For me, the Roger Linn designed MPCs always felt like instruments in their own right, especially the 3000. JJOS also fascinating, not Linn design, but wonderful

For me, the Roger Linn designed MPCs always felt like instruments in their own right, especially the 3000. JJOS also fascinating, not Linn design, but wonderful in its own right. The modern ones don't really come close to those, IMO. They're interesting, but they're more akin to DAWs in their scope, and with that flexibility comes compromise. Always loved that you could run SMTPE on older MPCs for scoring picture, that's what made Maschine an interesting proposition as you could just run it in-DAW, but unfortunately nowhere near as fleshed out as oldskool MPC offerings. The friction with Maschine for me was not being able to record mutes ala MPC—you still can't! That's without even getting into the lack of PDC in Maschine and clock stability getting worse with project complexity (this was a problem for years until I realized they didn't implement PDC!). Modern MPC software on the PC doesn't do PDC either. It's funny how things advance but regress in other ways, feel that way about computers and software in general—pretty, but lacking depth in a lot of software. I love these exchanges in unexpected places. Makes me so happy to find passion for music, especially enthusiasm for the instruments and tools.