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 Post subject: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:10 pm 
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So i posted up that link to the cheap ass MV near me and I've been thinking about it a lot actually. recently I moved into a much smaller space and have been looking into trimming down and streamlining my set-up. So my biggest gripe with the MV is it's physical size, the thing seems to be excessively big to me...like if I got it i would only have room for it+turntable on my desk and maybe my mopho.

The main thing that I've been looking into is a dope sampler/sequencer that has lots of sample mangling capabilities. how does the MV excel or fall short in this area? are there a lot of (or any)looping/modulation options for samples? can you push your samples into synthesis levels of sound mangling?

how is the synth engine? pretty flexible or pretty basic?

how about the efx?

i have more questions, but don't want to go too nuts with this first post.

so sell me on it, i have no bias or preconceived notions coming to the machine other than it's size...


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 Post subject: Re: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 10:41 pm 
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Check our album i've posted up here. Besides showing off all possibilities of the MV as it is done fully in the box without using PC at all, tracks 2,4,5 also use some MV synth here and there. But track 7 uses almost only the internal MV synth. As I never had a dedicated analog synth I can't speak over how much it is flexible and such. But for me it is quite good monophonic synth that you can tweak many ways and make it sound almost like anything you want so currently it suits all my needs. You can resample it and create a polyphonic instrument outta it and tweak it that way even more.

Sequencer is definitely a good feature of the MV. I have not even used lots of features it offers after completing a full album so if you are not a real software DAW junky it will give all you need.

Sampling side it is also very versatile has all the functions you would really want from such device. The only shortcoming is that if you want to manually edit instrument patch you do it one sample/note a time so some people are complaining that it does not allow you to edit those in a batch. But this also never was a big shortcoming for me because I've used to all basic/limited instruments I previously had.

The effects section offers you MFX, REVERB and CHORUS/DELAY, usually you would use Reverb and Cho/Delay plus one MFX at a time but if you need more effects this is when resampling of the effects and audio tracks come to the stage. Although I haven't got any song that required more than one or two resamples for the effects to be in place.

Really it's lots of writing here, just check the manual if it has the features you need, there are lots of images of the internal software so that should answer all your questions. But as a proud owner of this instrument I can say that it satisfies me 99.95% of the time. The little 0.05% are always gonna be something you could improved if you where the engineer of the instrument, you know. ;)

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 Post subject: Re: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:24 pm 
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reignbear wrote:
So i posted up that link to the cheap ass MV near me and I've been thinking about it a lot actually. recently I moved into a much smaller space and have been looking into trimming down and streamlining my set-up. So my biggest gripe with the MV is it's physical size, the thing seems to be excessively big to me...like if I got it i would only have room for it+turntable on my desk and maybe my mopho.


I know what you mean, but you should measure your space then, plus an additional give or take 10 to 20 cm for wires and stuff. Don't forget you probably don't need much more than an MV, mopho and turn table too, so it might be just the thing for you. :)

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The main thing that I've been looking into is a dope sampler/sequencer that has lots of sample mangling capabilities. how does the MV excel or fall short in this area? are there a lot of (or any)looping/modulation options for samples?


The sampling capabilities feel very much complete to me. It probably excels most in it's powerful sequencer though. Non-destructive quantize, different quantize for each track, tempo tracks to change the tempo, pattern tracks to do cool DJ style stutters of patterns, step recording. It's the sequencer and the main sampling capabilities why I am such a big fan of the MV.

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can you push your samples into synthesis levels of sound mangling?


Not quite sure what you mean here, but if you're talking about LFO, envelopes, filters and all that, then yes. You can stretch sounds and make entirely new sounds. Add reverb, resample and continue. It's really very versatile in my opinion. In my opinion, in this area the MV delivers what you'd expect from a high-end sampler.

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how is the synth engine? pretty flexible or pretty basic?


It depends a bit on your approach. You get basically about 10 'base flavors' of synths you can mess with, changing them into a more unique bass synth.

I think for synth standards, this is perhaps relatively basic, but def very flexible. You get to tweak quite a lot of parameters. (I'd look into the manual to see what, as it's too much to list.)

It's awesome for (mono) basslines and melodies right out of the box. But with some more effort, if you resample the bass lines with FX, chop 'em up into pieces and resample them again with some FX, you'll see you can get excellent high quality synth chops.

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how about the efx?


The FX are good. Basically every standard FX is there and is of great quality. As with every machine and depending on your style, there might be some FX you're never going to use, but there's a good arsenal of FX to do some proper sample mangling for sure!

Having owned both the SP-555 and SP-606 I can say the MV it's FX are of higher quality.

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so sell me on it, i have no bias or preconceived notions coming to the machine other than it's size...


Yes, it's definitely quite big, but I like that. Something you've paid a lot for, is supposed to be big, right? :wink:

The only gripe I've got with the machine is that it can be slow. Not with mangling samples or sequencing, that's really all very straight forward and fast (check Warren Harris aka Hanna on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ielczDVnHQQ&feature=related) , but when you're importing samples or saving a big project it will take a few seconds.

In general this doesn't influence the work flow a whole lot though.

Also, it comes highly recommended to upgrade to 512MB of RAM as soon as possible. You're going to need it as a standard big project easily is over 256MB. The average project size is likely to be about 300mb to 350mb for most people I think. (Without optimizing and deleting unused samples in my case, I'm lazy with that.)

I think you should check out many of the MV demo videos on YouTube. It's what made me consider it over going for the MPC2500 and ultimately why I bought it.

Quote:
Sampling side it is also very versatile has all the functions you would really want from such device. The only shortcoming is that if you want to manually edit instrument patch you do it one sample/note a time so some people are complaining that it does not allow you to edit those in a batch. But this also never was a big shortcoming for me because I've used to all basic/limited instruments I previously had.


Yeah, that's true. But there is a work-around for that. If you want an entire patch to have a certain filter setting, just use an FX, go to sampling and play all the sounds with the FX active. Then do auto chop (or auto divide) and you've got a new patch with the new FX applied to all samples. This is usually done within 5 minutes or so, but like Olby it was never a problem for me.

Most samples will need individual editing anyways. Especially if you haven't time stretched them all to a perfect match.

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 Post subject: Re: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:17 am 
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the MV got a synth inside? good!

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 Post subject: Re: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:13 pm 
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Yes, it has a bass synth. Really quite powerful for bass lines. It's not a full blown synth, but I've used it for melodies as well.

Don't expect Mopho quality or deepness of editing, but it's not something to be underestimated. ;)

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 Post subject: Re: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2009 6:53 am 
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Has anyone read the new SoundOnSound issue? The one with 'Record' on the cover? It has an AWESOME piece on Dot Da Genius, and the song Day & Nite that he produced for Kid Cudi. The song became a huge hit, but they did it on the M-Box, and the article has the whole Pro Tools session in there and step by step what dude did- it is VERY informative and inspiring!
Anyway Dot used the MV for the drums.


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 Post subject: Re: sell me on the MV-8800
PostPosted: Sun Oct 11, 2009 12:12 pm 
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I'm not a paid subscriber, but I'd love to read that. I heard it's taken him about 5 years to learn how to make proper beats and all, quite interesting stuff to read.

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