Two MPCs. Neither One Stock.

Two samplers on my desk. Neither one boots the way Akai shipped it.

The MPC One wakes up on a red screen with my name on it. The MPC Sample opens an effects list with nine entries Akai never wrote.

I didn't set out to start a project. I wanted my machines to work the way I make music.

This is the bench log. What runs. What broke.

THE ONE

The MPC One came first. Gen 1, firmware 3.9.1.

I took Akai's own 3.9.1 image, baked my changes into it and flashed it over USB. Root access came with it.

Now it boots on a Henry Skillz splash. The load screen reads DRUMS SAMPLE BASS. Power it down and the red screen holds for two seconds before the power cuts. On the network it answers to Henry Skillz.

Small changes. The box says whose it is before a pad gets hit.

Plugins. The One can load third party plugins. The community worked that out and keeps a catalogue. I loaded a 606 style drum machine first. It ran.

Wax HQ. So I built my own. Wax HQ is my fork of PotentialWax, a free open source sampler plugin by PotentialBreaks. I added a higher quality time stretch and a NO DRUMS mode that pulls the drums down on the device. About forty seconds for a four minute song. Some of the kick's low end survives. Clean enough to chop over.

The chop tool. On the Mac, one command does the prep. It splits the stems and reads the tempo and key. It cuts sixteen bar-exact pads and writes a drum program. The One loads it and plays.

Where it stopped. I tried to recolour the interface. 143 image files changed and flashed. Nothing moved on screen. The images on disk are leftovers. The real interface is compiled into the app. I checked twice and walked away. My name lives on the splash screens. That's enough.

CRATE SOURCE ON THE ONE

Crate Source is my digging app. It lives on the web. I wanted it on the pads.

So I rebuilt it as a plugin for the One. It stands on Crate Digger, an open source plugin by sd88me. The dig rules, the screen and the kit builder are mine.

Set the crate. Six filters down the left. Genre, style, decade, region, rarity and session.

Spin. One press locks three records. One per artist. Rarity runs from Any up to Scarce, Rare and Hunted.

The clock. Three session modes. Redline Session gives thirty minutes. Cassette Room gives twenty. MPC Lockdown gives forty-five. The countdown starts on the spin.

Cues on the pads. The loaded record sits in memory. Sixteen cue points across the pads. A cue jump lands with no wait. Cues snap to the hit.

Transport. The One's own play and stop drive it.

Save kit. One button turns the cues into a drum program with the sleeve as its cover. Every pad is a slice of one file. The chops stay editable in Sample Edit.

It runs on my One. It isn't released.

THE SAMPLE

Different rules on the MPC Sample. Nothing gets flashed.

Everything runs from the SD card, on top of SampQOL OS by Snare Bes. Pull the card and the Sample is stock again.

I wanted my mix chain on the box. So I wrote it. Nine effects in the insert menu. Saturator. Channel Strip. Bus Compressor. Pump. Heat. Para EQ. Crush. Bass Focus. Tube Strip.

Credit to The Sample Network for the help on these plugins and for the requests that shaped them. Website: thesamplenetwork.co. TikTok: @thesamplenetwork.

The parts I reach for most.

Key bus. Send the kick to a bus. Key the compressor on the bass from it. The kick pushes the bass down.

Track chains. Name a track DRUMS and its chain loads. Same for VOX and BASS. Save your own with a name and a hash.

LUFS meters. The SEQ page redraws as a desk. One button swaps it to loudness meters.

Key and tempo in the browser. Preview a sample and the row shows its key and the tempo the preview plays at.

Stems on the box. Vocals, drums, bass and the rest. No computer. A split takes about as long as the sample plays.

Every one of these ran in an emulator before it touched the real unit.

On the bench. A phone remote. It plugs in over USB and drives the Sample from the phone. Shortcut buttons and the full panel. Coming to iPhone and Android. Not out yet.

THE KIT

The Sample build is becoming a kit. The nine effects and the tools above, on one SD card.

Release date TBC.

It is unofficial. Akai didn't make it or endorse it. Neither did the SampQOL author.

Nothing on the One is released. That's my rig.

THE HONEST STATE

It's in hardware testing.

Today I ran the current build on my own Sample. It booted. It ran. It didn't pass.

The Para EQ display sat still. So did the meters on Crush and Tube Strip. One effect showed the wrong name in the menu.

Those get fixed before it gets a date.

Beta testers welcome. Email me or message @henryskillz.

NEXT

I'm one builder in a bigger room.

Snare Bes shipped the layer mine stands on. Jsen Surreal is documenting Sample SXL in public, one vlog at a time. Others are right behind them.

That's the next entry. The scene, the builders and the companies now answering them.

I stopped waiting for the update. I wrote it.