He pointed out that all the buttons and important controls are right where and how he designed them to be on his MPCs. He said they got the workflow and timing down perfectly. Did you watch the review?
A lot of musicians think Ableton kind of sucks.
A lot of musicians think Ableton kind of sucks.
The reason to use an MPC in 2024 is to get away from the irritations of interacting with software via a keyboard and mouse—the touchscreen on the modern MPC isn't very responsive to use, a stark contrast to being able to muscle-memory your way around MPCs of yore. It's nowhere near as responsive as a smartphone screen and chopping samples on it frankly sucks due to it. It's more annoying than a keyboard and mouse by a long way, IMO, and keyboard and mouse is actually pretty efficient and accurate for most things.
Linn's video also edits out navigating menus and other friction, so I would take the video with a very pinch of salt. Great dude, immensely talented, love what he does, but I am very sceptical of this video in terms of intent and honesty.
Remember: Linn has had nothing to do with Akai Pro, and he didn't receive a bean from them in all these years. So, to suddenly be receiving anything from them, disclosing that he was given it, and the video having been doctored and his observations being not strictly true, I'm not too convinced by the intent of someone—perhaps not even at Linn's behest.
A lot of musicians think each and every DAW sucks. Ask musicians about Pro Tools if you want an equally polarising "industry standard". I didn't say anything about Ableton Live anyway. Strange remark.
"teams back up"? Akai went bust. Akai Pro is not Akai. Nobody from the original Akai works at Akai Pro. The MPC isn't even the MPC anymore, it's based off of Linux. They don't need to team up with Roger Linn to know what's wrong with the modern MPC, owners are quite vocal with what's lacking versus the originals and versus contemporary workflows. Roger Linn should carry on innovating on his own.
As for "destroying" Ableton, I can only laugh. This'll be why the modern MPCs have a mode for controlling Live and can export projects to Live, right? Like I said, they couldn't be more different. The modern MPCs don't even have the modulation matrix of the 4000, nor do they have the capabilities of JJOS. The looper is pitiful. No PDC either. No MPE. No comping takes. No spatial audio, not even surround sound. I could go on.
That's without even getting into not being able to score with it due to no SMTPE like the old MPCs, and lack of PDC makes it a joke for scoring even using the VSTi (same problem with Maschine).
Shit-talk Ableton Live all you like, but nothing comes close to Max For Live from any dev. Anybody serious uses what they need, including multiple DAWs to take advantage of what each does best, hence the death of ReWire sucks as that means no more bidirectional sample-accurate audio and MIDI between DAWs.
Ableton Link only does clock (hence not suitable for scores), but at least Ableton has Link, and Akai Pro integrates Ableton Link into MPC; seeing a pattern here with Akai Pro following rather than leading like the original Akai used to? Akai Pro has a brand and is coasting on the history of that brand. The modern MPC is quite irrelevant in modern production, IMO. Not to say you can't make good music with one, you absolutely can, but it's not even as good as what we had quarter of a century or more ago in many ways. Modern MPC is a toy by comparison and is priced like one; MPC 60 was $5000 in ye olde money. MPC 3000 was $3,699 in ye olde money. It shows.
If the modern-day MPCs were so good, the old MPCs wouldn't still be changing hands for considerable money and wouldn't be highly sought after. Go figure.