Bugs or 500 schizophrenia?

I am have numerous problems with my 500. Its still awesome, but its about as touchy and hard to reason with as a woman sometimes!

First off, with the previous OS I was constantly getting that memory error message or whatever it was when trying to reload saved projects. the projects would not load manually either because they where corrupted. this would happen about 30-40% of the time, really bad. And it would always happen eventually which pushed back my plans for any serious work other than tinkering until the latest OS.
Next, the latest OS has fixed the constant error messages and corruption of my save data and it seemed to be working pretty good so I started getting more serious and really working on some beats. As I mentioned on another thread, I am using almost all the pads and banks for my initial project which is kind of a medley type jam to get acquainted with the machine and its functions.
Well after awhile I noticed that one particular sample kept disappearing from its pad every time I reloaded to begin programing again. I would reload the sample onto the same pad from a back up and save it again, and then upon reloading it would be gone again. The same sample would keep disappearing over and over.
Then I began to notice that a few other samples where behaving the same way. Certain samples would just disappear over and over after reloading them and resaving them.
Well everything came to a head when after an allnighter, groovin and making some killer noise, the next morning when I tried to reload to hear what I made half of the samples where gone. After that it just kept getting worse and would either lose some or all of the samples every time.
Now I've figured out that the "save all memory" to the autoload folder consistently malfunctions. But I also figured out that saving all samples and all sequences individually and manually to the autoload folder still works.

I intend to get another mem card and see if its just a bad mem card, but if thats so than why would it work when saving one way and not the other?

Now other than my mem card troubles I've also noticed that my pads will trigger the wrong samples sometimes, but only within the sequence. IE: the pad will PLAY the right sample when you hit it, but then after recording it will trigger a different sample. I figured out that this can be rectified by going into the pad parameters and choosing reset pad or whatever the vernacular is. But it keeps on happening to different pads at different times. For instance even after getting all the sequences straight, after putting them into song mode and playing back the song some of the pads would begin to trigger the wrong samples again. So far only 1 pad at a time, so not so bad. Just annoying.

Has anyone had any of these same of similar problems? I haven't seen them mentioned in the buglist sticky so I dont know if its just my machine, my memcard or what?
Thanks.

It's just your methods.
Do a save all but before you do create a new folder each time you save a whole project.
If you don't then you will always have the potential for files to be over written or disassociated from their proper place.

Sovereign wrote:It's just your methods.
Do a save all but before you do create a new folder each time you save a whole project.
If you don't then you will always have the potential for files to be over written or disassociated from their proper place.

I did have greater success saving that way because it was one of the methods that I experimented with when I was trying to figure out a way to get it to save again.
But deleting my autoload folder first and creating a completely new one with save all everytime I want to save a checkpoint in my workflow is about as many steps and as much trouble as saving sequences and samples individually. And since I have not had a malfunction when saving individually so far, I am wary of using the save all function again if I dont have to when its just as much trouble.
But there is still something wrong if just using save all to autoload had initially been working and now it does not. Even if deleting the folder first will get around the problem there is still the problem of loss of functionality.

I really need to try another cfcard (why are these slow old style cards still so expensive?), but if its the memcard, which I hope it is, why does it save just fine one way but not the other? Also I did put the card in a reader connected to my PC and scanned it for errors and it checked out fine under windows xp.

robthom wrote:

Sovereign wrote:It's just your methods.
Do a save all but before you do create a new folder each time you save a whole project.
If you don't then you will always have the potential for files to be over written or disassociated from their proper place.

I did have greater success saving that way because it was one of the methods that I experimented with when I was trying to figure out a way to get it to save again.
But deleting my autoload folder first and creating a completely new one with save all everytime I want to save a checkpoint in my workflow is about as many steps and as much trouble as saving sequences and samples individually. And since I have not had a malfunction when saving individually so far, I am wary of using the save all function again if I dont have to when its just as much trouble.
But there is still something wrong if just using save all to autoload had initially been working and now it does not. Even if deleting the folder first will get around the problem there is still the problem of loss of functionality.

I really need to try another cfcard (why are these slow old style cards still so expensive?), but if its the memcard, which I hope it is, why does it save just fine one way but not the other? Also I did put the card in a reader connected to my PC and scanned it for errors and it checked out fine under windows xp.

