I have gotten my MPC Live 2 in the mail and had it about two weeks. Luckily, I have an MPC Live 1 (not to be confused with the MPC One), been having a ball with this thing. Im writing everything from orchestral mockups to trap to EDM to whatever, you name it, I like it all. Have it loaded with a 2 TB solid state HDD, with all the akai expansions to date, as well as the Native Instruments expansions (this took awhile to convert them all, ended up using Maschine2MPC in lieu of kit maker because kit maker does not convert everything, especially the loops and instruments).

I have the MPC Live 1 now plugged in the studio as a permanent drum pad next to my Yamaha Motif XF8 and Icon Pro MIDI control surface and the expansion which gives me 16 channels, motorized faders, the works. For giggles, I did check, you can plug the MPC Live 1 into the MPC Live 2, that was a hoot. Two MPC's for those mega tracks where the MPC eventually runs out of computing power.

I have been on the search for samples to load into this bugger, my criteria is, quantity covering a large range of sounds. Quality is not so important, especially since I end up warping and twisting sounds to create monster creations. Despite that, I have found a couple of great bundles. Since I come from an orchestral music background, I have taken a great interest in using orchestral samples and "trapping" them, or dubstepping them for fun (who doesn't like finding the most annoying sound on the planet and then making it even more annoying).

Its a trip honestly, I never thought I would have this kind of conversion, orchestral to trap, RNB, industrial, EDM, ambient, hell, I'm even playing with autotune, something I despised. It is so much fun putting auto tune on a guitar and detuning the guitar mid note!

Some samples I have found:

Ghosthack - 2019, 2020, & 2021 producer bundles, Shymer, and Skyrealm, pretty much everything in their cinematic category
Official Akai Expansions
Official Native Instruments Expansions
Cinematic Anthems 1-6
Cinematic Flight of the Eagle 1-3

Searching today, I stumbled across what might be a crazy deal tho, a website called producersounds has 21 trap bundles, ranging from 4 to 7 gb for each bundle, all released between 2019 and 2021, ranging from $20 to $40, they call them the "Stack Em!" bundles (there are 21 of them to date, the most current is on sale for $20). I listened to the many demo tracks, I am intrigued. The very first one has a really nice violin and string section included, which peaks my interest.

Anyway, I am rambling, if anyone has comments, great, I just needed to share and see if anyone had these stack em bundles and what their thoughts were, or the MPC units...

 

Known to release uncleared samples from sample packs of other companies.
Including samples from commercial tracks.
Also "nice violin" might be from a Kontakt instrument. That's not so bad, I suppose!
May be worth you knowing.

 

I personally like MPC software more than Maschine and use it for making beats, as they say. I don't feel it's even close to being enough sophisticated to make my kinda arrangements, so I use it sparingly. I imagine if I used it for making simple EDM it would do. Anyway, just wanted to say MPC software is rather creative/inspirational, no matter that my post implies differently. It's a good software+hardware.

When it comes to my stuff, I actually use it as a tape recorder. Going backwards. No sync, just pure playing. Weird, eh? Try that sometimes. It's a really interesting experience. Forget the metronome, just feel the music as it comes to you.

Cheers!