I don’t think I ever said a standalone controller is a “valid” alternative for a controller + laptop. I did say I can recommend the MPC live as a controller because the pads are good. That means you can use it as a standalone controller, but for “realistic” sounding drums you’d hook it up to a computer and use it as a midi controller (with nice pads).
It’s true that with the mpc one you’d probably get the standalone functionality of the live for ‘only’ $700 so yeah, the price went down for sure! That said, it’s the ‘cheapest’ of the standalone devices but it’s still more expensive if you compare to any non standalone device, including Maschine mk3.
There’s a common misconception about ‘realistic’ sounding drums and ‘acoustic’ sounding samples. The realism isn’t the fact that the samples were once a real drum kit. Nor is the electronic sound always caused by the sounds being generated by a synthesizer.
Realistic sounding drums are ‘simulated’ by having multiple samples on multple velocity layers that then accurately translate your hits on the controller. So if you hit a snare pad softly, you’ll not only hear a snare hit that is soft in volume, you’ll also hear a sample of a drummer actually hitting that snare softly. Then, if you go louder, other samples are used of a drummer actually hitting harder. On top of that, if you hit the same loudness multiple times in a row, the software will “round robin” your samples. So it will have multiple samples of a drummer hitting at a certain velocity and will then pick different ones randomly so that no two hits sound exactly the same.
All of that is what you hear when you play using addictive drums, and it’s something you will not hear when using the MPC live or One in standalone mode.
That’s not to say you cannot make great music with those devices. I also believe that for many people it would be awesome to have a device like the MPC live on the go (mind you, the mpc one does not have a battery so playing on a mountain top or something is not in the cards… with the mpc live you could tecnically do that).
The thing is, you will just not get you the ‘quest for groove’ sound out of those devices. Everything you play will sound like its coming from a sampler, which is fine and in no way a bad thing. If you want realistic sounding drumss though… you’d have to use a drum plugin. And since most people join the site and do the courses because they like the way my drums sound, I want to make it clear to them what they can and cannot expect out of a device like MPC Live.
So yeah, besides the price of the mpc one I think that whole explanation / advice still stands at the moment.
I will do an update in the near future to make it 100% complete and up to date again!
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I had no idea, and now I understand the difference very well. I use the MPC One as a controller too, and I will check out AI2.