I hate & loathe VST’s and Plug in’s & I’ve tried them all, nothing sounds like a real EQP1A-3 through an analog console, (Or any other hardware for that matter) Sure….. I’ve learned to live with new DAW systems, though if Kids of today new it took $1800 -2800$ to buy a Jupiter 8 or a Prophet – we’d be in a very different world scenario, musical emancipation is one thing.

Beiber fever is another – as is Rap – Grandmaster Flash & the furious five, slave over 8 Track 1″ to make serious music, to see 8 babes in all Ass Booty in every clip of Rap/R&B etc – Nah……. not right!

Technology in Music used to be a very hard fought for and practised art form as much as the actual music itself!

Today – Buy an iMac and USB Keyboard – & hey everyone I meet is a Sound Engineer Producer!

I’ll leave it as that as I can Feel little chunks of vomit trying to cough up ———— Music Technology & Music as an Art-form is near dead
FAME————— IS EVERYWHERE & IN MORE THE 15 minute CHUNKS!

Sorry Andy – Idea Correct / Execution – WRONG!

Thanks a million for showing AKAI/LINN ASQ/MPC Seq./Drum Units still are the dogs bollocks!
Cheers!
CircuitSavage!

http://www.nn-seo.com/

First off. The ASQ-10 is tight but not as tight as you think it is. Your confusing tightness with groove Don’t get me wrong, I hear its tight groove and it will do you well that’s for sure but if you start to push that machine more than what your currently doing you may find it doesnt quite live up to your expectations. Its sequencer is much like the MPC 60, an overrated machine if ever there was one (and I have owned every MPC you can name) its great for down tempo stuff because of course timing drift is not so noticeable on down tempo stuff and theres no doubt it has a groove, but I repeat thats not tightness, thats a totally different ball game.

By far the tightest of all the Akai sequencers is the MPC 4000 whether its triggering internally or externally. Its resolution which does matter on MPCs is ten times + higher than the MPC 60 and its also higher than every other MPC. Im talking about Akai ones, not those crap things that Numark make and stick an Akai badge over the top. They have ruined the MPC line for sure. Well of course they did, their made in China now by the cheapest means possible. It frankly amazes me to this day that a company that always made crap managed to get a hold of the Akai brand. Such a shame.

Never forget that with MPCs its internal triggering will always be superior to its external midi triggering although the 4000 comes damn close.

The MPCs sequencer reputation comes from the Hip Hop community who are blinded by what their peers use and is the reason something like the MPC 60 is revered. But strangely the very best MPC of them all the MPC 4000 has been mostly rejected by the hip hop community. But it hasn’t been rejected by those smart guys in the Electronica arena (interesting). Your ASQ was never made for Hip Hop, or any other genre so it escaped the Hip Hop users clutches and importantly the marketing dept of Akai which was eventually blinded by the Hip Hop scene. Later on as Akai began to promote toward the Hip hop community and forgetting about users from other genres this eventually lead to their downfall. I noticed the MPCs instead of becoming more advanced were being intentionally dumbed down. I mean this as no insult to to the Hip Hop community. Thats marketing Depts following wanabee advice such as “keep it pure to the hip ho scene blah blah blah”. This really hit home to me when the MPC 2000 came out. It was as if they were five years out of step in features with other companies gear. I was waiting for the MPCs to get multitimbral which I thought for sure they would do when I heard about the MPC200. Consider what something like an S750/70 Sampler could do over an MPC 2000, yet the MPC 2000 came years later. Eventually Akai saw the writing on the wall, and that Hip Hop nostalgics were not enough to save the company so they pulled out the stops and came out with the MPC 4000 (fully multitimbral of course). A highly featured modern day samplists/sequencists dream machine. If they had brought that out 3 years before which they could have easily done then things may be different today. I noticed the advertising for the 4k wasnt filled with hip hop culture. It was much more neutral. But that seemed to P off the hip hop crowd and to the noobs making electronic music on their Daws a sampling box with pads didnt mean much to them. I of course knew different but even I had gone Daw but I did actually buy a 4k.

In saying that the Roland MV8000 has to be among the worst sequencer I have ever come across and they to have aimed that machine directly at the hop Hop market, not that it makes any difference. Sloppy akward groove doesnt even begin to describe that atrocious machine. Yet its got a resolution up there with modern PCs and Macs, higher than the MPC 4000. It makes no difference because the thing simply cannot groove. That is what ultimately counts and is really what your looking for.

An Atari Grooves, your ASQ grooves, the MPC range grooves, all of them a little different. The MPC 2000 and 200XL is the next best to the 4000 (for midi tightness) incidentally.

The Atari is tight, but again not as tight as you think it is. I can listen to loads of electronica made in the 90′s and its quite frankly all over the shop. I admit much of it is totally dependent on the external gear used. The Akai S1000 for example was slow to trigger but if you had a lot of stuff coming out of it then you wouldnt really notice it. Only when you mixed gear from different manufacturers would you notice. Take the Juno 106 for example, its a pretty sloppy synth.

