Review - MPC2500

The MPC2500 is an amazing piece of gear. When i first took it out of the box and took the plastic off it I was excited. The weight, the pads, the sliders and knobs, they were all so solid. I glanced through the Quick Start manual that came with it and was up and running in no time.

The stock sounds and songs were pretty good. A lot of the drums were dance and hip hop oriented and I liked that because that's what I would be using it for. After I browsed the basic layout and the many menus I started a fresh song to test out the Chop Shop function. I found that setting the input to mono instead of stereo I was able to record more samples off the record and have more to work with. Once I got the pieces recorded I found it was very easy to cut the remainder off the samples and make the loop clean with the sliders on the left side. Although I did not find the Chop Shop useful for this first attempt I saw how useful it would be in the future. The fine tuning took too long and I just wanted to get at the beat.

Laying down the drum pattern and the samples was also very easy. I had a rough beat after about 10 min and it sounded pretty decent. I found the auto quantize and toggled it to various settings as well as off. I found the mixer easy to use and the stock FX were decent. I did not find the FX very useful though because there only seemed to be 2 that you could program in at the same time and I wanted to use more. The 8 outs were nice though and made it able for me to bounce all the tracks separate. My only problem is it was stereo outs and used up 2 of the channels at a time, I was not able to get it to only use a single channel. The overall sound was warmer than I expected it to be.

Overall I really liked the MPC2500 and recommend it to anyone that uses hardware instead of software. It's easy and fun to use, it sounds good and it's a solid piece of equipment. I only felt limited by the samples, not the machine.

For the sample I used a Bob James song. The mic I used is a Rode NT1a in an enclosed sound proof vocal booth. Tracked into Pro Tools LE 7. Here's the link to the song - Sick Rap

Breakdown-

Interface : 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Ease of Use: 8/10
Value: 9/10

Overall: 8.25/10

Check out the MPC2500 at Akai Pro : http://www.akaipro.com/mpc2500

Happy Holidays!

-Cheebs