Post your views and questions about the Akai MPC2500
By ghoulie Sun Apr 19, 2020 8:11 pm
Also the title of my new sci-fi romance

Anyway, I've finally got the hang of sampling with my 303/404. I just need a drum bank/velocity and quick sequencer to piece songs together. I knew an MPC was IT, but it has only been a headache.

After a couple months of troubleshooting/shop fix, I finally got my MPC back running and with an HDD FULL of dope kits from Daft to Dilla to every Roland TR. It was worth the wait. Got started laying drums on a loop, and immediately run into the "save everything" issue. I think from choosing to overwrite files, but I can't find any straight answers about this.

I created a new folder in root, saved everything, and created another folder and saved the pad assign program I made. The loop sample wasn't saved in audio. The samples weren't on the drum pads. In the project folder, it loaded 2 drum samples and the rest had ?-names. Their initial folders turned to 0kb. Lost everything in them. Loading samples, sometimes I would get corrupted file/folder names or the sample would be straight up distortion or nothing. Tried to back everything up and recover, but it was too late. Formatted drive.

I put my own kits on the HDD and my Sandisk 8gb CF (which doesn't show up on USB transfer but I can use a card reader??). Scrolling through the loading page is still very slow. The majority of the samples don't play. I batch changed them all to 44.1/16 and shortened their names. Some samples I preview and get stuck until they load 5-10 seconds later. Other times, previewing a sample completely freezes the machine. I'm trying so hard to get this to work, but I'm too scared to even practice on this thing because of the time it takes and the guarantee to run into an issue or lose my work. If anyone could offer any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.
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By Menco Mon Apr 20, 2020 10:31 am
What OS are you running? Formatting disks and cards in the original Akai OS isn't as stable as formatting disks and cards with the (free) JJOS.
You are also sure you saved the samples that go with the program in the same folder as well? How does loading and saving behaves when saving and loading the programs and sequences individually in the same folder? Make sure to chose the option to save the samples together with the program instead of only the program data. If you save a program it will ask if you want to save the assigned samples as well. Make sure you select that option before you hit the 'do it' key.
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By NearTao Mon Apr 20, 2020 3:59 pm
Seconded... make sure to choose "entire memory" and save into a new directory every time until you get comfortable working with the MPC 2500. As Menco is suggesting... at least make sure you have the free JJOS installed, though it is worth considering JJOS2XL or JJOS3.

The drive hanging sounds odd and may be a problem, but you may be loading content that is very large. It's probably worth checking memory usage of different samples as you save them and load them to see if anything funky is going on.

One last thought... is to do some disk checking. It is possible that you've got an HDD or CF (or both) that were not shutdown/closed out properly and have some corruption that could explain some of the odd behavior.

Keep at it and we'll do what we can to help you work it out :D
By ghoulie Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:19 am
Menco wrote:What OS are you running? Formatting disks and cards in the original Akai OS isn't as stable as formatting disks and cards with the (free) JJOS.
You are also sure you saved the samples that go with the program in the same folder as well? How does loading and saving behaves when saving and loading the programs and sequences individually in the same folder? Make sure to chose the option to save the samples together with the program instead of only the program data. If you save a program it will ask if you want to save the assigned samples as well. Make sure you select that option before you hit the 'do it' key.


I’m on JJOS 128XL. Should I try formatting on free JJ?

I retried with a new project. Saving entire memory (+yes to replace same files) gives me .PGM, .ALL, & PRJ, but no samples (? in front of name on pads). I also don’t get asked if I want to save samples with the program.

Tried 2 more times, and now the samples are saving, but I don’t think any variables changed… :o Maybe I just have to always check to make sure? Still sketchy


NearTao wrote:Seconded... make sure to choose "entire memory" and save into a new directory every time until you get comfortable working with the MPC 2500. As Menco is suggesting... at least make sure you have the free JJOS installed, though it is worth considering JJOS2XL or JJOS3.

The drive hanging sounds odd and may be a problem, but you may be loading content that is very large. It's probably worth checking memory usage of different samples as you save them and load them to see if anything funky is going on.

One last thought... is to do some disk checking. It is possible that you've got an HDD or CF (or both) that were not shutdown/closed out properly and have some corruption that could explain some of the odd behavior.

Keep at it and we'll do what we can to help you work it out :D


The HDD was def corrupted. It’s a 160 gb that came with the machine. I had to kill it once on a sample freeze and once during a failed backup. I think the backup is when I lost folders and got serious corruption on samples. Am I gambling playing with it even after reformatting? Haven't had any lag or issues besides the weird on & off missing samples when saving everything.

Even though the CF was being read, I think it isn't good for the MPC. Just loaded a kit on my akai card and it's working well! Should have known.


Thank you guys so much for your insight! This forum gives me hope, where otherwise I would have just called it a loss.
By ghoulie Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:26 pm
NearTao wrote:Keep trying and good luck. These older machines can be grumpy and may need patience. Often it is time that has been unkind to them, but they often can be fixed.


Love bro. I expected way too much from the timeline. Things are already looking up with some patience.
Thanks again
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By saltmcgault Wed Apr 22, 2020 2:49 pm
@ghoulie If that hd keeps jankin up on you, consider sd cards for your cf slot and hd by using adapters. I did this and it hasn't failed me once and its awesome and cheaper than buying another hd. If you run out of memory simply buy another sd card.

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=181977

good luck!
By ghoulie Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:29 pm
Thanks for the suggestion salt. I'd seen that around but was hard headed bc I already had a HDD. I finally did snag a couple microSDs and an IDE > SD reader, which worked great after formatting (at first)..

I stopped being afraid to save things and really started learning how to use the MPC (amazing). But sometimes files wouldn't show up. Today it got stuck on "wait.." while loading up samples to a program, and I had to kill it. Now it's going from not appearing at all to showing up as totally blank, to letting me scroll a bit until I hit a "file not found !!" and then showing up as blank :(

When I plug the SD into my mac or use "USB" on MPC, I get "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." In Disk Utility, it shows the card is totally full which apparently means it's corrupted. This happens after reformatting on MPC (JJOS3). When I erase/format on Mac, it shows up normally. Should I try the other SD card and risk losing it? Any options besides spending more $$$ to have it looked at?
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By NearTao Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:48 pm
Perhaps check your file name length(s)? I think the MPC 1k caps out around 16-18 characters... forget which.

JJOS 128XL should be working fine, although I might suggest making sure you're running the latest version.

Have you tried formatting for Fat32 on your PC or Mac yet?

One other thought... have you checked to see if the CF reader has any bent pins in it?
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By Psychedelic Schizophrenic Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:59 pm
The cap is 16 characters on the filename also make sure it doesn't contain a full stop or any non-alphabetic or non-numeric characters as it will throw up a "file not found" error. I can't remember of the top of my head which ones throw up the error but I only use alphabetic, numeric characters and the dash key to name my files
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By NearTao Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:55 pm
Modern sampling software has taught the new generation that samplers don't sampler, they are just romplers :D

Seriously sample stuff to feed the beast... even if it is your own previous productions so you don't have to worry about clearing samples... it'll teach you a lot and help you build new techniques and workflows.
By mikeone209 Mon Aug 31, 2020 5:13 am
Personally, Ive found the upgraded jjos (I believe the 128XL) not to read my files for some reason. I had purchased a 2nd unit that had the 128XL installed and upon transferring some files over from my original MPC, they came up with ?s. I honestly think the 3.13 works/functions better but thats my opinion. Another thing to note is that the card reader is only intended to read to a certain overall card size. Don't quote me but I believe its up to 2GB. Anything larger starts to decrease its functionality.