what are your wishings 4 the next OS update?

This machine needs chop shop exactly BECAUSE of the dispaly it has. On my 4000 I can just visually pic out the peaks in the wave form and I know that its going to be a hit that i want to isolate and extract.

On this machine you cant see anything and it takes a long time to get your samples properly trimed. I know some purest is going to say "use your ears to make music not your eyes" blah blah blah.... I've worked out my own little system and I'm getting pretty accurate with it but I'd rather it be eaiser.

You'd just have to be careful about how you set the sensitivity of the peak detection of the chop. If you set it to some ridiculously sensitive setting you're gonna have to scroll through a thousand un-usably short chops. If you set the dection sensibly it could at least get it roughed out for you enough that you could just go in and manualy adjust it yourself quickly.

I think Upright or somebody was talking about using a character based system to represent the wave form, which i think is genius.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII = cliped waveform over peak limit

........;;;;''''''''''''''' = a swelling sound that starts out low then rises

''''''''''';;;;;.......... = a diminshing sound ,the crack of a cymbal that fade

They could even let you zoom in for fine detail.


......;;;;;;'''''''''''' x1


....................;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' x4

each character could represent a certain precentage of the total amount of samples per second. A 1 second sample would have 41,000 samples in it and since the MPC 500 has a 16 character disply each character would represent 2756 samples at 1x (roughly). For samples that are longer then 1 seconds you could use the Jog wheel or the direction buttons to scroll left and right of the waveform. And of couse you could switch back and forth between numerical veiw and characther view.


Also I think someone mentioned something about a "Marquee" style scroll back and forth of file names that are too long to be displayed all at once.

a file name that says "Drum Kit 1" would look like

<Drum Ki...>
<rum kit 1.>
<um kit 1..>
<m kit 1...>
<um kit 1..>
<rum kit 1>
<Drum Ki...>

automatically scrolling left to right to let you see the full name, as an option you could turn it off or on in the "OTHER" screen.

4000is1monster wrote:This machine needs chop shop exactly BECAUSE of the dispaly it has. On my 4000 I can just visually pic out the peaks in the wave form and I know that its going to be a hit that i want to isolate and extract.

On this machine you cant see anything and it takes a long time to get your samples properly trimed. I know some purest is going to say "use your ears to make music not your eyes" blah blah blah.... I've worked out my own little system and I'm getting pretty accurate with it but I'd rather it be eaiser.

You'd just have to be careful about how you set the sensitivity of the peak detection of the chop. If you set it to some ridiculously sensitive setting you're gonna have to scroll through a thousand un-usably short chops. If you set the dection sensibly it could at least get it roughed out for you enough that you could just go in and manualy adjust it yourself quickly.

I think Upright or somebody was talking about using a character based system to represent the wave form, which i think is genius.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII = cliped waveform over peak limit

........;;;;''''''''''''''' = a swelling sound that starts out low then rises

''''''''''';;;;;.......... = a diminshing sound ,the crack of a cymbal that fade

They could even let you zoom in for fine detail.


......;;;;;;'''''''''''' x1


....................;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' x4

each character could represent a certain precentage of the total amount of samples per second. A 1 second sample would have 41,000 samples in it and since the MPC 500 has a 16 character disply each character would represent 2756 samples at 1x (roughly). For samples that are longer then 1 seconds you could use the Jog wheel or the direction buttons to scroll left and right of the waveform. And of couse you could switch back and forth between numerical veiw and characther view.


Also I think someone mentioned something about a "Marquee" style scroll back and forth of file names that are too long to be displayed all at once.

a file name that says "Drum Kit 1" would look like

<Drum Ki...>
<rum kit 1.>
<um kit 1..>
<m kit 1...>
<um kit 1..>
<rum kit 1>
<Drum Ki...>

scrolling left to right to let you see the full name, as an option you could turn it off or on in the "OTHER" screen.

You should definitly contact akaipro regarding that idea!

that is excellent!

