about to buy a 5000: need some verification..!

hey guys, im about to buy a 5K but i have a used 4K from a friend as an option. now what i wanted to know is if theres any of you guys who has tested the 5K under full strain, for example used all the 4 midi outputs to sequence outboard workstations and sound modules etc. how does the 5K behave when fully stressed. are there any asyncronities? how buggy is the new OS2?

thanx in advance!!

emu1820 wrote:hey guys, im about to buy a 5K but i have a used 4K from a friend as an option. now what i wanted to know is if theres any of you guys who has tested the 5K under full strain, for example used all the 4 midi outputs to sequence outboard workstations and sound modules etc. how does the 5K behave when fully stressed. are there any asyncronities? how buggy is the new OS2?

thanx in advance!!

i've never experienced any bugs. I had the 5k running a prophet 8, omega 8, motif es rack and fantom xr rack at the same time. No problems because its all MIDI. no out of sync issues.

The only issues I had was my last 5k would freeze up frequently.. Theres a reason why the instructions say to have an authorized akai dealer install memory.

I am preparing mine for a live PA right now and I am running into all kinds of issues and bugs.
OS 2 is not nearly as stable as the newset OS in the 2500. That is all I am going to say.

I would actually prefer to work with the 2500 than with the 5000 right now. Also akai's OS updates are slow as hell, I don't understand why they don't release 2.01 2.02 etc

the machine is quite nice if you are going to be using for simple things but I have noticed the more complex things get the slower it performs and the more error prone it gets.

I got mine running a xv5050, blofeld desktop synth, micro x and logic 8. I have not encountered any midi issues yet(5 Months).

Get the 4k, go with wats known. I heard the 5k has fail all over it, and the one I did try froze up soon as I was loading programs.

I cant comment on the midi portion of your question since when I have used the 5000 it was connected to a midi patch bay with 7 other devices and not acting as a master.

BUt I can say that it does EVERYTHING else SLOWER than my 2500.

my buddy and I go back and forth on this.. he absolutely LOVES his 5000, yet gets mad jealous when I show him JJOS features. then again, he is one of those kinda naive "have the top of the line" kinda dudes so.. I suppose some of it for him is the ignorance of being able to boast a bunch of "flagship" features........ that work poorly or are insignificant at best.

The funny thing is, when I bring up something like the added features of JJ, he'll reply like "ahh well I can do that in my Daw better, blah blah, but then thinks that the Mediocre synth in the 5k is worth bragging about as if I cant do that on a real Synth better. hahahahaha
actually I just realized I need to slap him.

but yo for real.. everything I have done on the 5000 feels slower and not as fluent to use as compared to my 2500.
Looking at the large screen is great, but even the layout of some of the buttons are annoying, like the open window key and the mode button being in different places.(and to me less easy to access quickly without thought).

But mostly it boils down to work flow.. and to me its mad contrived on the 5000. so if I had to trade my 2500 for a 5000 I would not. at the same time, the bigger screen is very nice visually, but the extra Q-links are meaningless to me personally... extra vol/pan params via mixer & track mixing.. blah blah.. the synth blah blah.. 8 audio tracks in a slow environment with a buggy OS.. blah blah... I mean its mad nice to say I have the "best one they make". But in 2009 when referring to NuKai's Flagsh!t model mpc5000.. it just doesn't mean what it used too..

Basically a 2500 with JJ will pretty much do everything the 5000 can do and better with less issue and WAY increased workflow.. minus an insignificant HW feature here and there.

What do yall mean by its slower? Are yall taking about saving times, or what, cause i can make a track in the same amount of time of all MPC's(as far as sequencing)

seems to have slow times when going to load or save...and getsslower the more you load..
doesnt have purge unused samples / programs which really sucks
also what was strange....for some samples loaded into memory sample edit did not appear....no clue why that is, cos for other samples it was present

gertie wrote:seems to have slow times when going to load or save...and getsslower the more you load..
doesnt have purge unused samples / programs which really sucks
also what was strange....for some samples loaded into memory sample edit did not appear....no clue why that is, cos for other samples it was present

The only two issues that seem correct, which is the problem with all MPC's is loading times(saving time is definitely slow as well in the MPC 5000). And the Purge unused Programs(you can purge unused samples and then just delete that particular program)

Akai should have put a much more powerful processor in the 5k, no doubt about that.

the machine does have a lot of potential and we saw it when they upgraded the OS from 1.0 to the much better 2.0 but the 2.0 still has some bugs.

all in all the akai engineers really need to get going and optimize the code for the 5k.

Or Open source the OS and let us do it for you if you can't but dont **** hold us hostage after shelling out $2,500.

Hire JJ back or something and let him work on the 5k, he obviously knows what he is doing.

Coz wrote:Akai should have put a much more powerful processor in the 5k, no doubt about that.

Mos def

all this 2500 talk.. two things come to mind..

1. I wonder why they are being discontinued?

2. What are 2500 users doing in a 5000 thread (especially ones that dislike the 5k)?- I never go to the MPC 3000, 2000 etc, because I don't own any of those machines and dont plan on owning any of them

diegoeskryptic wrote:I never go to the MPC 3000, 2000 etc, because I don't own any of those machines and dont plan on owning any of them

what's true for you isn't true for everyone else. correct?

diegoeskryptic wrote:all this 2500 talk.. two things come to mind..

1. I wonder why they are being discontinued?

2. What are 2500 users doing in a 5000 thread (especially ones that dislike the 5k)?- I never go to the MPC 3000, 2000 etc, because I don't own any of those machines and dont plan on owning any of them

just because you dont own something doesnt mean you cant comment on it. And I wouldn't go as far as to say I personally dislike the 5000... I just wouldn't want IT over my 2500.

But in a forum, if someone asks a question and you are equipped to answer it from your own personal experiences, then why not.. Are we not entitled to answer because we dont own one?

I used the 5000 for months at my friends house before I bought my 2500. When He first got it I was actually jealous and dead set on having one too.. Until I used it more and more and became frustrated with some of the features as compared to the 2000xl, and also impressed a bit by others too.. So then I began to research other Mpc's and put that together with my experience using the 2000, 2000xl, and 5000 and made a decision.

Just last week I took his 5000 apart to install some different buttons and have a look at the LCD and LEDS and what not. So I know a bit about the 5000, but I dont have to own it to comment here.
see wut im saying. i would listen to anyone's opinion about something if they had experience with it.
Owning something or not, doesn't entitle you or dis-entitle you to post in the respective section of that device.