The MPC Renaissance: Haters gonna hate.
Earlier this year, electronic music equipment vendor Akai Professional brought the MPC Renaissance to market. This Mac and PC compatible system is an integrated hardware/software solution and looks to be a worthy successor to the original MPC. The Renaissance features a full audio interface, USB hub and lots of I/O — as well as dedicated external software. The product is most certainly a direct response to the popular Maschine hardware / software combo from Native Instruments. The difference between the hardware includes a “vintage” mode that recreates some of that legendary MPC3000/60 crunch, and the standalone software comes with a massive sound library, instant VST mapping (so you can work with all of your third-party synths) as well as the option to run in VST / AU / RTAS mode itself.
Needless to say, several DJ’s have already paid the hefty $1300 price tag to have their way with music as never before. What results is an argument in the hip hop community (and arguably other music sectors) over quality of the beat maker vs quality of the equipment and the results yielded. In short, the questions being asked circle around whether or not hip hop is being played by the man or if this is simply another innovation in sound engineering.
So as not to spend too much time on this, L|T|M has pared down the arguments to the following….
The Argument for:
The Argument against (a long-ish rant):
As far as we’re concerned, and that’s our job, we advise musicians to not hate the player but to hate the game. It’s a well known fact that the more things change, the more things stay the same. If one really wants to despise the profiteers of the music industry why not point the finger at the Avedis Zildjian Company, a percussion instruments manufacturer founded in Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire. We guess it’s just easier to share a tiny voice and point a finger than recognize certain aspects of technological advancement in music as a socioeconomic reality.. And yes, reality can often byte.
The bottom line is that even if you pay the cash, you’ve got to have the talent to make it sound right.
