Hey,
Wow, what a debate!!
I'll make a few statements:
1. Samples are nothing more than PCM files. A sample should in theory sound the same no matter what gear it's played through, be it an MPC or PC.
2. However, there are things that each of these devices have which can 'color' the sound, such as filters and ad/da convertors. On a computer, the card's driver will sometimes do stuff to sound, but rarely. Some people claim that they can tell the difference between convertors, but they can only do it in a dead room with really nice speakers, I'll bet that they'd have a hard time doing that in somthing like a car or nightclub. With something like an SP-1200 with its lower-quality convertors, it's probably easier to tell because it stands out from the nicer ones on the MPC or PC.
3. The MPC is nothing more than a computer dedicated to one task: sampling and sequencing. It has a motherboard, input (pads and buttons), output (LCD screen), processor, RAM, storage (floppy, hard drive or zip drive), soundcard (a/d and d/a convertors). It has an operating system, it has a power supply.
There is NO magic to the MPC, just like there is NO magic to a computer. It's just a bunch of chips, bread boards, components and software, designed and programmed by humans. If someone were clever enough and had the instruction set to the MPC's processors, they could probably program an OS and software to use it as a word processor. Someone could write a driver for an older SCSI printer and plug one in to print off copies of all the bad lyrics you hear in modern rap music.
4. There is something to be said about the sonic quality of analogue tape. I cannot speak from experience, but I've heard it from enough guys into it that tape 'colors' sound, especially if you saturate it, to believe what they say. People try to emulate this in software, I don't think that it has been done successfully, although I'm sure it add something to sound which tape cannot emulate. This is similar to the debate on analogue versus digital filters...one is not necessarily 'better' than the other, but people seem to like analogue filters better. I have both analogue and digital synths in my studio, I can hear the difference between them only if sweeping the cutoff, it sounds a lot smoother because there is an infinite number of steps between each herz value, plus the way the circuitry colors the sound.
5. As far as power goes, the MPC is a technological dinosaur. It has a low resolution of 96ppqn (my software sequencer has something like 512), a single low pass filter, max 32MB ram, no SMDI transfer to a computer. The advantage the MPC offers is rock-solid timing and stability because the OS is relatively simple, it's not having to manage a squillion things like Windows or Mac OS. Why is the Akai format so univerally accepted? Because it is so SIMPLE, it doesn't take much for other manufacturers to write the specs into their sampling engines.
What Mucka's saying about the different devices having their own sound is 100% correct, but you'll find that only studio boffins can tell the difference. The big question is DOES IT MATTER?
As for recording schools, don't get me started...most kids I know who went to recording school end up getting jobs at Guitar Center or Denny's, and they go around bragging about how they're 'real' because they went to school.
I'm not saying that they don't know their stuff; in fact they probably know a ton of stuff and have had experience with some neat equipment. However, just like going to medical school doesn't make you a good doctor, going to recording school doesn't make you a good engineer. All they do is go ON and ON about how frigging GREAT Pro Tools is and how you absolutely cannot make a good track unless you run everything through an SSL mixer with flying faders, Neve compressors and printed to analogue tape.
I wish they would teach their students how to SPELL, for crying out loud, it's been a nightmare trying to read some of these posts.
Take care,
Nick
