Share your knowledge on these two classic MPCs
By vout Sun Sep 17, 2017 6:06 pm
I had a strange problem the other day - I found some (very) old cubase songs that are all midi data and I was trying to transfer them directly from the PC to the MPC 3000 using the record 16 track function. I've never done this before so I followed the MPC onscreen instructions but whenever I tried to record it would only record a 1-bar section then drop into loop/overdub. I tried every setting I could find - midi clock/ song pointers on & off in all combinations, setting the bar length to a very high number on the sequence page but still no joy. When you go back to the 16-track settings page it always shows the bar length as 1 but there is no way to change this setting there. I gave up eventually and instead exported the songs as midi files and copied them to my sd card instead, so problem solved.

But, I'm still puzzled why this did not work - The DAW was Cubase SX3 (I keep it installed as its the last cubase version that will load my old Atari Cubase files!) and the MPC has Vailixi 3.50 (late version dated 2013). The strange thing is it did work in normal sequencer track record mode, recording one track at a time it would record the entire length of the songs as expected using midi clock sync.

Is this a known bug or have I missed something obvious here?
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By Lampdog Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:27 am
Source was midi file type 1 or 2? There is a difference.
By vout Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:23 am
It's not a midi file problem, I was trying to record 16 tracks of midi data directly from the daw to the mpc over midi cable. According to the 3000 manual the overdub button should be disabled in this mode, but it is NOT so it must be a bug in Vailixi. I'm going to install my original os chips and check the function again. I also have another version of vailixi dated 2007 which I will try as well. Just need to find them.

I'll post the results here for reference. It's not a biggie as you can work around it using midi file export from the DAW instead, but useful to know anyway. I guess this is a feature that doesn't get used much.
By vout Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:18 pm
OK, I tried this with both versions of Vailixi I have - same problem with both, stuck on a one-bar loop with overdub. I can't find my original os chips (3.16) so I can't check that yet. However, I did try it on my 60 with os 3.10e and it works correctly there as described in the manual - overdub is disabled in 16-channel record mode.

So it looks like this is a vailixi bug. If anyone can be bothered to check this function on the 3000 with os 3.16 or earlier I would be interested to know if it works or not.
By ajarson Tue May 01, 2018 11:58 pm
vout wrote:OK, I tried this with both versions of Vailixi I have - same problem with both, stuck on a one-bar loop with overdub. I can't find my original os chips (3.16) so I can't check that yet. However, I did try it on my 60 with os 3.10e and it works correctly there as described in the manual - overdub is disabled in 16-channel record mode.

So it looks like this is a vailixi bug. If anyone can be bothered to check this function on the 3000 with os 3.16 or earlier I would be interested to know if it works or not.

I actually had no idea this feature exists (for 3.10 at least). This could really be one of the most important features for me; now I can finally easily "bounce" songs/sequences in MIDI made on my Alesis MMT-8. The Alesis has no drive at all and the battery is shot, I'm either constantly losing my songs or bouncing them painstakingly track by track into my MPC1000.