Akai MPC

[LPF83]

Today I bought the The Piano Suite* expansion from MPC Samples. I was interested in comparing it to the Stage Piano** plug-in. I know that a lot can be done with key groups, and I'm generally interested in piano sounds, so it was worth a try.

While Piano Suite is better than, say, the acoustic piano sounds in Hype, Stage Piano is the gold standard for MPC piano sounds, in my opinion. However, if you want to spend $30 instead of $100, Piano Suite is a solid choice.

One advantage of key groups like Piano Suite's is that they load up immediately. Stage Piano can take some time to process, and it can take 10 seconds or more from the time you select a Stage Piano sound to the time you're playing it. For the live and/or impatient musician, this can be a crippling deficit.

Piano Suite offers more than simply straight-up pianos, too. There are some cool atmospheric and experimental piano sounds, including the "dusty" piano, which comes with its own crackly-record background.

One of the areas in which Stage Piano shines over Piano Suite is sustain pedal response. Stage Piano's hold is very realistic, while Piano Suite's is truncated a bit too soon. It just doesn't ring true, no pun intended.

I'm happy to have both. But if I was going to have one piano for MPC, I'd easily splurge for Stage Piano again.

* https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/325/piano-suite-2-mpc-expansion/
** https://www.thempcstore.com/mpc-plugin-instruments/stage-piano.html

I have Stage Piano, and it sounds great, and you're right the loading time is a bit of a put off when flipping through sounds but the individual sonic quality seems worth the wait.. 

I bought Stage Piano as part of a bundle sale that also got me Stage EP which gets slightly more use (I don't know why but I have more of a "thing" for electric piano than acoustic), Studio Strings, Organ, OPx4, and FabricXL.  So far the piano ones haven't gotten a lot of use, not because of their sound but because when I'm on my compact setup, its usually via the MPK Mini Plus, and there is just something really unnatural to me about 3 octaves and mini keys when playing realistic piano type sounds, so I've been saving them for an alternate setup.  They're as good or better than any other solution I own or have heard for these types of sounds, and I've wondered how they compare to some of the offerings of say the Yamaha Montage or Roland Fantom series, since the MPC Keys products seem to be going after the gigging workstation market, and I think piano sounds are probably a big selling point for those boards.

[LoboLives]

Today I bought the The Piano Suite* expansion from MPC Samples. I was interested in comparing it to the Stage Piano** plug-in. I know that a lot can be done with key groups, and I'm generally interested in piano sounds, so it was worth a try.

While Piano Suite is better than, say, the acoustic piano sounds in Hype, Stage Piano is the gold standard for MPC piano sounds, in my opinion. However, if you want to spend $30 instead of $100, Piano Suite is a solid choice.

One advantage of key groups like Piano Suite's is that they load up immediately. Stage Piano can take some time to process, and it can take 10 seconds or more from the time you select a Stage Piano sound to the time you're playing it. For the live and/or impatient musician, this can be a crippling deficit.

Piano Suite offers more than simply straight-up pianos, too. There are some cool atmospheric and experimental piano sounds, including the "dusty" piano, which comes with its own crackly-record background.

One of the areas in which Stage Piano shines over Piano Suite is sustain pedal response. Stage Piano's hold is very realistic, while Piano Suite's is truncated a bit too soon. It just doesn't ring true, no pun intended.

I'm happy to have both. But if I was going to have one piano for MPC, I'd easily splurge for Stage Piano again.

* https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/325/piano-suite-2-mpc-expansion/
** https://www.thempcstore.com/mpc-plugin-instruments/stage-piano.html

I have Stage Piano, and it sounds great, and you're right the loading time is a bit of a put off when flipping through sounds but the individual sonic quality seems worth the wait.. 

I bought Stage Piano as part of a bundle sale that also got me Stage EP which gets slightly more use (I don't know why but I have more of a "thing" for electric piano than acoustic), Studio Strings, Organ, OPx4, and FabricXL.  So far the piano ones haven't gotten a lot of use, not because of their sound but because when I'm on my compact setup, its usually via the MPK Mini Plus, and there is just something really unnatural to me about 3 octaves and mini keys when playing realistic piano type sounds, so I've been saving them for an alternate setup.  They're as good or better than any other solution I own or have heard for these types of sounds, and I've wondered how they compare to some of the offerings of say the Yamaha Montage or Roland Fantom series, since the MPC Keys products seem to be going after the gigging workstation market, and I think piano sounds are probably a big selling point for those boards.

