Some questions about mv 8800

[Olby]

Hows goin' everybody,...

I am planning on updating my studio from mpc1k to mv 8800 but before I do so I have a few questions that some of you that have this machine can answer:

1) Does the mv has ever locked up when you was working with it ?
2) Does real time recording audio tracks (using vga mode) on your beat produced some kind of errors or lags ?
3) Is there a way to change a stereo sample to mono using only left, right or both channels of a stereo sample (just like on mpc w. jjos), i have red the manual but could not find a way to this coz stereo -> mono does not accept any parameters.

I know I could ask these on mvnation, but i tried to register and both times I could not do this successfully

Thanks, ya man
Olby

[drewzle]

how's it going Olby?

Vivi and Phemox both rock the MV, they should be able to help you

apart from the MPC1000 i was wondering what gear you're rocking now, you sold your SPs right?

[Olby]

Yo i'm doin fine. Apart from working like a mf*cker and drinking too much.

Now I have a full blown home recording studio. I managed to create a recording booth for vocals and setup new gear for recording.

I still got my both SP's (404 & 505) cleaned packed and unused since beginning of this year. I just do not have time for selling them. So yo if some of you want to buy an SP-404 or SP-505 directly from me speak up. Maybe we can arrange something.

Speaking about MV. I am currently using a cheap funky ol' PC for recording my tracks from the mpc into cubase, but I hate using computers and all that shit to produce my tracks so I want to upgrade to MV to use its direct rec to bust the tracks directly in the MV. Besides this way I am going to return back to my roots - which is the ROLAND brand. SO IF SOME , especially Vivi and Phemox can answer these, please speak up.

Speaking about MPC i have mastered it quite well but the only reason i do not put much of my latest and the greatest music online is because we are working on two different albums and I don't want to put that shit up on the net yet. Last 3 beats on my page is produced using mpc.

I cant find pic of my recording booth but here's a pic for all sp headz over here of the production gear i'm currently using:



Hehe the only thing left from my 404 times back in 2006 is the black Philips headphones and that old Yamaha synth on the right, which i might change to a small midi controller. But i dont use synths too often like once in a 20 beats...

[PHeMoX]

Hey Olby, what up man? You got a nice studio there.

Hows goin' everybody,...

I am planning on updating my studio from mpc1k to mv 8800 but before I do so I have a few questions that some of you that have this machine can answer:

You're going to like the MV for sure. Perhaps you'll need some time getting used to the quantize coming from the MPC, but basically it's a matter of getting familiar with it. Contrary to the often heard rumor, there are no timing issues.

1) Does the mv has ever locked up when you was working with it ?

No never. I did find out relatively soon that expanding the memory to the max 512MB is a good idea. No need to worry about RAM then.

By the way, one time the MV8800 rebooted when I used a USB cable to copy some samples and had Windows Media Player 9 running.

Apparently the MV doesn't like it when Windows Media Player tries to synchronize with the MV hard disk. I didn't lose any data though, everything was still there.

2) Does real time recording audio tracks (using vga mode) on your beat produced some kind of errors or lags ?

Zero playback issues when it comes to sound itself. No lag there. The only thing lagging slightly is the interface that displays the bars of midi info and so on on playback, but it's purely a visual thing.

It's not that annoying anyways, just remember to pay attention to the metronome for timing instead of the moving grid.

3) Is there a way to change a stereo sample to mono using only left, right or both channels of a stereo sample (just like on mpc w. jjos), i have red the manual but could not find a way to this coz stereo -> mono does not accept any parameters.

Yeah, you can only have panned stereo sounds it seems. Haven't really looked that much into this yet, I often just use stereo samples for panned sounds, there's plenty of polyphony anyways.

Just curious, but what's the advantage of using mono-but-panned sounds?

By the way, I just realize that you can pan the entire track that have mono sample sounds on them, so if you're not using all 128 midi tracks, there's actually a work-around for this.

Cheers

[Olby]

You're going to like the MV for sure. Perhaps you'll need some time getting used to the quantize coming from the MPC, but basically it's a matter of getting familiar with it. Contrary to the often heard rumor, there are no timing issues. Smile

Yeah I am a fast learner so I guess it wouldn't be prob for me. And i am also sure that all speculations about problems with timing are spread out by mpc fan boys. Otherwise I cant see a reason Roland would produce a gear that is not working.

