5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Buying the MPC Sample

11 minutes ago

7 min read

When the MPC Sample came out earlier this year, it was the first MPC that really caught my attention. Unlike the MPC Live or MPC One, it seemed much more influenced by older standalone samplers. It was simpler, more focused, and much closer to the kind of hardware workflow I usually enjoy.

After spending the last few months with it, I understand why there was so much hype around its release. There are things the MPC Sample does better than almost anything else in its price range, especially when it comes to sampling and chopping. There are also some strange design decisions that I still can't completely wrap my head around.

So rather than doing another traditional review, these are the five things I wish I had known before buying the MPC Sample.

https://youtu.be/ttuB86AEHiE

Prefer to watch? I break down all five of these points and demonstrate them on the MPC Sample in the full video below.

1. USB-C and a microSD Card Make a Huge Difference

Before getting into beatmaking, there are two accessories I'd consider almost essential for getting the most out of the MPC Sample: a good USB-C cable and a microSD card.

USB-C is one of my favorite parts of the machine because it handles several jobs at once. You can send MIDI, send audio out, sample audio in from another device, and charge the internal battery.

That makes sampling from something like a phone incredibly simple. Connect it over USB-C, change the input source to USB, and you can record directly into the MPC.

There is one strange limitation, though.

The MPC's main volume control does not affect the level of audio being sent over USB. It controls the built-in speaker, headphones, and physical outputs, but USB audio remains at the same level regardless of where the volume knob is set.

It's not a deal-breaker, but it's something I immediately wished I could configure.

USB audio is also stereo only. You don't get individual channels for every pad or instrument directly over USB. If you've built a beat with kicks, snares, bass, and melodic samples, you can't simply send each part into separate DAW channels over the USB connection.

There are ways to export projects and work with stems through MPC software, along with third-party options, but if you're hoping for simple multitrack USB audio directly from the hardware, that's not what you're getting.

The other accessory I'd recommend is a microSD card. You can use the MPC Sample without one. There are plenty of built-in sounds and you can create complete projects internally. But the SD card makes it much easier to bring in your own sample library.

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2. Sample Chopping Is Fantastic

Once you've loaded some sounds, this is where the MPC Sample really starts to shine.

The chopping workflow is probably my favorite thing about the entire machine.

Take a sample, hit Chop, and you can immediately divide it in several ways. Auto Chop can split it into equal regions, Threshold can find transients based on volume, and you can manually adjust things if you want more control. It's incredibly immediate.

Compared with something like the SP404 MK2, where chopping can require more button combinations and menu navigation, the MPC Sample feels much more purpose-built around this part of the workflow. I've used a lot of samplers, and this is probably the most intuitive and enjoyable chopping system I've found so far.

The time-stretching tools make it even better. The MPC includes Warp, which lets a sample follow the sequence tempo, but I actually enjoy its more traditional time-stretching mode even more. Pitch and speed can be separated, so you can drop a sample several semitones while attempting to retain the timing of the original sequence.

And that's where things start getting interesting.

Push the pitch far enough and you begin hearing those strange stretched artifacts that remind me of older digital samplers. The sound almost feels like it's being physically pulled apart.

For cleaner results, I've found staying roughly within four semitones in either direction works pretty well. Go farther and things can get weird quickly.

Sometimes weird is exactly what you want.

3. Sound Design and Automation Go Deeper Than They Look

The MPC Sample's interface looks fairly simple, but there's a surprising amount of sound design hidden underneath it. The fader is a good example. By using Shift and the appropriate control, you can assign the fader to parameters including volume, pan, tune, attack, decay, and filter cutoff. I usually keep mine assigned to filter cutoff.

Every sample pad can have its own filter, and being able to physically move the fader while the sequence plays makes it feel much more like performing than editing parameters. Better still, many of those movements can be recorded.

Akai calls this motion recording, although I always think of it more as automation. Start recording the sequence, move the filter cutoff, resonance, volume, pitch, or another supported parameter, and those movements are captured into the pattern.

That opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, you can record subtle volume movement on a hi-hat part instead of manually programming different velocities. You could slowly open a filter across a section or automate pitch movement without diving into a traditional automation lane.