I was talking with BoBeats about this and he and I both found the MPCKey is being heavily discounted at the moment, likely because it was struggling to compete with Korg, Roland, Kurzweil, Yamaha type boards which have a lot more sounds and functionality. Even during “comparison” videos at Andertons the Korg Nautilus ended up the winner. Obviously it’s a personal taste thing but I think Akai just didn’t know their target audience for the keys.

[LPF83]

Today I bought the The Piano Suite* expansion from MPC Samples. I was interested in comparing it to the Stage Piano** plug-in. I know that a lot can be done with key groups, and I'm generally interested in piano sounds, so it was worth a try.

While Piano Suite is better than, say, the acoustic piano sounds in Hype, Stage Piano is the gold standard for MPC piano sounds, in my opinion. However, if you want to spend $30 instead of $100, Piano Suite is a solid choice.

One advantage of key groups like Piano Suite's is that they load up immediately. Stage Piano can take some time to process, and it can take 10 seconds or more from the time you select a Stage Piano sound to the time you're playing it. For the live and/or impatient musician, this can be a crippling deficit.

Piano Suite offers more than simply straight-up pianos, too. There are some cool atmospheric and experimental piano sounds, including the "dusty" piano, which comes with its own crackly-record background.

One of the areas in which Stage Piano shines over Piano Suite is sustain pedal response. Stage Piano's hold is very realistic, while Piano Suite's is truncated a bit too soon. It just doesn't ring true, no pun intended.

I'm happy to have both. But if I was going to have one piano for MPC, I'd easily splurge for Stage Piano again.

* https://www.mpc-samples.com/product.php/325/piano-suite-2-mpc-expansion/
** https://www.thempcstore.com/mpc-plugin-instruments/stage-piano.html

I have Stage Piano, and it sounds great, and you're right the loading time is a bit of a put off when flipping through sounds but the individual sonic quality seems worth the wait.. 

I bought Stage Piano as part of a bundle sale that also got me Stage EP which gets slightly more use (I don't know why but I have more of a "thing" for electric piano than acoustic), Studio Strings, Organ, OPx4, and FabricXL.  So far the piano ones haven't gotten a lot of use, not because of their sound but because when I'm on my compact setup, its usually via the MPK Mini Plus, and there is just something really unnatural to me about 3 octaves and mini keys when playing realistic piano type sounds, so I've been saving them for an alternate setup.  They're as good or better than any other solution I own or have heard for these types of sounds, and I've wondered how they compare to some of the offerings of say the Yamaha Montage or Roland Fantom series, since the MPC Keys products seem to be going after the gigging workstation market, and I think piano sounds are probably a big selling point for those boards.

I was talking with BoBeats about this and he and I both found the MPCKey is being heavily discounted at the moment, likely because it was struggling to compete with Korg, Roland, Kurzweil, Yamaha type boards which have a lot more sounds and functionality. Even during “comparison” videos at Andertons the Korg Nautilus ended up the winner. Obviously it’s a personal taste thing but I think Akai just didn’t know their target audience for the keys.

It's possible.  At the moment, when I check prices on the sites I typically look, the MPC Key 61 is currently about $1,500 here in the US which I believe is the MSRP it was released at.  It's hard to know how it's really selling.  I would guess that it was not a terribly expensive endeavor for Akai to release, because they already had the MPC ecosystem fully fleshed out, all they needed to do is add a keyboard around it.  Sometimes when there is low-hanging R&D fruit like this, it can make sense to go ahead and make the investment and see whether the product takes off or not.  I'm not 100% sure they aimed to take over the workstation market, because buyers of those are often want 76 or 88 key options.  Limiting their offering to 61 keys might seem to indicate they weren't trying to lure away Fantom/Montage/Nautilus users, as much as they were trying to address an new audience that wants the pads on their keyboard and everything built-in rather than a controller + an MPC box. 

To some extent it may have also been an intentional loss leader, to help remove perception that MPCs are hip hop machines and advertise all of its other strengths.

[chysn]

Air Jura Chorus for standalone just came out, and it’s an introductory $15 USD.

