Reviews and questions about the entry-level MPC500
By ChuyLocs602 Mon Aug 01, 2016 12:29 am
So im brand new to the mpc, and I just bought a used 500 off of ebay. Everything thing seems so good but when im previewing the samples before i load them, they are loud, but when i load them they are significantly quiter, even when full level is on. Is this normal? Thanks in advanced.
By ChuyLocs602 Mon Aug 01, 2016 1:14 am
Bonus question...for some reason my mpd doesnt find any of my hi hats files in my closed hi hats folder except for one. Is there limitiations for samples, minimum and maximum? Im curious if they are too short or too small or i dont know but its bot finding my closed hi hat samples.
User avatar
By bliprock Mon Aug 01, 2016 2:34 am
check sample rate of samples. you want 44.1 at 16 bit wave files only.
The samples volume will be different cos when its loaded into a program the program has certain settings affecting the total volume output, like level and filter amount. So check all program settings
By ChuyLocs602 Tue Aug 02, 2016 8:58 am
bliprock wrote:check sample rate of samples. you want 44.1 at 16 bit wave files only.
The samples volume will be different cos when its loaded into a program the program has certain settings affecting the total volume output, like level and filter amount. So check all program settings
as for the sample rate I converted a lot of my samples down to 16 bit 44.1 mono but as for some reason my mpc still doesnt find all but one hi hat sample from the ones I converted. The other issue can be considrrd fixed. Previewing the sound when loading still makes it loud but its not as much of an issue as I figured out how to increase the master level. It was at -12 dB. Now does anyone know if having the level at 0dB limits the sound? Would it be ideal to be at -6? I just know when recording my outputs I want the lowest noise floor possible but i dont wanna choke the headroom either.
User avatar
By TheUnfuckwithable Tue Aug 02, 2016 10:16 am
ChuyLocs602 wrote:as for some reason my mpc still doesnt find all but one hi hat sample from the ones I converted.


How long are your filenames?

ChuyLocs602 wrote:Now does anyone know if having the level at 0dB limits the sound?


No it doesn´t.

ChuyLocs602 wrote:Would it be ideal to be at -6? I just know when recording my outputs I want the lowest noise floor possible but i dont wanna choke the headroom either.


As long as the output doesn´t distort you can leave it at 0dB.

The setting depends on your song/arrangement. If it´s a sparse one, 0dBis fine. If you have a lot of samples playing at the same time you may have to decrease the master level...
By nicokas Tue Aug 02, 2016 2:06 pm
to complement the response of TheUnFuc*withable :

Sample's name is limited to 7 caracters to be recognize by the MPC500. It could explain your first problem.

-12dB is the maximum master level (to avoid saturation) when you play a lot of normalized samples at the same time. So you can increase this master level if you have very few samples or if your samples level isn't loud.