For such a simple-looking machine, there's a lot more control here than I initially expected.

4. The Step Editor Isn't a Traditional 16-Step Sequencer

This is one of the biggest things I wish I understood before buying it. The MPC Sample does have a Step Editor. What it doesn't have is the kind of 16-step sequencer I personally prefer.

On something like the SP404 MK2 in TR-REC mode, the Elektron Digitakt, or even the Roland P-6, I can see a row of 16 steps for each track and immediately understand where every note sits in the pattern. I like having the entire sequence laid out in front of me. The MPC Sample approaches this differently.

Its Step Editor works on a more individual, per-event level using the screen. You can move through the sequence, add events, delete them, and make changes, but you're navigating step by step rather than interacting with all sixteen pads as sixteen visible positions in the pattern.

That workflow just doesn't click with me.

It's especially strange because the MPC already has sixteen pads sitting directly in front of you. I constantly find myself wishing those pads could simply become the sixteen steps of the sequence. This is obviously personal preference. I've talked to people who love this style of editing.

For me, though, it means the MPC Sample works much better as a live-recording sequencer than as something I want to program one step at a time.

5. The MPC Sample Paradox

This is probably the most important thing I've learned after using the MPC Sample for several months. For the first part of making a beat, its workflow is incredible.

Sampling is fast. Chopping is fast. Playing the pads is fun. Recording a sequence feels immediate.

Then I reach a certain point and everything slows down.

A big part of that comes down to effects. The MPC Sample essentially gives you one main Knob Effect that can be assigned to selected pads. You can decide exactly which sounds are sent to it, which is useful, but you're still dealing with a single effect. There's also an amp simulator. The problem is that if you're using that effect for a guitar input, you aren't able to simultaneously use another Knob Effect across your samples. You also have Pad Effects, which sit more toward the end of the chain and affect everything. You can stack several of them, but because they're global, they aren't always useful for traditional send-style effects.

Maybe I want delay on a guitar sample but not on my drums. If delay is being used globally, that's not really an option. This means you end up resampling frequently if you want different processing on different sounds. And that's where the flow starts breaking down for me.

Let's say I want to resample two guitar samples.

First I need to mute the other parts.

Then I have to choose an effect.

Then I need to decide which pads are going through it.

Then I resample the pattern onto another pad.

Then I have to remove or mute the original parts and replace them with the resampled version.

None of these steps are particularly difficult.

It's the time and break from beatmaking that bothers me.

Everything before this point feels so fast that the MPC almost disappears beneath your hands. You're sampling, chopping, playing, and recording without thinking about the machine. Then suddenly you're managing routing, resampling, mutes, and sample locations.

That shift is what I think of as the MPC Sample paradox: It's one of the fastest samplers I've used until suddenly it isn't.

The Erase Button Makes This Even Stranger

There is one workflow decision that makes this even more confusing.

Deleting a sample is incredibly fast: hit Erase, hit the pad and the sample is gone.

You can undo it, but you only have so many undo steps linearly. What makes this particularly strange is that copying something uses Shift + Erase. So if you intend to copy a sample but don't press Shift correctly, you've potentially just deleted it instead.

Even stranger, the sequencer already proves the MPC Sample can handle this differently.

If you're editing a sequence and attempt to erase all the events belonging to a sound, the MPC can show a confirmation message asking whether you're sure.

It's a small thing, but it's exactly the kind of inconsistency that becomes frustrating once you've been using the hardware for a while.

Is the MPC Sample Worth It?

The MPC Sample is a strange contradiction. There are some workflow choices I still don't understand, the effects routing can feel restrictive, and I wish the sequencer offered a more traditional 16-step programming mode. At the same time, it's also some of the most fun I've had using a sampler.

For me, its biggest strength is getting ideas down quickly. If I only have a few minutes to make music, I can grab the MPC Sample, chop something, use 16 Levels to play it chromatically, record a sequence, and walk away with the beginning of a track. Then when I have more time, I can bring that idea into the studio and develop it further.

That's ultimately why the MPC Sample has stuck around for me. It isn't the sampler I'd choose because it does everything perfectly. It's the sampler I reach for because the parts it gets right make me want to make music.