MPC1000 Akai OS2.12 Alleged Bug

This is a video I documented with my phone and submitted to Akai addressing what I believe to be an old bug that still exists in OS 2.12 in hopes for a fix very soon.
http://vimeo.com/4674140

If anyone else has experienced this problem and has a solution or a workaround please don't hesitate to drop your 2 cents in this thread...

And yet another bug that occurred during the same session as described in the video:

OS 2.12

i'm familiar with this problem...

Nym, wuts good?
Are you referring to the main issue I posted about with the note on function cutting other notes off in the video, or are you referring to the bug I posted in the photographs?

Mr. Brown wrote:Nym, wuts good?
Are you referring to the main issue I posted about with the note on function cutting other notes off in the video, or are you referring to the bug I posted in the photographs?

I think he's refering to your whole OS being some sort of problem... though I am no expert.

yeah, honestly the OS is really the problem here, the bug being that AKAI really doesn't give a rats ass about their machines' os situation. i really regret having to say it but man those screens make me sad for you, esp cuz your beat is quite excellent and your attitude in the video is so positive. your last words on the video "backburner" made me laugh - if you are aware of this situation, why use the akai os?

as for the video, i am very willing to bet that you are maxing your polyphony without realizing it. you said in your vid that you don't think this is the case - but it is probably and feel me out on why:

i want you to go through each track where multiple notes are hit (think maracas, think anything that has a lot of notes recorded in it). you mention your mute groups - don't forget that if you're using a pgm in which everything is on a mute group but you're only using 1 pad in the pgm, the mute group isn't triggered. ie if A01 is set to mute group 1, A01 won't cut itself off - you have to make AO1 monophonic for that to occur

now truth is, your video is thorough and i could see in a lot of your param screens that you had things correctly set, which leads me to believe this isn't the common user error that typically maxes folks' polyphony and brings them to this forum with this problem, but the issue sounds virtually identical to a max polyphony issue that you might as well check.

the other thing to do is load jjos1, which has a polyphony meter. you could use this to count how many voices are used by each track very easily. voices get used sneakily on these machines...the 32 cap was one of my biggest issues when i was using it standalone.

Nym wrote:yeah, honestly the OS is really the problem here, the bug being that AKAI really doesn't give a rats ass about their machines' os situation. i really regret having to say it but man those screens make me sad for you, esp cuz your beat is quite excellent and your attitude in the video is so positive. your last words on the video "backburner" made me laugh - if you are aware of this situation, why use the akai os?

Yeah...The irony is that the alleged polyphony/note-on issue happened so rarely that I never really tripped about it and simply pushed it aside due to the frequency at which it occurred. But somehow it always seems to poke its ugly head out again when Im making a beat I really like. **** figures right?....
In regards to the mixer bug, that was the very first time I ever encountered that one.

Nym wrote:as for the video, i am very willing to bet that you are maxing your polyphony without realizing it. you said in your vid that you don't think this is the case - but it is probably and feel me out on why:

i want you to go through each track where multiple notes are hit (think maracas, think anything that has a lot of notes recorded in it). you mention your mute groups - don't forget that if you're using a pgm in which everything is on a mute group but you're only using 1 pad in the pgm, the mute group isn't triggered. ie if A01 is set to mute group 1, A01 won't cut itself off - you have to make AO1 monophonic for that to occur

Word, im with you here. I def could have made the video a tad clearer but I see you got the gist of what I was trying to show.

Nym wrote:now truth is, your video is thorough and i could see in a lot of your param screens that you had things correctly set, which leads me to believe this isn't the common user error that typically maxes folks' polyphony and brings them to this forum with this problem, but the issue sounds virtually identical to a max polyphony issue that you might as well check.

I know right? Thats all i could infer from what was happening yet I counted out all the notes I could find that were voicing at the same time and they still never met the maximum polyphony, at least to my knowledge - so I just figured it has to be a something else or a bug?

Nym wrote:the other thing to do is load jjos1, which has a polyphony meter. you could use this to count how many voices are used by each track very easily. voices get used sneakily on these machines...the 32 cap was one of my biggest issues when i was using it standalone.

Word. This is great idea.
I can safely say that this is going to immediately piss me off if I actually did max the polyphony considering my beat is really quite minimal in tracks and note events.

With that said, i may have to finally travel to the dark side and ditch the Akai OS for good.
I just read about so many heads having constant problems with the JJ OS and I literally never run into issues like 95% of the time with the standard Akai OS, but this is kind of the last straw for me...
I just never really dug the way certain features were implemented in the JJ OS ironically.

Nym - I know your an advocate of the JJ OS...
Is the polyphony limit lifted in the JJ OS?
Will my beats load and play correctly that were made in the Akai OS?
Also, how bad is the learning curve switching from the Akai Sh*t-Code?

folks have problems with the jjos because they do not know how to use it, plain and simple. they'd have the same problems if they were beginning with the akai os, except in JJ os there are a lot more parameters that probably appear mystical to them ("wat is adsr lol")

polyphony limit isn't lifted in jjos, it's just way easier to see what's using what and diagnose problem tracks and then treat them accordingly (snip tails off, set pgm/pads to monophonic playback, turn unnecessary stereo samples to mono, etc)

akaios-made beats/pgms may or may not load correctly, depending on the os, but recreation is dead easy once you're familiar with the os. i'd say start with an old akaios project that you'd begun but neverr finished and recreate it/finish it in jjos to wisen up to some of the new features/new layout.

i can't speak on the learning curve, as i was there since the very first version of jj os was released, so i've used every new version since its original state...i've learned as it's grown, so to say. however it shouldn't be that hard, a lot of things are much more logical than the akai os.

