Post your questions, opinions and reviews of the MPC1000. This forum is for discussion of the OFFICIAL Akai OS (2.1). If you wish to discuss the JJ OS, please use the dedicated JJ OS forum
By kartiloco Wed May 20, 2009 2:35 pm
hi all,
i just got a MPC 1000 bout a week ago, i already worked my way into it and made some hot beats :)
early on tho, i had this snare drum i sampled from an older funk record in my DRUMS program on Pad 1. it sounded nice, but just was too quiet... so i just added the SAME sample to Pad 1 aswell, so i had twice the same snare drum sample on the same pad, to make it sound louder.
then i just recorded the snare drum to an unused track in main mode, with timing correction on and everything, so it went on 001.02.00 001.04.00 002.02.00 002.04.00 ... what happened now tho is when i played back the track, switched tracks and did other stuff you cud normally do without a problem, some of the snare hits, like every 4th or sometimes every 5th or whatever snare hit, strangely sounded DIFFERENT than the normal pad's sound i recorded, eventho i didnt change anything!
i just put 2 of the same samples of the snare on the same pad, recorded it, played it back and for some reason the snare sound changes between its normal sound and something like a bit flatter, higher pitched sound... is that a bug or what can this be ?? pls help!
might there be another way to make a sample sound louder without doubling it on the same pad?

another question:
i bought the mpc 1000 brand-new from an online store, its black and has the akai 2.12 OS on it - does that mean that i got the new pads on it aswell or may i have some dead pad issues in the future??

any help is greatly appreciated!!!!!
User avatar
By Cap_Ill Wed May 20, 2009 2:42 pm
sounds like they are kinda phasing together

Try to adjust the pitch of the 2nd snare that you have layered just a little bit.

I usually down pitch it just a tad so that one snare is just a few milliseconds longer than the one that i'm layering with. it usually evens it out for me.

or you could turn the time correction off.

If you have two of the exact same sounds being played at the exact same tick on your sequencer they will sometimes have that weird phasing effect.
By dtaa pla muk Wed May 20, 2009 2:44 pm
so i just added the SAME sample to Pad 1 aswell, so i had twice the same snare drum sample on the same pad, to make it sound louder.


this is the problem. the mpc isn't sample accurate, and so you shouldn't use this technique to increase the volume of your sample. use normalize instead.

might there be another way to make a sample sound louder without doubling it on the same pad?


turn everything else down
User avatar
By Cap_Ill Wed May 20, 2009 2:47 pm
ALso, like he said ^^^ instead of layer the drum you could normalize/compress/eq/resample some more power out of it.

It sounded to me like the problem was more with the snares phasing together than the volume. I think that was what he was asking about.
User avatar
By sonseelye Wed May 20, 2009 3:06 pm
what happens is,when you layer the "same" samples to one pad,you end up with an echo,,either before or after,unless your samples are exactly on point to the millisecond..in wich this case they were up until the fourth snare,like you said...then that fourth snare ended up with an echo..i bet it sounded muffled...

think of it like this...do you ever whistle?
have you ever whistled while someone else is whistiling?
you hear a very wierd noise.
it puts out a whole different spectrum of frequencies,just because its not "exact"

so like the above people mentioned..add volume to that single sample or layer different snares together so they dont have to be exact..
hope i helped..
"SS"
By kartiloco Wed May 20, 2009 4:24 pm
wow very quick and good answeres here, great forum :O
does that phasing issue occur on any MPC when u layer 2 of the exact same samples at the same time or is it only the mpc 1000?
and what do u guys exactly mean by normalizing a sample?
i thought the mpc was very timing accurate, and since i used timing correction, the 2 samples should be played back perfectly together ?! i cant really see where that muffling / echo thing is coming from...
so the only way to add more volume to it is to turn everything else down?

and could someone tell me whats up with the pads in the mpc i just got?
By kartiloco Wed May 20, 2009 11:55 pm
okey thx man :)

i first thought my mpc was broke already :lol:

wud love if someone answered the few other questions i asked in the thread aswell :)

i noticed another problem earlier when i made a beat with some of my friends:
i tried to resample a snare drum consisting of 2 different snare drum samples on the same pad, cuz i put several effects and stuff on it and wanted to have the effect section cleared for some other drums i would add later. so i solo'ed the snare drum track, went to RECORD via MODE + PAD5, put the source to main out and started recording. during the short recording of the few snare hits, everything sounded fine. but when i listened to the sample after recording (you know, in the screen where you can choose retry, play, keep etc.), it sounded very QUIET, much more quiet than it went the whole time before recording. and when i go intro TRIM mode (MODE + PAD6), i cud also see that theres a small gap of nothing / no audio signal in the very beginning of the sample, where the snare drum should normally have started immediately. is that normal? what can i do about it to have the re-sampled sample as loud as the one before?
By scissordub Thu May 21, 2009 12:20 am
For all you technical heads out there:

Actually phasing is when waveforms don't line up...

So if you had the exact same sound or waveform there would be no phasing.

The reason phasing happens is the peaks and troughs of the wave don't coincide.

So if you have one wave going up and another running into it going down you get the net result: out of phase sound.

In this case, either the sampling of the second "clone" snare was different; which I think is not what happened,

or more likely the time correction moved the first and second samples to slightly different points in the sequence

causing phasing. This could be milliseconds only; which would explain why it wasn't noticeable to the ear until the

discrepancies added up by the fourth bar.
By kartiloco Fri May 22, 2009 11:16 am
so do you mean i should record the snares without having set them in the sequencer at all, but just by playing the pad? would that maybe erase any timing and therefore phasing issues?
User avatar
By Cap_Ill Fri May 22, 2009 1:09 pm
as long as you have two of the exact same sounds on the same pad you will probably run into this.

If you pitch on of the layered snares down a couple notches, or layer it with a totally different snare then you shouldn't have the problem.

http://www.akaipro.com/mpc1000

go to docs/downloads and get the manual.
User avatar
By Peace Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:58 am
Nym wrote:
so i just added the SAME sample to Pad 1 aswell, so i had twice the same snare drum sample on the same pad, to make it sound louder.


this is the problem. the mpc isn't sample accurate, and so you shouldn't use this technique to increase the volume of your sample. use normalize instead.

might there be another way to make a sample sound louder without doubling it on the same pad?


turn everything else down


lolz at your sig. that shit's awesome.
By beach_break Wed Jun 03, 2009 1:37 am
phasing isn't necessarily a bad thing. it's great when djing with two copies of the same record.

play around with the timing, pitching and sweeping the panning of your layered samples and you may come up with with some phased sounds that you like. it can work very nicely with layered synth sounds.