That's improper use of autoload.
You save to autoload and then leave it alone you don't save and re-save.
It's a preset folder not a work folder.
It's a folder where you store high usage sounds that you use as building blocks for creating programs not where you store work in progress or completed work.
It pretty similar to ona synth workstation how you have slots for presets and slots where you save your sounds you create or tweak.
Projects you work on or are working on should be giving a new folder with the name of the song or project and all your samples, programs and sequences should be saved into that folder so all necessary components are in one location for the MPC to find and load.
It's the same as working on a DAW and having all the elements together in one project folder.
Unlike the older MPC's (2kxl and older) that used APS the newer units use Projects and make real good use of the folder structure of saving.
thus the reason you have the option to create new folders when saving projects.

Interesting. I would think the "preset" or high usage folder would be the the same folder as the project I'm currently working on. I keep my sound libraries in another set of folders. And I'm not sure I would want to autoload my machine with sounds that I'm not currently using. If I had stuff in autoload that I'm not using and then manually added my project after powering on and autoloading, I would have all of both folders in the memory right? Unless I deleted everything from the autoload folder that I didn't want out of memory or purged the memory first manually, right?
The way I consider and like to use autoload is to pick up my work where I left off asap when powering on.

Well never the less, if I deleted a seperate project folder first and then used "save all" everytime I saved, it would still be as many steps as if I deleted and saved to autoload, but now a few more to manually purge autoload after powerup and then load a seperate folder. I think I like using the autoload folder as the working save space better. I'm not saying your wrong and I appreciate your help but I think you can see what I mean (plus I've been told that I'm kinda lazy too).
But I still dont see why there would be a difference relating to data loss whether I "save all" to autoload or to another folder?

robthom wrote:Interesting. I would think the "preset" or high usage folder would be the the same folder as the project I'm currently working on. I keep my sound libraries in another set of folders. And I'm not sure I would want to autoload my machine with sounds that I'm not currently using. If I had stuff in autoload that I'm not using and then manually added my project after powering on and autoloading, I would have all of both folders in the memory right? Unless I deleted everything from the autoload folder that I didn't want out of memory or purged the memory first manually, right?
The way I consider and like to use autoload is to pick up my work where I left off asap when powering on.

Well never the less, if I deleted a seperate project folder first and then used "save all" everytime I saved, it would still be as many steps as if I deleted and saved to autoload, but now a few more to manually purge autoload after powerup and then load a seperate folder. I think I like using the autoload folder as the working save space better. I'm not saying your wrong and I appreciate your help but I think you can see what I mean (plus I've been told that I'm kinda lazy too).
But I still dont see why there would be a difference relating to data loss whether I "save all" to autoload or to another folder?

It's simply a folder for people who like to use the box like a preset machine so the box loads up sounds to get them started.
It's not like on the 4k or MV where you could let it know what to load the next time it boots.

Most people with any form of workflow have their Auto turned off on the 500/1k/2500/5000.
They simply boot it to null and load the project or folder they plan to work on.
They also create a default template setup the way they like to work that they load for starting new projects.

Not really sure what you meant by if

I deleted a seperate project folder first and then used "save all" everytime I saved,

If you were working on a song called Get Rich that would be the name of the folder and you work from that folder and save to that folder.
If you are more the type who makes uncertain choices then you would make the folder and work from it and save your changes to a secondary folder until you were sure you like the changes. You would basically have 2 folders one would be Get Rich the other would be Get Rich2.
Get Rich would contain the Project you are satisfied with and Get Rich2 would contain the experimental changes until you were sure thenof them.
The folders would function the same as PlayList or UnDo in a DAW.

Use the Auto as your workspace if you like but understand you will lose data or file association at some point in time because of the potential to rewrites and reassociates files everytime you use it.
There's no shortcut for proper file maintenance and to answer the original question of this post it's not a bug.

robthom wrote:But I still dont see why there would be a difference relating to data loss whether I "save all" to autoload or to another folder?

For some reason between the filing system Akai uses and the Auto being a system managed folder files seem to get misassociated from programs or sequences.
Had this problem with the 1k and 2500 as well as some more critical write errors.

Cool, I'll give turning auto off and manually loading a separate project folder a try.
I also plan on getting a new CF since I got this machine used off ebay and it came with the 2 gig so I don't know how old the card is or where it came from. Maybe its just wearing out. When I get the new card I'll try saving to autoload again and see if its still giving me major trouble or hopefully find out that the old card was just getting a little wonky.
Thanks for the info.