. Several more Expansions are also provided for download, plus you get all the fantastic AIR plug-ins (Hybrid, Loom, Vacuum Pro, etc), some Sonivox instruments and the standard MPC add-ons like The Bank, and The 809 to play with on the computer side.
While the stand-alone MPC is much like a Touch sans computer, there are important features that are only available in the software version. The biggest is VST plug-in support: the MPC stand-alone is all sampler, audio and MIDI based. However, it does include the internal audio effects, so it’s not that it couldn’t do it in theory. In fact I initially misread the product information and thought that Akai had got AIR’s Hybrid synth running on the hardware. Realistically, though, this would be asking a lot of the on-board processors and memory, but I’m still holding out hope that they might be able to get some simple synths (drum synths maybe?) running on the fairly capable quad-core ARM chips.
Audio To Go
The biggest new MPC features are Clip Programs and Audio Tracks, both of which are available stand-alone and in the software, with the only difference being an eight audio track limit in stand-alone mode. Audio Tracks are pretty much what their name suggests: linear audio lanes where you can record, import and edit audio. The only meaningful difference between these and the audio tracks in a traditional DAW is that they exist separately within each Sequence, rather than at the top Song level, but, for better or worse, that’s very much in keeping with everything in MPC Land.
Audio and MIDI tracks are fenced off from each other in the Track view, and in the Main view you’ll now see separate tab selectors for viewing the two track types. In the Audio Track tab the setup area has an input selector instead of Program assignment, plus Arming and Monitor mode controls, and the MIDI Grid view button is replaced by Audio Edit. This is a full-screen DAW-style audio waveform editor, in which a selection of edit tools let you zoom, select, cut or delete clips. You can move and trim clips directly on the touchscreen, or use the edit modes at the bottom of the screen in conjunction with the main knob. This is particularly satisfying and just as quick as mouse editing in most cases. I’d like to see the Q-Link knobs have trimming assignments here (as they do in the regular sample editor), but this is pretty great for a first version.
Audio Tracks are easy to edit in the touch user interface.
You can record directly into audio tracks from the inputs and you can record multiple tracks simultaneously. You can also quickly drop audio samples from your Project into an audio track, giving you a new, non-MIDI-triggered way to sequence and assemble tracks. All of this is in addition to the existing sampling and slicing options.
If you prefer to work with audio in a more Ableton-esque fashion, by triggering loops and scenes on the fly, then Clip Programs are for you. A Clip Program is like a regular Kit Program in that it has different samples assigned to each pad, but it’s set up for playing back loops. Tapping a pad toggles playback of the assigned loop (though this can be switched to single shot mode). By default, ‘mute groups’ are set up in such a way that one loop is played back from each pad column at a time, as per the popular clip-launching convention. This can be redefined using up to 32 separate groups. The final piece of this puzzle is automatic time stretching, which keeps the loops in time with the current tempo.
The factory content includes ready-made Clip Programs that combine complementary loops from four ‘food groups’: Drums, Bass, Melodic and Vocals, with consistent pad colour-coding. This suggests a ‘live remix’ usage similar to NI’s Stems format. However, there are many great uses for these loop mixing programs. One nice feature is that launch quantisation is flexible, and loops are launched in what Ableton call ‘legato’ mode; in other words with the position in the loop maintained relative to the beat (which is still not possible when triggering MPC sequences). This makes it easy to improvise on the fly with loop variations and fills, and record your arrangement.
In Control
Despite The MPC Live’s extensive stand-alone capabilities, most users will want to move projects to their computer-based studio environment at some point to gain access to VST plug-ins, more audio tracks and I/O, or to bring their work into another DAW environment via the MPC plug-in. Switching the MPC to Controller mode prompts you to save your work, then closes down stand-alone operation. When connected via USB to your computer the MPC appears as an audio and MIDI interface. If the MPC software (or an instance of the plug-in) is running, the hardware detects it and becomes as one with it. Unlike the Touch, where the screen is driven from the computer using DisplayLink, the TUI (Touch User Interface) on MPC Live is powered by the unit itself. This bypasses the Touch’s tricky initial setup process, and means it responds faster too.