Apparently the MV doesn't like it when Windows Media Player tries to synchronize with the MV hard disk. I didn't lose any data though, everything was still there.

Yeah I heard about this that it is a Win Media Player specific error that cannot be corrected and is not a problem with the MV itself.

Just curious, but what's the advantage of using mono-but-panned sounds?

Well, ill try to explain. When I sample a record I usually do it in stereo mode.. then later when I use that sample I usually found out that the sound I specifically need is located only in the left or right sound channel so currently I do not have to sample the record repeatedly. I just go to stereo to mono mode and specify to leave only L or R channel thus I can extract a specific sound I need and in style I produce it is very useful. When you are panning my previous experience shows that the stereo sound pans both channels to the left or right thus if you wanted to omit a specific sound it would not be so easy as I see it.

Hmmm...

What about FX ? Enough or I will need to look for a external fx processor ? How do you feel about that ?


Regards and thanks for the on point answers,
Olby

[PHeMoX]

What about FX ? Enough or I will need to look for a external fx processor ? How do you feel about that ?

Well the FX itself are great, usually a LOT of things you can tweak and separate parts of the FX that you can turn on or off and so on.

Still if you want to take real advantage of them you'll probably need to resample a lot. Together with a separate Reverb and Chorus FX you can only have 1 main FX at a time, which is sort of a bummer.

Doing crazy stuff often mean a lot of resampling or bouncing entire parts of a track to audio while doing your FX thing (using automation).

I don't know, I don't own a separate FX processor, but I definitely can see how it could be helpful.

It's possible to use a laptop (and/or external modules like the Sonic Cell) with plugins running directly into the MV though, not sure what the limit is on that, but there's a lot possible.

When looking the the MV as stand-alone device the FX do fine for me. The usual and important FXs is all there. There's an advanced Lo-Fi FX, plenty of Echos, different Reverbs you name it...

But having only 1 FX at a time basically makes the process a bit more tedious than say fooling around with FX on the SP-606.

All that said I don't consider it a real weakness, but I guess the real FX junkies won't be easily satisfied with the MV alone.

Yeah I am a fast learner so I guess it wouldn't be prob for me. And i am also sure that all speculations about problems with timing are spread out by mpc fan boys. Otherwise I cant see a reason Roland would produce a gear that is not working.

Yeah, either mpc fanboys or people that straight out refuse to really dig into the MV and figure it out by using the machine more, and obviously you're right... what about all the people that manage to handle it without problems,

Cheers

[Olby]

Ok but is it possible to specify for each track the amount of how fx bus (mfx, reverb, delay/echo) affects it ?

And what about MIDI. Can it load MID files, and how well it works... so that I can convert my beats from MPC to MV ?

Is it possible to preview wav/aiff files directly from hard drive before loading it into memory ?

Thanks,
Olby

[PHeMoX]

For each 'instrument' (similar to 'program' on the MPC I think) you can specify the amount of reverb and chorus with some options in the main FX area as to what type of reverb or chorus and so on. It's all in all very flexible.

Then there's the 3rd FX you can have, the mfx. That's something you can set to 'Master' so it affects all tracks or to a specific audio track for example 'aux1'. Just make sure you set the tracks you want to affect to 'aux1' in the instrument area and the mfx will only affect that track.

There are even more options, but as far as I know it comes down to having only one mfx at a time (+ reverb + chorus). If you want more, you'll have to resample and bounce tracks to audio. It's not a big issue for me at all though.

As for MIDI, I don't really know actually. I've never tried that. Getting MPC beats into the MV should be possible through certain work-arounds if I understand correctly, but I'd advice you to search on MVNation forums for that question.

It is definitely possible to preview wav/aiff files, but to be honest it's best to make sure the name of the file gives you a good idea of what to expect, because previewing will still load the file into the RAM. It won't load twice once you decide to use it, but it's not quite all that fast.

In my experience nothing too annoying though, especially because I usually import files right before messing around with them on the MV just by using USB.

