Make no mistake: these are the finest feeling drum pads we've experienced at this price or anything near it. "Make no mistake: these are the finest feeling drum pads we've experienced at this price or anything near it" On to the MPC Element itself, then, and from the moment you flip open its stylish protective lid, it feels absolutely awesome in the hand - so solid and aesthetically pleasing, in fact, that you can't help wondering how on earth they can afford to charge so little for it. That said, it does what it does well, and the MPC software in general has a loyal fanbase because of it. Nor does it have the most beautiful interface we've ever seen. One notable shortcoming is the lack of real-time global swing control for playback - instead, you have to add shuffle by applying quantise/swing as an offline process. In general, MPC Essentials is very useable, although more basic and less refined than, say, Maschine (particularly with its recent v2 update).
Expect to handle mixing and mastering in your fully equipped DAW, though, for reasons we'll make clear soon. Multisampling is limited, though, with a maximum of four velocity layers per pad, so like all MPCs, totally realistic instrument emulation isn't on the cards.Įffects-wise, you get four inserts per pad, into which AU/VST plugins and a range of onboard effects (including all the usual suspects and a particularly nice bitcrusher called Decimator) can be loaded.
Each pad features a filter, amplitude and filter envelopes, tuning and LFO modulation of pitch, pan, amplitude and filter, as well as sample editing and slicing. You can load and edit kits and samples of your own or from the bundled library, and with up to eight banks of 16 pads available, you're unlikely to run out of triggers.
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