Akai MPC - accurate input meters

[skiroy]

I have had this question with gain staging on the MPC in the past. Im also intrested. It seemed even staying away from the peak meters I would still get distortion on the MPC 1000 samples. Drums are different. You can hit them as hard as you want within reason,but it all depnds on what your doing with them.

Now the MPC 3000 depending on how hard I hit it with melodic samples it would sound different. Hitting it harder would compress it more but I never got crackling like on the MPC 1000.

[Studio507]

Hate to be a dick, but use your ears, you're making music not doing brain surgery, if its distorting in a way you don't like back it off a little, if you're not getting enough signal give it some gain

[skiroy]

Hate to say it but gearslutz has become alot less active lately. Sems evrything is a dumb question nowadays. I used to be one that asked tons of questions here and got alot of negativity but there was also alot of people that helped. Now alot of threads lay dead. You might be better off on MPC-forums.com or future producers.

One

[3rd Degree]

I don't want to be the guy that says hundreds if not thousands of hits were made without concern about accurate metering on the MPC series but it's just the truth. Furthermore, some people like to record in on the low side to insure things are clean. Some people purposely distort their samples as they think it sounds good.

I do want to add one thing. Any equipment will distort their converters at full gain, even if you aren't clipping. That is just how electronics are. I didn't even learn this from making music, I learned it from setting amp levels for car stereos.

[iz_thewiz]

Originally Posted by Studio507

Hate to be a dick, but use your ears, you're making music not doing brain surgery, if its distorting in a way you don't like back it off a little, if you're not getting enough signal give it some gain

There actually is a fair bit of science that goes into 'making music'. The problem is, although our ears may be a good tool for measuring levels in audio...there are far more accurate tools like meters. As I said before, with input on the Rane hitting +4db (which is Rane's nominal or maximum input level), and signal being monitored on both the MPC and the DAW - input level is metering at around -4dbFS while the MPCs rec gain is flat.