All in all the work-flow doesn't really suffer from all this for me, but to get the most out of the MFX you'll definitely be resampling things a bunch.

Peace.

[Olby]

Ok thanks for supplying me with some info, I guess this is it for this moment. I think I wont change my mind and go with mv. So I guess Ill be back around on sp forums then.

Peace,
Olby

[PHeMoX]

Cool man.

You know where to find me in case you need more info.

I own the MV8800 for about 2 months or so now and while I still have lots to learn, I'm not selling this baby for sure. Peace.

[Olby]

Yo PHeMoX,

Just before I cop this beast I wanted to know more about direct recording of the audio tracks... How does it work? Can you cut out parts of audio in sequencer using selection tool just like a midi data on midi tracks? Can you overwrite audio in certain places without removing the previous audio data? There is not much info about this in the manual.

Thanks man,
I still cannot get onto MVnation because of the f*cking login system will not use my mail even my gmail account

Olby,

[PHeMoX]

Yeah, I hear you on the log-in thing, it took like 2 weeks before I was able to get on there.

How does it work? Can you cut out parts of audio in sequencer using selection tool just like a midi data on midi tracks?

Yeah, you can insert slice points (or split regions), then you select the part you don't like and erase it by selecting it with the selection tool, just like you would with midi data.

Can you overwrite audio in certain places without removing the previous audio data? There is not much info about this in the manual.

I take it you mean overdubbing? Yes, you can do that.

The audio phrase sampling engine of the MV can do a whole lot of different cool things.

I'm still learning this beast though and I don't know in what areas the 8000 is different from the 8800, but it's the mad possibilities that's keeping me busy figuring out all the good stuff.

[Olby]

Man you keep me pumped all about mv
So last but not least how the mixer works on mv ?

* Does it works only for the 16 instrument parts or you can also adjust volume or each track using the assignable sliders ? as it seems you can adjust only the instrument volumes like on mpc it is called program (instrument) mixer.

* What about editing of the recorded vocals like you can double click on it (or any other method like right click and hit edit) and open it in the sample edit to see the recorded waveform and do stuff with it ?

olby,

[PHeMoX]

Any time man, more cats should grab an MV if they can. It's really awesome.

* What about editing of the recorded vocals like you can double click on it (or any other method like right click and hit edit) and open it in the sample edit to see the recorded waveform and do stuff with it ?

Yeah, you should in that case use the audio phrase sampler engine. It's a tad difficult to explain without pictures or a movie, but yeah basically you can do cool stuff with vocals there and there is a wave form. The MV is reasonably flexible when it comes to this, but to be honest I haven't really used the audio phrase sampler that much yet.

* Does it works only for the 16 instrument parts or you can also adjust volume or each track using the assignable sliders ? as it seems you can adjust only the instrument volumes like on mpc it is called program (instrument) mixer.

Yeah, you can adjust instrument volume in the instrument menu and in the mixer area you can besides that also adjust things for the 4 audio tracks, you can't however individually change the volume for each individual midi or audio track though.

You can't for example have instrument 1 on track 1 at 50% volume and the same instrument 1 at 80% volume unless you load the instrument twice (max. 16 instruments; unless you're bouncing your mixes to audio tracks when you're done recording instruments. Trust me though, 16 instruments is a LOT. )

I am not so sure whether there's a work around using Events though when it comes to this.

If you need specifics, you can change Level/Pan:

Mute
DelayChorus Send
Pan
Level
Output

for each of the 16 instrument parts .

In the Equalizer section you can change:

EQ Sw (off/on of EQ)
EQ High Gain (db) and
Freq (hz),
EQ Mid Gain (db) and
Freq (hz) and
Q (not so sure what that does yet)
EQ Low Gain (db) and
Freq (hz).

and then there's a couple things you can EQ for the audio phrases as well.

Of course, then I have talked about how you can EQ the heck out of samples by just editing them using Quick Edit. You don't even need to resample as it's basically non-destructive.

But you could go crazy and start a resample frenzy applying FX. Samples can be tweaked in very much the same way you would on a SP-505, but with more possibility of course.

Cheers

[Olby]

Man, this sounds like a machine designed specifically for me. Ok, so it looks like I am going to cop it 100% fo sho.

See ya then,

Olby