Seeking Workflow Solution with my Maschine MK III vs MPC Studio 2/Software

Hello Maschine Fam!

After 10 years of using Maschine MK1, I grabbed a Maschine MK3 and the MPC Studio 2 controller (bundled with MPC 2 Software). I went into the MPC purchase, because I just really wanted to take advantage of the MPC Expansions. For $269, I figured getting the controller with the MPC Software was a good deal. At any rate, once I jumped into fiddling with the MPC Expansions and looking at videos and feeling the MPC pads, I got pulled in and had the bright idea to try to do some production on it, like the Maschine. But here is where I am struggling now, and would like you allz guidance/suggestions.

[Backdrop]
Basically, I have been a DAW-head since the beginning, amassing well over 4TB of samples, drum kits, sample libraries (licensed and makeshift). Samples and folders are well organized, etc.

In working with these samples across a few HDD's, I have become accustomed to tools like Maschine, Kontakt, Geist, GURU, FL Studio, Cubase, Sonar, etc that take advantage of absolute path referencing. This is especially a luxury because, I don't have to worry about multiple copies of files laying around.

Not only do my kits, projects, what have you, reference samples in an absolute manner, but file origin tracking is a breeze this way. What I mean is that if I build some random kits in Maschine, using samples from all over different sources (directories/drives) , make about 10 beats or projects, walk away for a few weeks; come back and open up previous projects, I can easily know where samples came from; what directories or sample library paths, etc. I can use features in Maschine and other products like, "Show in Explorer", or "Open file location", etc. Awesome!

[Problem]
HOWEVER, in the MPC realm, there is no concept of absolute paths. Upon saving an MPC project, all of the samples are bounced (duplicated) into one <name>_[projectData] folder. Even worse, there is no way to find out where that sick or licensed/copywritten sample(s) came from in your massive sample library. You then have to do manual searches from the top of all of your directories to hopefully find it. And if you have some old libraries from multiple sound makers, that were lazy and labelled their samples as, "KICK 01", "SNARE 02", you have other issues. And If a client walks in and asks about that beat you have, or a co-producer inquires about that sick sample in one of your projects, you won't be able to pinpoint origins right off the bat.

Worse, after getting a suggestion from an MPC-head to try to add metadata to the samples, I went off and found an app to let me edit wav file metadata. I attempted to update the "Title" metadata attribute of the files with the original absolute path name. That way I could right-click and look at the properties of the file and see where the origin is. While this indeed worked on PC, and my DAWS, the MPC Software stupidly strips off the metadata when doing its copy of the samples into its projectData folder. Even Artist, and all other info from commercial original album wavs was stripped off when I loaded pads with tracks and saved the project.

So at the end of the day, it just feels really disturbing that I cannot have the flexibility of saving settings without samples (using absolute path references) and being able to track location origins. As such, I am turned off from even using the MPC stuff at the point, as I have been conditioned otherwise over the years. I know it's being a little anal, but I can't help it. Not having organization bothers me.

[My Crossroads]
I have this wonderful MPC Studio 2 controller with nice feeling pads; I like some of the concepts of the MPC Software's workflow,; the way the MPC lets you easily layer pad samples, etc. But I am now wondering if I should just ......

1. Resample all of the MPC Expansions into Maschine and create Maschine Groups from them. I say resample because, some of the MPC program kits have effects and panning that is too tight to ignore. Just snatching the wav files would drop that on the floor. Ultimately this would take many days or weeks, because I would have to manually screen capture what sounds are on what pads to transfer over and manually build up Maschine groups.

-OR-

2. Just use the MPC Studio expansions, synths and sounds as a sound module. In this case to save disk storage and prevent MPC projects with duplicated samples from being all over the place, I would just play the MPC in real-time and record my tracks into Maschine or DAW of my choice as sequence audio tracks. Afterwards, I would go and just delete the MPC projects. In this case, I also would not build any custom programs (kits) in the MPC Software at all. I would just use the stock expansions and instruments as sound modules. That way I wouldn't run into the dilemma of trying to locate the sample paths.I know where all the MPC expansions reside.

To get a nice feel of the pads for finger drumming, I would just use the MPC Studio 2 controller to play the Maschine groups at times.

-OR-

3. How do (or would) you guys work around the MPC's sample management issue/limitations after being spoiled with the NI way of handling samples and referencing. In what ways could I still get something out of the MPC Studio 2/MPC 2 Software ecosystem in junction with Maschine ?

If Akai would just address this (they probably won't after decades), man some of the MPC's concepts in junction with Maschine would be killer! And before you guys tell me to simply go and name all of my sample library files with more descriptive names that describe the filepath, etc. I would ask you, if you would do that for all of the 10's or 100's of sample libraries that you have purchased. Someone sarcastically actually told me to do that.

Thanks in advance for your knowledge and workflow suggestions,
JB

 

Option 1 - Sounds like a nightmare in terms of how long it would take assuming you have a lot of MPC expansions, I'd reconsider if those built-in FX are worth it or if you can just add them yourself when needed.

Option 2 - Defeats the purpose of 'saving disk space' as audio tracks will take 100x more disk space than tiny one-shot samples.

Option 3 - The way I've always done it is by saving every sample with the name of the original record/artist I sampled, it's a bit annoying to break the creative flow but on a computer with a keyboard writing a name is pretty fast, I did it in my MPC2500 days too (a lot more painful with no keyboard); in cases I got lazy I would name the project/sequence/group as the artist/song.. So if I need to tell an A&R the sample so it can get cleared or whatever I'll always know. For drums samples I never really cared about the source but since I've recently been reorganizing my samples and if there's a Pack by 'XYZ' that has those generic "Kick01" "Snare02" names I will use MacOS built-in renaming tool to add the 'XYZ' name in the files - in your case this might be completely unfeasible for drum packs since you have 4TB of data, I don't have nearly as much content.

AKAI might do it that way because they started with standalones which saved all project data in a folder; there's pros and cons to each approach.
For example, I can still load beats I've made in a MPC-2500 15 years ago in their current MPC Beats app; if it depended on relative/absolute paths from an HD I no longer have I wouldn't be able to do that. Another thing to consider is with absolute paths rethinking and reorganizing your sample lib is impossible unless you open each project and perform a "save with samples" or equivalent, this is generally a feature we never consider until we actually need to. - I've recently been doing this and it's not a fun time to say the least. I have hundreds of old beats I made in Reason that have missing samples, it takes so long to find everything in just one project that even I don't have the patience to fix them all, now I wish it saved them in a sub-folder by default.