A couple of weeks ago I put a post up asking for advice between an MPC 4 and the roland mv8k, and since I had a chance to try both out side by side for like a week, i thought i'd just post up my 2 cents for those who might be making a similar choice in the future.
at first I loved the mv8k- I got real caught up in its "groove templates" and features and all that stuff, but the more i used it, the more i really started to become convinced that people who talk about it having timing issues were right. from what I gathered after reading a lot of message boards, the LCD measure/beat/tick display apparently has some bug in it where on a lot of the models, it is slightly off time...which is problem cause it makes it hard as hell to stay on beat if ur watching the screen as I like to do. i read a lot of posts about how people eventually got their timing settings worked out to suit their needs, and eventually i did too, to some extent...the problem is, the roland has so many timing features (quantization, swing templates, and 71 groove quantize templates, all with multiple varying percentages), that figuring out how to get the machine to respond exactly how u want is a pain in the a** for each different beat you do. it can be done, but i just found the roland took way more time than it should have to be able to get into an easy groove. also, two things to look out for that i hadn't heard before buying it; number one, save and load times are rediculously slow. second, you can only have ONE filter for the entire loaded pad banks at once; meaning if you want a low pass on your kicks and a diff filter on your claps, you gotta resample.
the 4k is plain and simple that shi*. i completely understand what people mean when they talk about the mpc timing and feel now, i hop on this thing with no quantize and my beats play back perfectly, the sequencer is really on point. the sound quality of 24 bits is sick and the fact that i can assign a filter to not only each pad, but each of the 4 sounds i might have layered on the pads, along with the q-link mixing stuff, is unreal.
if the mv8k works for you, im not trying to down it, its a very capable piece of gear. i jsut found the timing and feel of the sequencer to be bizarre at best and like i said, you CAN get it to groove like an mpc with the right quantize grid and shuffle settings, but it takes way too long to get that feel figured out for each beat, at least for me. and as far as the thing about songs having an mv "sound" to them, i do agree...i listened to a ton of myspaces of people on the mv-nation boards trying to prove how it can swing just like an mpc, and i honestly didn't hear one drum beat that really had my head nodding. i think roland is close but they need some more time to get that machine right. with the mp i just hop on there and the music happens, no wasted time. anyway, hopefully this perspective helps someone out in the future, cause i found it hard to find unbiased comparisons on these 2.
at first I loved the mv8k- I got real caught up in its "groove templates" and features and all that stuff, but the more i used it, the more i really started to become convinced that people who talk about it having timing issues were right. from what I gathered after reading a lot of message boards, the LCD measure/beat/tick display apparently has some bug in it where on a lot of the models, it is slightly off time...which is problem cause it makes it hard as hell to stay on beat if ur watching the screen as I like to do. i read a lot of posts about how people eventually got their timing settings worked out to suit their needs, and eventually i did too, to some extent...the problem is, the roland has so many timing features (quantization, swing templates, and 71 groove quantize templates, all with multiple varying percentages), that figuring out how to get the machine to respond exactly how u want is a pain in the a** for each different beat you do. it can be done, but i just found the roland took way more time than it should have to be able to get into an easy groove. also, two things to look out for that i hadn't heard before buying it; number one, save and load times are rediculously slow. second, you can only have ONE filter for the entire loaded pad banks at once; meaning if you want a low pass on your kicks and a diff filter on your claps, you gotta resample.
the 4k is plain and simple that shi*. i completely understand what people mean when they talk about the mpc timing and feel now, i hop on this thing with no quantize and my beats play back perfectly, the sequencer is really on point. the sound quality of 24 bits is sick and the fact that i can assign a filter to not only each pad, but each of the 4 sounds i might have layered on the pads, along with the q-link mixing stuff, is unreal.
if the mv8k works for you, im not trying to down it, its a very capable piece of gear. i jsut found the timing and feel of the sequencer to be bizarre at best and like i said, you CAN get it to groove like an mpc with the right quantize grid and shuffle settings, but it takes way too long to get that feel figured out for each beat, at least for me. and as far as the thing about songs having an mv "sound" to them, i do agree...i listened to a ton of myspaces of people on the mv-nation boards trying to prove how it can swing just like an mpc, and i honestly didn't hear one drum beat that really had my head nodding. i think roland is close but they need some more time to get that machine right. with the mp i just hop on there and the music happens, no wasted time. anyway, hopefully this perspective helps someone out in the future, cause i found it hard to find unbiased comparisons on these 2.
