You can assign the pads to trigger clips in ableton, or just have it on hand to use for impact or other software synths. I slave mine to ableton and use it as a general control surface. in my opinion the sampling is just a bonus feature.

I use the zip drive situation right now, the only thing the CF option offers over zip is space, but with the speed you can put files on a zip disk from your computer to turn right around and put that disk in your MPC, it's not worth paying extra for a cf reader for your MPC. I'd give $250, tops, for a standard.Īlso, the max RAM on those is 32 mb (guitar center has some 64 mb chips they sell which fit and do the job - that MPC only recognizes 32 mb, max, but the nice thing about those 64 mb RAM chips is that if you can find them, you can get them for as low as $10, including shipping).Īlso, I'm not sure the cf reader works on the standard, but really, you could get an internal 200mb zip and a USB zip drive for cheaper than the CF reader for the MPC and a CF reader for your computer, and they give you the same capabilities in the long run - you could pick up a USB zip on cl or ebay for something like $20, and an internal zip you could find at a thrift store or online for probably $5, definitely way cheaper than just the internal CF reader for the MPC alone, and guaranteed to work (some of the internal cf readers sold now are kinda fussy, you have to be real strict with what you do with them, or they won't work). I don't think I would pay $350 for a mpc2000 standard, although I would pay that for an XL.the standards are older, and the screen life on those is getting toward the end for people who have one they've used a lot - new screens for those go for something like $200, which is ridiculous.

Mpc 2000xl guitar center