| Incidentally.. the main reason MPCs have such a reputation for timing is that they have a high speed link between the sequencer and sampler side of things. With wire MIDI, the absolute best case resolution you'll get is of the order of 750usec, and you can *very easily* end up with a situation where you're getting drift of 10msec or more (if you're triggering five or six notes at once and sending some CC information, for example).
MPCs, when using the onboard sampler, don't suffer from this; the same is true of softsynths (well, those that don't have timing bugs *cough*), but in the case of most sequencers, you start to lose timing accuracy again when swing/shuffle comes in to the picture.
That's because sequencers typically clock their MIDI to a grid at 480ppqn (or sometimes 960ppqn), which at 80bpm is 1.5ms. Great for notes that fall on the grid, but pretty lame for swung notes that don't. |