a wha dat?

Guest room studio! Just got the 808 & MC-307 combo running again. Works pretty well in this arrangement to post up in a chair in front of the 808. The rack synth is a trinity tr. It sounds great but requires something that can receive a midi dump to store settings, so I use it w the mpc-1000, which is currently in use elsewhere. It’s a bit of a reach to the turntable. I might switch it with the shelf setup as long as the keyboard and trinity r going unused.

The speakers r low end for sure, but they work surprisingly well for mixing. Lots of vinyl pulled out along the wall, out of frame. I might add a couple more snaps of the room. It’s a pretty fun work environment. When I close myself in there for a late night sesh it feels like I’m on a beat making vacation.

@Ghost Bazz: Lovely, looks so inviting. Keep the pics coming.

Sp Trinity

@rumorazzi Awesome!!

Updated pics, haven't posted many since I spammed this tread.

i'll bite. my shit is a mess tho

wow, the waldorfs....

@kegeratorz
Looks nice man. Is that the evolution of ur garage spot? Also, never seen that Deluge before... maybe cause I live under a rock. I’m gonna have to read up on it.

@bandit lu
U got a lot of firepower crammed in there! Nice collection.

I love the hard core gear head setups. Usually not much regard for ergonomics... and I’m right there w u guys. I’ve found recently that it actually makes a huge difference if I am comfortably seated w my various gear all at arms length. I used to have my desktop computer in the most comfortable location to work while seated... since I’ve had a work from home gig for many years this just made sense. Samplers and what not would b given b-level priority and get piled onto any flat surface that was close enough to plug into my mixer. Ive recently switched them up and moved my iMac to the far end of a double desk arrangement. I pretty much have to stand at the desk to use it... and now my 808/404 is right smack in the middle. I love it. Seems like I’m working faster and am more focused. Feels like it’s made a huge difference. Half of the people reading this will probably find this totally obvious, but it’s one of those little things that has taken me forever to figure out.

A lot of gear not pictured here but the three machines in the middle are my most used as of late: MPC live/404/Micron combo...

I still have an mpc1000, sp202, and a few moogerfoogers still looking for desk space or a new home :/

@bandit lu and @kel those are great setups!




Deluge is cool so far, little bit of everything. Will work it out and see if it's a keeper. Garage spot @ the bench is where I hide at night, See below. Above Pics are in the dungeon she calls a basement.

how is the Live...?

Although I used the 2500 for a decade beforehand, it took me forever to finally get comfortable working quickly with the Live, mostly because there are a million different windows in sample edit mode, and it's easy to cause unwanted changes to programs if you don't pay attention to which window you're using. I thought I was going to hate the touchscreen but it is quite responsive and I'm happy with it. Grid edit still leaves a lot to be desired, and there is some MIDI buggy weirdness sometimes, like hitting a key 4 times will cause the fifth time to hit the wrong note once in a while, which is annoying. One thing I don't like is that I can't assign samples to keys on an external controller by pressing keys on the controller itself (good for building drumkits because I like to play drums on a key board), and I also can't erase specific notes by using keys after a performance, although holding erase and pressing keys does work while overdubbing. The 2500 could do this, and I'm still not sure if it's MIDI settings I'm overlooking. Also there are no arrow keys on the transport so you can't skip around the sequence unless you highlight
the Bar counter on the main screen and use the up and down buttons. Some JJOS features missing such as XFADE, but hopefully future updates will fix that. EQ, Compressor and distortion sound great to me, but as usual for MPCs the reverb is wack (and MONO only ((!!))

Pros:

Chopping is lightning fast and there are several ways to do it. the ADSR is awesome, you have great control over your sounds.
The MIDI Learn feature allows you simply touch a knob or pad on any external controller and it will ask you what you like to assign to it (Pan, FX settings, etc.) Probably would be awesome for someone that likes to do a lot of live noodling.
You can plug a hard drive of any size into the LIVE and it will read it.. I have my entire sample library at my fingertips, and you can assign up to 5 bookmarks for quickly jumping back to commonly used folders. It will even read MP3s and convert them for you. The pads light up which is very helpful. Although I used the 2500 forever, I never could get over the problem that I was always getting lost as to which pad was which because they didn't light up like the 404. Also there is a sort of language to the colors that can help you navigate around and see what spots are taken, etc.

Resampling is very fast and works similarly to the 404 in my opinion. There is a feature called "Pad Flatten" that basically takes all of your setting on a sample/pad (filter, pitch, ADSR, whatever) and resamples it with all the settings intact while replacing the resampled sample back to the pad and resetting all of the tweakable things back to its default setting. I did not explain that well at all but it is an amazing feature.

Haha! Love it dude. I can totally relate.

@Kel
Great write-up. I’ve been wondering about those things for a minute. The “flatten sample” function sounds great. How is it in the bit crunch/lofi effect offering? Seems like an area Akai might have thought to further develop to help cut into that 404 market.

great review
tanx Kel