1

or how about:

......::::::::iiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiii::::::::::....... ( a swelling sound that fades out)


or maybe with a little L like this:


.......::::::::iiiiiiiiillllllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiii:::::::::......... ( same like the one above)



so let's say we have a break(1 bar break):


||||lllliiii::::....|li:....||||lllliiii::::....|li:...||||::::.||||::::.||||lllliiii::::....|li:.....
kick..............hat....snare............hat..kick.....kick......snare............hat




how about that?

||||lllliiiii::::....____x1Let's pretend this is a waveform for a bass that fades
||||llll!!!!::::"""

yeah you get the idea, I think everyone would love something like that. Do you think they'd actually listen if people requested it? Do you think it is even possible for the 500 to do this.

4000is1monster wrote:yeah you get the idea, I think everyone would love something like that. Do you think they'd actually listen if people requested it? Do you think it is even possible for the 500 to do this.

I get the idea, it just seems like a kludge.
I have chop shop on the 2500 and it's not all that incredible and doesn't help me trim samples much. I use it for the patched phrase function which is cool but I can trim the samples faster in regular trim mode. I can do them a lot faster in the computer and just save them to a CF card which is what I do 99% of the time. I use the 500 as a portable device so I'm not doing any sampling on it directly. I prep my material on the 2500 or on my computer then save it to a CF card and make beats on breaks at work or in my living room or in the doctors office like I did the other day.

I think things to add more real time control or automation or making programs easier would be alot more functional for a portable MPC than a half way chop shop function.

no one is disputing that you can trim faster on a computer or a full size MPC, that goes without saying. I use my 500 in the exact opposite way that you described using yours. I MOSTLY sample with mine, I take it over to people's house and bring my portable CD player and sample stuff. My friends and family all listen to different kinds of music then I might listen to, so sometimes I find some really interesting stuff and some of them have quite large CD collections. I could sit there for days litterally and search through their CD's and not find a CD that I already own.

I like to trim the sample pretty close to what I want on the 500 so that when i bring the samples back to my 4000 I wont have that much more to trim to make them sound the way I want. I trim them on the 500 first then start doing some rough sequencing to get a feel for what I want things to sound like so that when I bring it back to the 4000 I can stretch my legs out and really dig into it.

Right now I have my own little method that works well enough but I think an auto chop might speed things along alittle better and I know a character based sample editing scheme in conjunction with the normal numeric editing would be amazing.

Actually if I had to pick one or the other, id much rather then did the character based editing. I highly doubt they will do any of these things anyway so im pretty much wasting time writing this. But something they CAN and SHOULD do is give up a way to manually set regions so we can chop it ourselves.

Sequence editing is a real **** on this thing so I'd rather do it on my 4000

madbeets wrote:I think things to add more real time control or automation or making programs easier would be alot more functional for a portable MPC than a half way chop shop function.

very valid point.

pz

4000is1monster wrote:no one is disputing that you can trim faster on a computer or a full size MPC, that goes without saying.... I highly doubt they will do any of these things anyway so im pretty much wasting time writing this.....

It's not a waste of time. Akai probably won't do it but it's cool that these discussions allow us to see how other people are using their MPC's. It might inspire someone to try doing something that they don't normally do.
You use yours in a totally different way than me, and I'm sure plenty of people are doing something else totally different.
It's all good and discussing "dream features" lets us get a view of alternate work flows.

How well does the stuff on the 500 go over to the 4000?

There are som weird-ness-es that happen with transferning samples &/or programs between the 500 and 4000.

1) When transfering samples to the 4000 that were sampled on the 500, The 500 assigns a midi note number of zero to every sample (0) C-2 but the 4000 assigns a note number of sixty (60) C3 to every sample. That becomes annoying because sometimes I like to mess around with the Pitch of the samples on the sample list page, it allows me to hear the samples played back at different pitches/speeds and kind of gives me new ideas. So when I transfer a sample from the 500 to the 4000 I have to go and re-assign the note numbers from 0 to 60, just annoying.

It seems that with the 500, the sample itself doesnt hold any information about stuff like note number or even play back method (loop, oneshot, note on). I think the program holds all that information, so if you dont save the samples as part of a progam they dont get translated to the 4000. I always thought it was weird that you have to go to the program to set the playback method of the sample instead of being able to adjust that in Trim page of the sample itself.

