Screenshot
VMPC2000XL is an emulator of the classic Akai MPC2000XL sampler/sequencer.
Features
Linux, MacOS and Windows support
Available as standalone applications and VST3/AU/LV2 plugins
Load/save most of the MPC2000XL file formats: APS, ALL, PGM, SND, MID, WAV
Raw USB volume (CF card) support with Akai FAT 16.3 filenames
Every screen and function tries to be 100% like the original
Multi-track direct-to-disk recording, a.ka. “bouncing”, to WAV with offline rendering option
Basic MIDI in/out
VMPC2000XL does not mimic the signal path, analog inputs/outputs so it doesn’t make your samples sound “warm” or “dirty”.
make it easy to create beats, manage sounds, etc. In fact, these things are all quite clumsy, but very much like the real 2000XL.
100% mimic the digital per-voice filter. It contains an approximation which I tweaked by ear, so it’s likely a setting on the 2000XL doesn’t sound the same in the emulator.
emulate the optional EB16 FX board.
Quick Start
1) Grab the macOS or Windows installer from the downloads page. Ubuntu x86_64 binaries available, and for openSUSE, Debia, Ubuntu and Fedora there are ZYpp packages.
2) Check out the keyboard shortcuts, and grab a copy of the original 2000XL manual.
3) Dump your samples and other files you want to load in /Users/you/Documents/VMPC2000XL/Volumes/MPC2000XL. This is also where anything you save will be stored.
Warning: Files in that directory are renamed by the emulator just like on the real 2000XL! This means you shouldn’t put the only copy of some important files there. Your data might become corrupted.
v0.6.4
Fix various issues when using more than 127 sounds.
Implement 256 sounds in memory limit. Before this, VMPC2000XL would allow over 256 sounds in memory at a time, which is incongruent and incompatible with the real MPC2000XL.
Fix iOS keyboard configuration and learn (i.e. Shift + 0 and then F2 for KEYBRD).
Fix sound and program name derivation. To summarize, the real MPC2000XL uses the sound or program name that is encoded in the actual the file data — with mixed casing, like CoolKick or NewPgm-A — if, and only if, the encoded name is a case-insensitive equivalent of the file name. If it’s not, the file name becomes the sound or program name, resulting in upper casing, like COOLKICK or NEWPGM-A. VMPC2000XL now follows this behaviour.
Minor cosmetic fixes in KEYBRD, Copy Sound, and Channel Settings screens.
For developers: I’m learning Vim, so I’ve made some minor changes to facilitate working on VMPC2000XL in Vim. The main change is the creation of compile_commands.json during the CMake generation stage. The rest of my setup can be found here.
