Merry go round polyphony on 500

Hi, After much deliberation, much trawling of threads here, I bought a mpc500.

The 'd' pad bank button doesn't work so it's going back but ...

Can anyone answer this ?

If I load up piano samples in 16 bit wav form, stereo, what should my polyphony be?
I don't mean what might you expect it to be but what are you guys getting?

I loaded up an octave of piano samples, total 32mb, I have 128 mb in the beast but I appear to be only getting 3 note polyphony- ie a simple chord no more- is this right or have I another fault to log

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this other than the familiar 'polyphony' sucks line !

Thanks

Mick

ps all effects are off !

Welcome to the 500 club!

I have not counted but sure it is more than three!! Also, I have never thought about whether or not the 32 note spec is for mono or stereo - I'd imagine it is for mono which is not that great. I shall check mine out when I get home but I have made some quite complex electronica tracks with overlapping arps and not had a polyphony issue yet.

Thanks GWM,

I'm looking forward to your note count !
Anyone else have a definite idea what the 500's limits are ?

Mick

Hello all,

I realise it's not possible for every post to receive a reply but I'll just ask again.

Does anyone have some hard facts regarding the Akai MPC500 and polyphony, especially if using say an octave or two of good quality piano samples?

I have to return this unit and just want to be able to list my situation as a fault or otherwise.(see my first post for details)

Thanks in anticipation

Mick

...though I have many problems with polyphony...I added the 128mb it made no diffs (i didn't think it would but some do)

I like fast (double-time) hats for some beats but they cause problems.. Say I have a 2 bar loop with kick, snare, and 1 stereo sample as the melody that runs throughout the 2 bars.. The hats make the sample stop abruptly and cut back in a bar later. Mute the hats and it plays fine. I don't really like quaver hats but that's all it seems to handle hats-wise...

...Also, the 500 does exactly the same when I go into Record Mode (even with the hats muted). Exit Record Mode and it plays fine again...

But this is absolute crap for something that's so versatile, and really annoying.

I made a beat last night, kick snare guitar, no bass, no hats... my friend was about to
rhyme over it and I had to explain to him that my new product that I paid £375 (w/ RAM) for can't play 3 sounds together in record mode...and that's before you've even hit record.

His response was: 'oh, I should be able to ride it'

...but the poor guy only heard half the sample every 2 bars! lol

we still made it, its raw as hell, without bass it's probably not classed as hip-hop, lol, but fancy being limited to 3 sounds..

Now, don't get me wrong I've made stuff with more sounds and it likes me better when I don't put double 'guh,gung/kah' kicks and hats in...but if you like rolling beats like early 90s style (par example) you need those double hits, or you're a bit stuck really, or maybe I'm destined to make some grooveless MTV RnB infused tely jingle...n then we could get rappers who say the same rhyme every line with a different pre-fix! joke n*ggas, broke n*ggas etc. You've gotta laugh.

like dude said welcome to the club. everyone with a 500 that I talk to has these kinds of issues. While I dont know how to fix it, you can work around it.

mute the hh and play the rest of your drums. record that like its a new sample. put it in your sequence. repeat as neccessary (drums with bass, drums with bass and sample, etc). this is crazy annoying because the mute group obviously mutes the whole beat now, BUT you can at least keep whipping it and be able to hear your whole track.

hope this helps homie. keep it funky

ps - hook it up if you figure out how to increase polophony like you wanted.

Max Powers wrote:
ps - hook it up if you figure out how to increase polophony like you wanted.

I bet I could get you some phony polos though!

Cool, big thanks! I'll try the re-sample method next time she chokes!

I get my phony polos from TK Max...or T J Max when I was in Texas!

I've been planning on sampling a bunch of chords.. Rhodes, piano, etc, rather than playing actual chords from 3 or 4 pads. Maybe set up a program with 6 pads of eminor chords, another 6 for another key and so on.

One good thing about limited polyphony is that you're gonna end up with better timing, as the more notes there are playing, the longer the possible delay times there could be between them.

I don't understand, please explain further Avene! I don't have timing issues so I'm not sure what you mean. The fast hats that stop my guitar sample playing are quantized and exactly on-point...the timing doesn't drift, sounds just cut abruptly. Are you saying that the tails of multiple notes played together can make notes actually play off beat even if they're played or quantized precisely in time?

Love yo beats, big up brotha

Tex

i cant even get a simple drum loop (kick, snare, 1/8 note hats) to play with a few stereo samples. to get my drums to play with anything i've resorted to just kicks and snares.

dont know what the hell is wrong with your MPC 500s...I run drums n bass in mono and all other in stereo up to hell a 3-4 layered melody and never get cut outs and I run MPC effects.

I've seen this complaint often here and futureproducers but never experienced it.

Could be a bad production run or you need new OS from Akai website???? don't know but

good luck on that issue

well im fairly new to the mpc, but i now i know i just gotta spread my sounds out on different tracks, cas i was stackin one track too much, so sounds were cuttin out

textyle wrote:I don't understand, please explain further Avene! I don't have timing issues so I'm not sure what you mean.

Yeah, due to how MPCs work, the more notes you have playing simultaneously, the more delay there is between them. Most people probably wouldn't notice it in the 500 though. I tested it once. I had 16 notes of the same sound playing simultaneously and recorded the result in Soundforge and zoomed in as far as I could go to check the waveform. By the look of it there were 3 notes in perfect sync at the very start. Then there were another 3 slightly later, then another three and so on.

In comparison, the MPC4000 I had at the time couldn't play 2 notes in perfect sync! So the MPC500 essentially has 3x better timing than the MPC4000.

Ha! Lol - thanks Av, I had no idea - were those delays audible? If not I guess it doesn't matter and it's better to have more polyphony, then you don't get the cut-outs.