[kingofswing]

Originally Posted by terrytee

This is what the big homie Pete Rock has to say about the 2500.

“When I started putting this record together, I found myself listening to [hip-hop] radio a lot more. I wanted to get a better sense of today's sound so I could hopefully mix that with my own. It's important, especially when you're associated with a certain era, to update your sound.” Chief among Rock's observations about today's hip-hop is the attention it pays to the higher frequencies. For Rock, this resulted in the music's newfound presence. “Hip-hop today sounds bright, like it's right in your ear. It's clean.” Rock sees the change as, in part, attributable to the Akai MPC's predominance in the world of bits and bytes.

“The main difference I noticed when I switched from the SP to MPC was the MPC has a thin, clean sound. The SP's gonna give you that raw, gritty hip-hop feel. The SP just makes your sound fat.” For the erudite E-mu scholar, one who admits to once downgrading sampling rates for the sake of increasing sample time, adapting to Akai's model was a mixed blessing. While it gave the producer a superfluous three minutes of high-rate sample time, it also meant parting from his signature bandpass filters that yielded famous horn lines like the opener for “T.R.O.Y.” “It's a tradeoff; you gotta give up some of that boom-bap-buh-boom-buh-boom-bap,” Rock says as he breaks into a deep-voiced beatbox pattern. But, in response to the MPC's less warm, slightly dead sound, the producer implemented two strategies that preserved the boom in his boom-bap.

“Before I sample anything into the MPC, I always EQ my sounds first,” Rock says. “I just use an old GLI Pro mixer that I got hooked up to the sampler. It's not a great mixer, but it has three basic bands that I can equalize on. If you want your sound to be heavy on the MPC, you need to EQ. For kicks, I have [tape] markers that I leave on the EQ knobs. The markers give me a range that are gonna make the kick boom. I have the same type of markers for the hi-hat and the snare. Every time I sample anything, I use those markers as a reference.”
Pete Rock

Pete Rock on NY’s Finest | Remix interviews hip-hop producer Pete Rock on engineering and mixing NY’s Finest

This is an article...don't believe everything you read in these things.

ps: where does he refer to a using a 2500?