Reviews and questions about the entry-level MPC500
By namotu Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:53 am
i generally never have problems with my 500, but today it's goin crazy. first, any time i would record something, thenplay it back, it would change the time signature for bars 1 and 5. cas normally i have them all 4/4 time sig, but it f*cked em up and made bar 1 2/4 time sig and bar 5 5/4 time sig. and whenver i went to change em back, it would delete a bunch of sh*t and the whole sequenced was f*cked.

then later, any time i hit REC or Over Dub and play or Play start, it would count in the normal 4 clicks before recording, then it would just freeze...i've heard this happen to people alot before. the cursor still blinks, and the rec and play lights are still on, but the whole machine is frozen.

i tried reinstalling the OS, clearing the memory card, formatting it and everything. nothing seems to work...

anyone have any insight on how to fix this?
User avatar
By ssnedden Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:06 am
Sorry, I don't know the remedy, but I know what you're talking about on that time signature thing, I've gotten that about 3 times.

When this happens, I've found that even if you save the project, you can't salvage it later. It might just be like this in my case, but even the samples individually were corrupt from when I saved a session where the time signature got weird.

But I just turn my shit off when this happens, curse outloud and start over. And it won't have this problem for 99% of the time I have it on. Is yours doing it everytime?
By namotu Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:09 am
it doesnt do it everytime, but now i can't record at all cas it just freezes. i think your right, it permentently corrupts the samples, cas i loaded em onto a new card and it did the same stuff.

hah yeah, i guess you just godda swear real loud and start over, until an extremely stable OS happens.

f*uck watever, i guess i gotta start over
User avatar
By robthom Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:09 am
Try uploading your sounds to the PC and reconverting them to wav.
I'd scrap the sequences and try to save the sounds then redo it.
Also I try to always backup a project periodically to my PC so that I can retrieve it if something gets lost or muffed up.

Its also possible that whatever goobered up those samples (probably a bad card IMO), keeps messing up anything you try to reuse them in.
In which case I'd trash the samples and the sequences, leave the old card alone, and start fresh only using uncorrupted data and the new card.
User avatar
By ssnedden Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:20 am
namotu wrote:it doesnt do it everytime, but now i can't record at all cas it just freezes. i think your right, it permentently corrupts the samples, cas i loaded em onto a new card and it did the same stuff.

hah yeah, i guess you just godda swear real loud and start over, until an extremely stable OS happens.

f*uck watever, i guess i gotta start over


Yeah man, it's a shame.

But I was asking if you could get the MPC to function after restarting, but I guess you left it frozen, I didn't realize that.

What I was getting at is that it might be like mine, and experience this once every 100 sessions and be fine the other 99. Which sucks, but is better than a broken sampler.
By namotu Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:36 am
well i restarted it after it froze, but it just does the same thing every time. yeah its usually pretty stable. but i retrieved the data, i had the samples backuped on the comp (i back up everything while making the song on the mpc) so i deleted to old samples and sequences, and uploaded the fresh samples to a new card. i dragged the Program into the new one too, which worked, and kept all my settings for the samples and what not.

so its all good now, and yeah, im guess its the work of a crappy card. but i got a few extras, so it works out now.

thanks for the responses