I never bought Jura because I didn’t feel like I needed another analog synth emulation; but the ability to just put my Prophet 5 through that chorus? Yes, please.

That’s what I loved about Junos in the first place, and this sound brings me there, more than any other MPC chorus.

With this, I suddenly find myself building electric piano patches. Jesus, electric pianos!

[LPF83]

Air Jura Chorus for standalone just came out, and it’s an introductory $15 USD.

I never bought Jura because I didn’t feel like I needed another analog synth emulation; but the ability to just put my Prophet 5 through that chorus? Yes, please.

That’s what I loved about Junos in the first place, and this sound brings me there, more than any other MPC chorus.

With this, I suddenly find myself building electric piano patches. Jesus, electric pianos!

Yes, I snagged Jura Chorus instantly, without trial.  It is one of the things that's so great about Jura (still my favorite MPC plugin).  One of these days I'm going to take my MPC into my studio and use it solely as a multi FX unit just because I can.  Hell, it didn't even cost me too much more than some of the high end multi-fx units... and as a "bonus" its a killer synth, drum machine, sampler, sequencer, etc.

I recently bought Alex Ball's Korg KR-55 and ARP 2600 drum samples (nice recreations of Depeche Mode - Speak and Spell sounds), another worthwhile $15.  Sometime soon (maybe this weekend) I'm going to use Kitmaker to make a couple of kits for the MPC with them.

[LPF83]

Stem separation coming... looks like fun!

https://youtu.be/xnDTt0winYI

[chysn]

That's pretty cool. I'm not sure I'd ever use it, but I'm sure amazed that this is possible.

Is this an upcoming plug-in, or is it going to be part of an OS update?

[LPF83]

That's pretty cool. I'm not sure I'd ever use it, but I'm sure amazed that this is possible.

Is this an upcoming plug-in, or is it going to be part of an OS update?

I'm not sure yet if there will be an additional cost.  I already have some tools that do similar like RipX and SpectraLayers, but it would be nice to have the capability built into the unit.

[Soundquest]

Wow, that's really far out!  I didn't know  that such technology was possible beyond normal notch filtering.    Echoing Chysn's point though, not sure how much I'd use it.  Though, I do have some old recordings of my band whereas there are parts that would be cool to isolate so I could replace them and such.   Ok, here I go again...last thing I need is another temptation of something to buy

[Manbird]

When I mastered my recent album, with a mastering engineer I'd not worked with before, he was using similar AI tech - Ozone's version - to separate out the drums, bass, vocals etc. Normally, I work with an ME who gives my tracks a listen in advance and simply sends me fix-it notes before we start proper work. It was weird - and nervewracking - to try the new AI biz, but the results were fine, so...

[LPF83]

The tools I have today such as RipX, I definitely would not put them in the category of essential production tools...  but I would put them in the category of "high fun factor".  Even if just for example taking the drum track from a song and using the drum sounds in a different way, or doing something weird with the vocals.  Back in the day if you wanted to sample a clean snare for example, you'd be limited to tracks with a drum solo intro or similar, whereas this helps you pull what you want from where you want it.

[Soundquest]

Latest Version of Audacity (3.4) has that ability to load an AI program to VST plugin modules called Vino that can do music separation.  I was unable to get it to load properly evidently.   Got tired of screwing around with it and gave up. 

I have some old songs from my band days that I'd like to  isolate the occasional key parts and replace them.

[LPF83]

There are a number of software options:

RipX DeepAudio, Isotope RX9, Steinberg Spectralayers, etc. Some DAWs are starting to include the feature (FLStudio recently) as well, websites and some other interesting hardware devices like these: www.stemplayer.com.

I'm pretty sure nobody will go out buy an MPC solely to get stem separation, but as a feature its a natural fit for the MPC I think and in that sense will do good things for the platform.

[Soundquest]

There are a number of software options:

RipX DeepAudio, Isotope RX9, Steinberg Spectralayers, etc. Some DAWs are starting to include the feature (FLStudio recently) as well, websites and some other interesting hardware devices like these: www.stemplayer.com.

I'm pretty sure nobody will go out buy an MPC solely to get stem separation, but as a feature its a natural fit for the MPC I think and in that sense will do good things for the platform.

OK, thanks for the tips.