Well thanks Nym, your helps been very useful.
I took your advice installed JJOS1 and checked my polyphony meter in 3 scenarios...not sure which one is more accurate to gage by?

Scenario 1: Each track was played by itself and screened in the Polyphony meter.
These are my results pertaining to the exact track config that the problem occured:

Track 1: 4 - VIBE1
Track 3: 2 - STATIC
Track 4: 2 - BEEP
Track 5: 16 - BASS1 ??
Track 6: 4 - GTR1
Track 7: 2 - FLUTE
Track 8: 2 - WOW
Track 9: 6 - MARACAS
Track 10: 3 - HH
Track 11: 3 - KIK-SNR1
Track 12: 4 - CLAPS1

As you can see if you add each tracks individual result together I go way over the Max Polyphony with a sum of 48, however Im not entirely sure this is the correct way to establish an accurate value or not?

Scenario 2: All tracks listed are playing at the same time minus the BASS1 track:
All tracks minus the BASS1: - 25

Scenario 3: All tracks listed are playing at the same time:
All tracks: 28 - ?? - And the problem still persists as the bass cuts off the flute and wow.

Now its been a while since I read up on the how the polyphony works in the MPC but the way the results are coming out i have a feeling a stereo sound that is triggered gets counted as 2 voices, which I suppose makes sense if that is true?

That still doesnt answer why the hell my bass track is maxing out at an astounding 16 voices?
You got an answer to this one Nym?

no problem man i actually enjoy helping people who are this motivated

phew, that bass track is clearly a/the problem.

before we tackle that one though, yes, stereo samples are always 2 voices, and yes, this means that all drum hits that are stereo should be evaluated as to whether or not they need to be!! stereo hats (or worse, rides) that don't cut each other off will eat up polyphony faster than rick ross would a bag of fritos. jjos's trim mode will let you kill the unnecessary channel if need be.

describe your bass track... one big long sample? many small samples? mono program, poly program? mono pads, poly pads? mono sample, stereo sample? something is definitely overlapping unnecessarily here.

also are any of these tracks sharing pgms? i recommend that each track has its own pgm in most applications.

worst case scenario, you could send me a .zip of your project folder so i can look at it

Nym wrote:describe your bass track... one big long sample? many small samples? mono program, poly program? mono pads, poly pads? mono sample, stereo sample? something is definitely overlapping unnecessarily here.

My Bass Track consists of:
*A duplicate sample from 1/2 of the original vibe loop but filtered with 2 low pass filters.
(Note - this is a stereo sample so that means my bass sample is stereo as well)
*All 4 layers contain the same sample on this pad.
*Essentially the sample is one big long sample, but set to Note-On.
*Poly program mode.
*All samples/pads set to Mono.
*The sample exists on the same program as all my other samples from the record.
(I prefer to work this way since I can just organize different sounds into banks instead of switching programs...I did try putting the bass on another program for the sake of trying it but it didn't make a difference by the way)
*Track was recorded with NO time correction.

Nym wrote:also are any of these tracks sharing pgms? i recommend that each track has its own pgm in most applications.

worst case scenario, you could send me a .zip of your project folder so i can look at it

*1 Program - For all samples recorded from the record.
*1 Program - For all of my drum samples.
**Ive worked this way for many years with no problems.**

(I may have to just send you the beat so you can see for yourself, but I think its safe to say we can rule this out as NOT being a bug now most likely - and rather just a polyphony conflict after all....The mixer problem on the other hand is clearly a bug)
Thanks again Nym.

________________________________________________

*All 4 layers contain the same sample on this pad.
(After realizing this may be contributing to the problem I removed the bottom 3 layers leaving just the first sample and the problem seemed to finally stop surprisingly....so I think when u layer your sounds on each pad you have to also keep in mind that your multiplying the voices as well)

*As a result, since i really liked the beefed up sound I got from the layered version, i just resampled the layered version and also turned it into a mono sample hence reducing the voices used while maintaining the original bass sound.

Dont think i would have arrived at a solution without your help tho Nym so thank you.

*All 4 layers contain the same sample on this pad.
(After realizing this may be contributing to the problem I removed the bottom 3 layers leaving just the first sample and the problem seemed to finally stop surprisingly....so I think when u layer your sounds on each pad you have to also keep in mind that your multiplying the voices as well)

until i read that, i was just about to ask if the layers were all playing at the same time (i.e. not triggered at different velocities). but yes your conclusion is correct. think of polypony as samples being played back at the same time, rather than pads playing back. Your original bass would be triggering 8 notes per pad.

Even though the original sample was in stereo, its likely that there will be little stereo info in the bass region. its important for mastering to vinyl and for giving a track a "centre" that the bass is in mono. In short it probably doesnt need to be in stereo, and below a certain point probably shouldnt be in stereo.

also watch out for bass notes phasing, have you tried eqing the bass to get the texture your after?

Word, I just was lazy and didnt reduce the sample to mono after I filtered it and used it for a bass sound.
Whats crazy tho is that bass sound counted as 4 voices on that track, so multiply that by 4 and you got 16 voices all at the same time on one pad. Totally unneeded. And I agree, bass and most drums are best in mono. This was something I just overlooked from working too fast.

Once again, user error wins. (even tho the 32 voice cap can suck my balls. lol.)

so (hah) what did akai have to say about this?

As you prob know, their support sucks pretty bad.
I still haven't even heard back from them, but I do thank you for your help Nym...wouldn't have figured it out without you.