MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
By astarte76 Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:01 am
Ok I got my MPC 5000 in the mail yesterday. I own a Roland VS2480 and a MV-8000. My MPC came with two manuals a reference and a quick start guide. My question is because i could not find it in the manuals, what is the proper way to shutdown the MPC 5000. It has a push button switch in the left rear of the machine. Isn't this machine capable of direct to harddrive recording. Shouldnt this thing have a shutdown process before power off? I couldnt find anything in the manuals unless i'm missing one. When I turn my unit off it instantly shuts down wont that damage the harddrive. I understand that the operating system is run from the ROM but what will happen if you, say turned the unit off while the harddrive was doing something. Hmmm and no I'm not gonna try it. My Roland rigs have a shutdown process before power off although you can turn them off instantly at your own risk.
I can see nothing in the manuals about how to turn this unit on or off or am I missing a page.
Last edited by astarte76 on Wed Jul 29, 2009 12:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Jauly Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:51 pm
When I got my 5000 I was wondering the same. There is no shut down... hope the HD heads are wearing good helmets :)
By moyphee Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:08 pm
poundaproblem wrote:I personally dont worry too much about powering down on gear with HD's just make sure your not currently accessing the drive (saving, loading, viewing) and you should be fine.



The problem is that the HD is spinning regardless of whether you accessing it or not. Devices with a shutdown sequence will spin down the HD and then park the heads. Without parking the heads you'll get errors and the worst situations a crash.

The heads don't use a motor or spring to movie. It uses a voice coil just like the ones in your speakers to move the arm. When the voltage is cut abruptly the heads slam back and remain unparked. Typically if you do this enough times you'll start to hear a sort of clank (arm realign) on HD spin up. That's pretty much the beginning of the end.

Jauly wrote:When I got my 5000 I was wondering the same. There is no shut down... hope the HD heads are wearing good helmets :)


Spin down and park are not instant so your implication spot on.
By astarte76 Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:24 am
I think this needs to be addressed by a software change for the MPC 5000. Or maybe the company knows something we dont.
By moyphee Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:11 pm
Even on a laptop or pc the spin down only occurs when the system is idle. It also takes time to to spin up so that would give it a lag before access. If there is no lag the drive was still spinning unless it's a solid state drive. I supposed JJ worked all of that out.
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By mr_debauch Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:18 pm
and doesn't the 4k have a feature to stop the spinning?
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By Askia Shaheed Wed Jul 29, 2009 11:36 pm
I learn something new everyday. I wasn't aware that my MPC 5000s hard drive was spinning even when I didn't access the hard drive. Especially when the hard drive is only used for saving and loading files unless you are using audio tracks. ???

....from my experience, my MPC 5000 behaves just like the 2500 with the JJ OS as far as the hard drive being idle.
By Heavie Thu Jul 30, 2009 5:32 am
mr_debauch wrote:and doesn't the 4k have a feature to stop the spinning?



Yes it do and thank god for it. My mpc4k original hard drive failed and I quickly replaced it with a very old 20gig hard drive. That old drive makes my mpc4k sound like a old pc running windows 95 or a old fridge compressor.

As soon as the mpc4k finish loading all my data, I go right to the spin down feature. If I wasn't so lazy, I'll swap it out with a quiet hard drive.
By seiko Thu Jul 30, 2009 7:58 am
I would even pay money to have this feature !
I hate the sound of harddrives...so for all who say it's sooo quiet : open your MPC and disconnect the drive and you'll hear the difference. Most of the time I have it disconnected , only when I use the HD feature I need it.

To stop it from spinning via a menu would save me from opening my MPC from time to time.
By Sepru Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:56 am
Hi,
My mpc5000 got some overvoltage right after switching on and stopped working. Anyone knows if it has protection in its input switch? Or a fuse in the power supply? :|