I tried setting the note number to 60 on the 500 after I saved a sample to see if it would show up on the 4000 as 60 also. But since I didnt assigan and save the sample as part of a program that info isnt transfered.

2) When playing back a sequence on the 500 where the progam and sequence was made on the 4000 things sound off because the 500 automaticly seems to set the play back method to "loop" in the Trim page but the Program will have it set to one shot. I've only tried this once so Maybe its something I did, but the samples all overshoot where they are supposed to stop and start to stutter/repeat themselves.

madbeets wrote:

4000is1monster wrote:yeah you get the idea, I think everyone would love something like that. Do you think they'd actually listen if people requested it? Do you think it is even possible for the 500 to do this.

I get the idea, it just seems like a kludge.
I have chop shop on the 2500 and it's not all that incredible and doesn't help me trim samples much. I use it for the patched phrase function which is cool but I can trim the samples faster in regular trim mode. I can do them a lot faster in the computer and just save them to a CF card which is what I do 99% of the time. I use the 500 as a portable device so I'm not doing any sampling on it directly. I prep my material on the 2500 or on my computer then save it to a CF card and make beats on breaks at work or in my living room or in the doctors office like I did the other day.

I think things to add more real time control or automation or making programs easier would be alot more functional for a portable MPC than a half way chop shop function.

Wow I can't believe you don't use the chop shop in the 2500 for chopping up your samples.

.....anyway, I think the 500 definitely needs some sort of chopping function whether it is done by numbers or fake wave display it really doesn't matter we just need a chop function.

Your idea looks great 4000. This looks along the lines of something JJ would do....I can't see akai implementing this idea into the 500.

madbeets wrote:I use the 500 as a portable device so I'm not doing any sampling on it directly. I prep my material on the 2500 or on my computer then save it to a CF card and make beats on breaks at work or in my living room or in the doctors office like I did the other day.

I think things to add more real time control or automation or making programs easier would be alot more functional for a portable MPC than a half way chop shop function.

Second that! More real time tweakabiliy (more filter types, recordable track mutes, select sequence using pads, real time panning) and more program options (for instance, filter env and LFO) over sample editing any day! Sample editing is just soooo much easier on a PC. Chop Shop? ReCycle anyone?

However, both would, of course, be nice, to get the 500 to be a real portable killer... =)

Oh, right, forgot...

Also, something they reeeeally need to fix is some kind of expand/scrolling of names, so we can read what's under the xx...04 currently showing for stuff with names more than like 4 characters. Really annoying. Also, would it be THAT hard to remember which sample was loaded last, so you wouldn't have to scroll through all the samlple list all the time. Also, a mode, when assigning samples, that would hide the samples in memory already assigned to a pad would be great!

- multi-timbral capability

- track volume

- forward & reverse looping
On my ASR-X I get nice sustained sample effects with no clicks by using this feature. The sample plays from the loop point to the end point and then backwards to the loop point and repeats. This is how I can play long notes with small chops. Increase the release and the sustained sound fades out nicely instead of cutting off abruptly.

I'm definitely co-signing on all the previous posts that mention LFO and more Q-link slider assignments.

As for the sample deletion issue, what about the purge function? I haven't used it yet. Isn't that supposed to make it unnecessary to clear memory by erasing unneeded samples one by one?

Since the 500 is my first MPC I'm not familiar with Akai's O.S. update track record. What is the best way to log suggestions with them? (if they even pay attention)

Somewhere in this forum there should be a compilation of the running JJ and Akai O.S. posts into one master wishlist.

Here are my most wanted features...

1) More than one mute group per program
2) Filter and Pitch envelope
3) Marquee style display of longer filenames (as described above)
4) LFO
5) Multimode filters (LP, BP, HP)
6) pseudographic display of waveform (as described above)
.
.
.
x) more individual outs (just joking)

They need to fix the polyphony problem.

High pass, band pass and notch filters would be nice aswell.