So far everything with the MPC3 beta has gone exactly as Akai has told me it would. I signed up, I got an email saying they would email me when the beta was ready.
I haven’t gotten an email yet, the beta isn’t released yet, everything seems fine on my end. I will be happy to help test for bugs whenever they are ready and I don’t care when that is because my MPC works just fine in the meantime.
I wonder if they will do a Keys61 in the cool gold color scheme?
They could at least put some of the MPC Instruments on sale whilst we wait…I quite fancy the OP4 but I can see it has been on sale in the past for a fraction of the cost (under 50 bucks). I bought the Sub Bass one (its actually very good) as the price was right…I am pretty sure if they lowered the cost of the MPC premium instruments and FX they would sell a ton of them with V3 pending…
Pad Perform, and how you have it set up for Notes, Chromatic, Chords, etc… is this always Global?
Can it be per Track/Program?
I’ve spent the last couple of days sequencing my Syntakt and SP404mk2 from my Live 2 (which is great, btw)… the Syntakt operates chromatically from C-2, and the SP works from C1.
As it stands, moving from an ST track to an SP track in the MPC means you have to change the Notes setting… it would be great to have them per track so you can easily play when you move between tracks.
Also, Keygroups and Drum Programs follow the same Notes setup?
(paging you on this one @NearTao… 🫡)
Not in front of any hardware right now (and don’t have a Syntakt to boot)… but two thoughts come to mind…
On the SP404 mk2 you could probably use Midi Mode B, and then offset the notes appropriately… though this feels like it might feel goofy
On the MPC you can probably use Transpose on a recording to move notes up/down an octave, and then choose where you route the midi to. To control the target you can use midi out, or maybe midi channel. There might be some things with track sends for midi, mutes, etc… that might be able to get this working well for you.
While you’re here: did Akai ever improve installing their preset expansions (e.g. the Opx-4 expansion) and Fx presets (e.g. the Marco Polo Flavor Pro presets)?
Have watched two of your videos in the issues and still confused.
Thanks!
I haven’t seen anything to indicate that they have improved it…
So you still need to do weird contortions to get it to install onto your MPC for standalone mode as far as I can tell.
The main thing you may be missing is that for Marco Polo Flavor Pro… they don’t use the licensing model that has been added from the other preset expansions… so you really want Flavor Pro installed onto your SD so you can make changes to it on your PC easier. I’m not sure how Akai are managing the files under the hood exactly… but it’s making it between painful/impossible to use their stuff… and more towards impossible to incorporate 3rd party patches without doing super hacks that I wouldn’t want to support.
Feel free to drop questions and I’ll see if I can help you out… though I did this months ago and only vaguely recall the details off hand.
I just installed the latest preset expansion for Hype today, I had already purchased the expansions for fabric and opx4 in the past, why is it complicated? As explained in the instructions: put the “plugin expansion” folder in the main folder of your memory… stop. To activate the Expansion just choose one of the new presets on a plugin track, if the mpc is connected to the internet the activation will be automatic in a couple of seconds. I don’t have flavor, but for the sounds it seems pretty simple to me.
Following my own advise of picking up some expansions whilst waiting, I just got the ‘AIR Music Tech Flex Beat’ (its $40 or less currently I got mine from KVR store)
Anyway, its a lot of fun 
Prefect for MPC Pads, but you get the VST as well…
Flex beat is the only one I don’t have. I’ve slowly acquired all of the others. When they released it I wasn’t blown away by the idea, but now that I’ve watched videos of it used in 3.0 with the macros and the qlinks turning it on and off, I kinda started wanting it. Haven’t seen it on discount anywhere, but thanks for the tip.
Its half price at www.pluginboutique.com and KVR at the moment (I got an extra 10% of half price at KVR as I had some points for some reason!)
I’d like to get some more presets for Hype and some other synths, where do you buy them? At the Akai-store?
Yes the expansions are present both on the Akaipro site and on Airmusic, search for “software presets packs”
Be careful with flex beat, in standalone mode it works well only if the mpc works with its internal clock, if it receives external midi clock the plugin does not work well and produces annoying noises, I asked Akai and they refunded me, there is no solution
On the mpc-samples site there are other presets for Tubesynth, they are inside “The Source” expansion but the installation is a bit more cumbersome, follow the instructions on the site
Thanks- Good to know, fortunately I pretty much always use my Live on its internal clock!
Flex beat needs love in general. The fact you can’t use pads to trigger the effects makes no sense.
absolutely agree, ironically, it is possible to use the vst on the pc and use the pads of an mpc to control the plugin… better than nothing
Yes very weird, not what I was expecting when the GUI is pads based!
I also cant find a quick way to set everything to use one shot (my preferred use case) and most of the pre-sets seem to be set to loop…‘a set all to’ (loop/one shot/hold) would be useful- easy menu item.
Anyway- still worth the 37 bucks I paid for it, lost of fun on the master bus!
Yup, agreed on everything you said. I am contemplating a sp404 for performance effects, since flex beat just isn’t quite what I’m looking for
May be worth waiting a few weeks for OS3, it looks like there will be some good options for XYZ pad and macros…