Out of curiosity...

How can you tell the different models of the 4k? I have the white and purple one if that makes a difference?

Look on the back and see if you have expansion boards or metal panels where the boards would be. Also you can check that on the LCD, but a head peak round the back is easier.

You can check the RAM on the LCD when the unit is on. N. America whites will have at least 272MB, maybe 512MB if it was upgraded. UK got screwed and 16MB was standard I found out recently.

A lot of blues are the "Plus" model and have all the upgrades I think.

For some crazy reason Vintage Synth Explorer doesn't list 4k's. While they have stuff that's 5 years old on there. But the 4k info is easy to find on Google.

Metatron72 wrote:
A lot of blues are the "Plus" model and have all the upgrades I think.

They just called them Plus to make them seem different but.
The differences were a better hard drive, better fan, better CD drive, the blue case and the Digital I/O was supposed to be included.
For some reason some didn't include the Digital which kinda goes along with the claims that some of the blue units were problematic.

The individual outs and ADAT were still extra.

Since we have the variance from USA to UK with the white and the selling of Akai with the blue it causes a lot of grey area.
Throw in the wonderful world of eBay and amount of time since they were made and the various models don't really matter anymore it's more like was mentioned look at the back and the screen and that's pretty much what you have.

The fan thing, yeah my old white is like an airplane propeller. I can have it in my back room, go on my front porch and hear the fan.

I need to get in there and get that awful glue off the bolts and get a quieter compatible fan in there.

But no matter which one you find, I think people are starting to feel that pound for pound the 4000 is the best MPC.

I wish the blue model was fully decked out. People over here are charging £130 for the 8 output board from skanky old Z8s, when VST have got new old stock for even cheaper. With delivery and customs fees it turns it into a pricey upgrade.

Metatron72 wrote:The fan thing, yeah my old white is like an airplane propeller. I can have it in my back room, go on my front porch and hear the fan.

I need to get in there and get that awful glue off the bolts and get a quieter compatible fan in there.

But no matter which one you find, I think people are starting to feel that pound for pound the 4000 is the best MPC.

This is always funny to me because I hear people talking about how loud their fan is on their White MPC 4000. I can't hear the fan on my White MPC 4000 in a silent room. All this stuff is so random, it's crazy.

There's a fast or slow setting in the hidden depths of the OS, but Metatron has previously mentioned that he's got it set to slow.

With mine set to fast it'd be unusable. Slow is ok though.

Coz wrote:There's a fast or slow setting in the hidden depths of the OS, but Metatron has previously mentioned that he's got it set to slow.

With mine set to fast it'd be unusable. Slow is ok though.

Yeah. On slow I can't hear it at all. The HD in my s6000 though...that's another story.

I have the Blue MPC 4000. It has a quiet fan. It did not come with the analog output expansion or the adat expansion. It did not come with the digital I/O either. It just had the fx card in it. The HDD in it is not noisy either.

I had a Z4 that was fully expanded and I took the digital I/O and the 8 output analog expansion and put them in the MPC4000. The digital I/O did not have the digital cable that goes from the cd drive to the digital expansion. THis is because the Z series does not have a cd drive. So in time I purchased another digital I/O that had the digital cable for the cdrom. The HDD in the Z is very noisy and I unplugged it. I just use thumb drives and I have an external scsi mounted Harddrive cdrom tower. (which I also connect to the MPC4000.)

The cost was either $500 or $600 for my used mint condition MPC4000. I drove 2 hours from DC to New Jersey to get it. It was a great purchase.


Cheers,
Ian

PS "there are no lines in my MPC screen. I find that SCSI loads really fast"

Coz wrote:I wish the blue model was fully decked out. People over here are charging £130 for the 8 output board from skanky old Z8s, when VST have got new old stock for even cheaper. With delivery and customs fees it turns it into a pricey upgrade.

Family is the solution to that problem.

Ian Canefire wrote:I have the Blue MPC 4000. It has a quiet fan. It did not come with the analog output expansion or the adat expansion. It did not come with the digital I/O either. It just had the fx card in it. The HDD in it is not noisy either.

I had a Z4 that was fully expanded and I took the digital I/O and the 8 output analog expansion and put them in the MPC4000. The digital I/O did not have the digital cable that goes from the cd drive to the digital expansion. THis is because the Z series does not have a cd drive. So in time I purchased another digital I/O that had the digital cable for the cdrom. The HDD in the Z is very noisy and I unplugged it. I just use thumb drives and I have an external scsi mounted Harddrive cdrom tower. (which I also connect to the MPC4000.)

The cost was either $500 or $600 for my used mint condition MPC4000. I drove 2 hours from DC to New Jersey to get it. It was a great purchase.


Cheers,
Ian

PS "there are no lines in my MPC screen. I find that SCSI loads really fast"

Yeah some of the blue were sold as a MPC4000 and some were sold as a MPC4000 Plus which added the 2 channels of digital.
I suspect Akai did it to purge the remaining SPDIF cards when they realized the state of the company.

ntalec wrote:Family is the solution to that problem.

True.

Hopefully I can get my brother to bring it over with him from NY later in the year.

This is how i remember it.

USA models:
mpc studio plus= spdif/ effects/ 272 Mb, HD, cd/rw
MPC studio A = spdif/ 8 analog outs/ effects/ 272 mb/ HD/ CDRW
mpc studio D = spdif/ adat card/ effects/ 272 MB/ hd/ cdrw

there was the speak in another forum that akai changed the processor on the blue one.
That one can bail out and is not available anymore, or not replaceable. something like that
it came from somebody who i rate as much reliable source.....seemed that there have been talk about at many places/threads.
thats why i went for a white one.
don´t hung me up on this. it´s just where i was when getting my 4k