Exchange tips and tricks for the Akai MPC4000
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By elektrik_muz Mon May 21, 2012 12:35 pm
ntalec wrote:The real question is why if you situation is so critical that the 4k is causing you delay issues, why would playing through a buffer which is what the delay offset would actually does be the solution?

It wouldn't.



If he just stuck a global delay on everything then yes, that would be pretty worthless. My impression however is that he wanted to be able to adjust the timing offsets between individual tracks/instruments to get them to line up the way he wanted.
By ntalec Mon May 21, 2012 12:54 pm
elektrik_muz wrote:
If he just stuck a global delay on everything then yes, that would be pretty worthless. My impression however is that he wanted to be able to adjust the timing offsets between individual tracks/instruments to get them to line up the way he wanted.


He title pretty much says what he was talking about.

He was referring to delaying MIDI info.
Most digital mixers and such have this function as well as some DAWs or audio interfaces.
It's purpose was to correct inherent delay they added to the MIDI data stream.
They basically buffer things for alignment much like ADC does in a DAW.

The OP was saying the 4k should have had this function since it messes up the MIDI and we were all chiming in to say that we haven't seen this.
We tried to explain how we have run various combinations of old and modern gear driven by the 4k without the presence of a detectable delay in the MIDI data stream.

Who knows maybe he's trying to do some super tempo glitch type stuff.
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By elektrik_muz Mon May 21, 2012 1:07 pm
ntalec wrote:He title pretty much says what he was talking about.


I have to admit I wasn't paying much attention to that title, more the content of the post -- specifically where he mentions track delay. Again I agree, a global delay wouldn't help this guy.


ntalec wrote:Who knows maybe he's trying to do some super tempo glitch type stuff.


Maybe -- part of the problem here is he hasn't really given us much info as to what he's doing or what he's trying to do it with.
By ntalec Mon May 21, 2012 2:07 pm
Whatever the case may be, I own or have owned at least 1 of every model MPC (multiples of most) and the 4k sequencer definitely sits at the top of the list IMO for it's handling of external MIDI instruments.
Even when using various converter boxes to drive old gear the 4k has never given me any issues.
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By feline1 Mon May 21, 2012 3:34 pm
If it did turn out that this guy really does have the misfortune to own some really dreadful MIDI modules, that really do have such nasty latency on their MIDI inputs that they really do sound awful,
would a workaround not be possible as follows:

1. (I assume y'all are aware of this already, but) - for serious work, once you've built something up on the MPC4000 in Song mode, you really oughta do Convert Song to Sequence, to make one great big sequence of your whole song, which might typically be a few hundred bars long.

2. Then, track by track in your sequence, you Select All the events, and apply an appropriate timing offset to them all. (lol can you do this? - it's been so long since I used my MPC4000 in so much detail that I forget! I remember you can apply global offsets to each event's velocity... can you add a number of ticks to their position too?.... if you can't, then I am talking sh1t and I apologise...)

You'd need to do a little bit of maths to convert the required offset (in milliseconds) to a number of ticks.
For a tempo in beats per minute (assuming the 'beat' is a quarter note),
1 quarter note = 60/bpm * 1000 = value in milliseconds.
Divide that by 960 to get the length of the smallest tick.

e.g. at 120 bpm, the 960ppq resolution of the MPC4000 lets you position events by an accuracy of 0.52 milliseconds.

If you can't do the global offset of the position of each event in a track, you'd need to manually apply the offset to each event in the track - which would probably take hours!
But if you are sufficiently anal to care about this in the first place, you will probably ENJOY spending hours doing it.
In any case, do it once, record the difference, and prove to us it's worth it. :lol:
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By feline1 Mon May 21, 2012 3:46 pm
Yeah I'm re-reading the manual omline, and it does look to me (page 45?) that if you basically use the jog-wheel to highlight ALL the events in a track, and do a Move on them, you can basically cut-and-paste the entire thing a desired number of ticks further along the timeline?

If anyone cares enough, feel free to test and tell us how you get on! :)
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By feline1 Mon May 21, 2012 5:24 pm
Ah I thought so.

So - if anyone cares enough to test this, they could apply manual offsets to the note events in a bunch of different tracks,
and tell us whether it made their music any better..... 8)

It should only take 5 minutes or so to set up.