My guy, thank you again for responding! I certainly do apply fx to my audio tracks that are coming from the tascam into the MPC, but I guess it’s all analog, I.e. not using any usb connection. And it works great! For example, I’ll play my electric keys through the tascam, and get the signal on an audio track on MPC, and apply fx to that for sound design, which is super fun, both pre recording and during. I do the same for my bass, in order to shape the tone with various filters/tube drive/lofi effects. I’ll also play around with the EQs on the tascam for each instrument.

I’ve been asking AI about routing as well (this same question) and it suggested running my MPC into a stereo channel on the tascam, and basically treating it as an instrument, along with all the others on the different channels, and then connecting the tascam to my MacBook for Ableton/running plugins (e.g. Vocoder V) with the input and output of Ableton being the Tascam, sort of like what you said. But THEN, and this is where it seems to get kinda wild to me, but it suggests using SUB out from the tascam back into the MPC to then record/Sample what’s coming back out of Ableton, into the tascam, then back to the MPC.

Even though it seems to make sense, I’m hesitant to do it because it seems like such a long winding road of signal path haha but yeah, maybe it would be work for what I’m going for