Even stuff from the same manufacturers can be all over the shop. Roland have been a particularly bad company in this area.

So whats the tightest sequencers on the planet. Well they are in fact non midi sequencers. The ones that trigger sounds at light speed (ANALOG). But thats a whole different ball game. If you want tight, then get an old analog sequencer and you will hear tight :)

But for midi what is the tightest sequencer out there. remember Im taling about tightness, not groove because tightness is what you keep going on about. Well it may surprise you to learn this. The three tightest sequencers I ever came across for triggering external midi are

Yamaha QX1; A beast of a machine with features way ahead of its time and today is almost completely ignored. However those in the know how good this sequencer was and still is. It has a groove but it may not be to everyones taste. But its damn tight and you can throw a lot at it

Roland MSQ 700: Limited, but what an amazing tight feel and groove. Linked up with a TR909 there is no MPC except for the 4000 which can match the timing of those two. It also has a certain and very like-able groove. it was used a lot in the mid 80′s but was soon suprpassed due to its limited note capacity. Roland brought out other MSQs but they were never as good

Akai MPC400: For midi tightness Im afraid it blows your ASQ out of the water, but keep in mind you may prefer the ASQ’s groooove. But I would also say that the 4ks groove is second to none. In fact for me as an electronica music producer its about as good as you can get. Thats why I like this machine. No matter what BPM you work it the thing can seriously groove.

Im actually surprised that during your investigations you didn’t come across one or manage to check one out. Maybe you did?

You not only get a massive tight groovy sequencer but you have a machine that can make a lot of sounds and the sampler inside is excellent in almost every dept. You could do entire tunes easily with just that thing. It also has many advantages in that it can talk to your PC/Mac. It will sync up well if you need to record stuff to your DAW etc. I personally couldnt handle the limitations of sequencing in an ASQ, QX1 or MSQ these days. But I can easily handle a 4000 because the sequencer is a joy to use compared to what your using just now. Of course its not like a DAW which is good thing (no eye candy to distract you) but its damn good and you can get really fast on that thing. Just check out the specs of a 4000. Failing that your Atari or ASQ will do the job nicely. But if you ever feel a little limited do check out the 4k.

On a personal note I was sorry to hear about your dog. I have no doubt hes running around the green grassy fields with my dog. Their really our best friends, never demanding, totally loyal…just the best.

On another personal note: Your a pretty honest guy and face up the difficulties of a career that isnt as happening as it perhaps once was. I can tell you this which you will definitely understand. The advent of DAWs was a fairly major part in this in that it distracted your immensely from your music making. People like your self who grew up making music on real boxes had no idea what was going to happen when venturing in to Daw land, none of us did. Daws promised us so much and the possibilities seemed endless. Who wouldnt go down that road if their a music lover/writer. Yes, Daws deliver to those who know nothing different, have no experience to base their Daw usage on. But to those who understand the feel of playing without that weird midi from daws, the latency, the way music could be made without staring at a screen etc. It has been very destructive to many musicians careers. But once we went on that path we found it difficult to move away from it. I understand exactly where your coming from, but now its time to get on with the music again. You can obsess over this until the end of time :)

As for me I eventually found a system that works. I treat my Daw (Ive used all of them) like a big fancy tape machine with fx and toys. I use limited outboard and simply record bits in to my Daw. In my case its pro tools. What I like about pro Tools is the ease I can manipulate the timing of audio, shifting parts a few samples back and forth and so on if I need to, and I can really see that audio and get right in there to edit single notes if I want to. Its as close to midi editing but with audio. Cubase, Logic, Live I just cannot do it the same way as I can with Pro Tools. I couldn’t ever go back to just using hardware again because to do that I would need a very expensive console to compete with the mixes I can do from Pro tools or any other Daw ++ I would need a lot more hardware. it was 2 years ago I started using some outboard again as I had stupidly sold every single piece of hardware I had owned, and I owned a lot of it. Ive gone back a bit for the very same reasons you have. Of course I had to buy back another MPC4k and have added the most excellent Roland S770 sampler to the set up which are two bits of kits I previously owned. I thought I could do it all with VSTs and whilst there are some I like, and I can get a great mix from using only VSTs I missed that interactive thing with the gear,and of course the feel of playing a real instrument. I of course found out like you that sending midi from Daws was a near waste of time unless it was for the most basic of stuff like a chord here and there. I didnt realise this until I had bought an S770 but as soon as I started sending midi to it from my Daw I noticed the problem straight away. It made no difference monitoring through my sound cards zero latency feature. I was going to get a 4k anyway the realisation that sending midi from the computer was total nonsense sped that process up. That gear will do me for now until I can pony up for an Alesis Andromeda which I simply must have :)

See ya
best wishes.

saw this while running around the net and figured you would dig it. Big screen, lots of midi outs, and x0x style programming.