Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By ekco314 Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:14 pm
I just got most of my pads set to poly I must of pressed something or did something to have this start happening, I make a beat,play it back to listen to my beat and my beat is going blank (as in no sound) after 30 bars, does anybody know what I did wrong and how to fix it?
By ekco314 Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:22 am
Plz explain and how to fix it? I don't even know what that means and I think it started doing this before I even set my pads to poly.
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By NearTao Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:56 am
There's at least six or seven possible mistakes you may have made. It's also not clear what your skill level is.

Can you explain what happens when you change your sequence to say, 4 bars?
By ekco314 Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:38 am
Umm you could say beginner I have more experience with other mpcs and midi controllers, i could try it but Im using drum loops and sometimes it doesn't allways match up. That's how I started on the machine doing a four or six bar loop.
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By NearTao Fri Jan 22, 2021 1:21 pm
Setting your pads to poly means that you can trigger the same sound and it will let the original sound play out. So if you have a crash on a pad, and it is set to poly, if, while playing the original crash hit, you play the next one, you now have two crash hits playing at the same time. The MPC can only play so many notes at the same time before it starts "stealing" notes so that it can reclaim new sounds... I'll get into it more later... but just understand that if you're stacking a stereo note like a crash, it can quickly consume all of your polyphony and then you won't be hearing other sounds because it is chocking out everything else.

The MPC 2k/xl has 32 notes of polyphony... meaning it can play *up to* 32 distinct sounds at the same time. If you're using stereo samples, then you have to count each stereo sample as 2 notes of polyphony since it is playing a Left and a Right note separately. For this reason, a lot of folks use mono sounds absolutely anywhere they can, because if everything is stereo... then you can consider yourself in many ways as only having 16 notes of polyphony.

So... what Mr D was suggesting may be a problem, is that you have too many notes playing at the same time, and the MPC is just ending one sound playing so it can start the new one.

None of us know how you have your sounds/programs setup... so we can only speculate... yet you did mention you're using drum loops... this is both good and bad from a resource standpoint... it's good in some ways, because you know that the entire loop is only using 1 or 2 notes of polyphony in your MPC... it's bad... because as it sounds like you are hearing... once you go over the 32 notes of polyphony... the MPC ends the longest running sound... which is clearly going to be the loop.

There is a huge assumption here, but given where your knowledge seems to be at the moment... it really sounds like you need to focus on some time on your sample and polyphony hygiene for your project.
By ekco314 Fri Jan 22, 2021 10:02 pm
not sure if this what was happening but very informative, thank you!!!