So, I currently have a native instruments maschine, that i Blindly bought in the excitment of getting an MPC, coming to realise that it was way more then that. And was wondering, as i was planning on buying my mates MPC 2000 XL for 7k and was hoping for some advice on the different advantages/disdvantages of the maschine and the MPC 2000 and also how hard it would be to adjust going to an analog controller when all i’ve used so far are digital midi (note i am studying audio engineering so Audio/digital recording i will learn eventually but since the mpc is on sale for a limited time only i was wondering if i should get it. Love making hip hop beats and drum sounds.)
I own the original MPC2000 which is basically the same as the XL with a few minor tweaks (flip screen, sample folders etc.). In the 90’s I used it as the center piece of my studio. It sequenced my external synths, played all the drum and sample parts and did all my arrangements. At that point computer DAWs were very primitive and VSTs sounded pretty bad. The down side was that all of this had to be done in that tiny little MPC screen. To finish a track required lots of deep menu diving and tedious editing. The up side was that I didnt need a computer and I played a few shows just with the MPC.
Fast forward to today - it is sitting unused in storage. My zip drive broke and I never bothered trying to track down a new one let alone the disks which are really tough to find these days. Unless it’s been modded the only way to get samples in our out of it is via floppy disk or through a SCSI port, neither of which are easy to find. I own a maschine and use it both in stand alone and in Logic and I never look back. A lot of people wax nostalgic about the MPC and it’s “swing”. I can do anything I did on my MPC in maschine faster and sounding better. It can even drop down to 16 bit mode if I want it to sound retro like the MPC.
And I gotta say I hope youre not talking 7k us dollars! You can get an MPC on ebay for under a grand easy. With 7k you could get a maschine studio + komplete + a DAW of your choice and still have money left over.