MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
By BrianGrassfield Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:35 am
Hi Everyone! I exprienced a strange error yesterday. I made a whole chillout tune in my MPC5K and I wanted to record tracks as independent audio tracks in my computer. When I synced Pro Tools (or Cubase, whatever) with the gear, after 32-40 measures the MPC tempo drifted even it synced with MTC. Hm, thats bad, but yeah, I can record it independently to the computer's tempo.

But then I started to investigate the problem. This drifting seems constant, and the gap closing on higher tempo and openeing on slower tempo, even if the gear synced up to the PC with MTC!!! How crazy this? I thought it must be the PC badly counting, and spent some hours to read forums about finding reasons of drifting MIDI on PC, but found nothing except hardware and "slow machine" problems which are not relevant on a supa-dupa-asskicking-latesttechnology-geek configuration like mine.

Then I started another test. I set up my Fantom, Radias and MOTIF and created a 100 bpm, 2 bar long arpeggiator loop on each. I switched off syncing, and turned to internal clocking in all of them, and just triggered the patches as note plays.

Guess what happend! All of it can stay in tempo with PC in freerun mode! None of them with the MPC.

So my question is, can anyone explore this weird problem? Because it seems there can be two possibilities: all of my gear and my PC counting tempo faster then needed, or the MPC counting slower than needed.

If someone has struggled with this, could you help me?
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By Insomniac Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:05 pm
I've had similar (if not same) problem countless times myself
using the 5000 & reason or live or audition or you name it.
It's pretty sad to spend that money on hardware & have results
like that with seemingly no hope for improvement updates.

I'm near fed up myself. The thing still serves a purpose but
considering the features it's said to have & that should function
properly.. Very disappointing. I'm really hoping these sorts of issues
are computer software/hardware related but given the plethora
of other bugs the 5k has, I'm just not surprised.


Haven't used software lately & can't remember if I ever
got that sorted out. I know I've done quite a bit with software
& the MPC in the past so maybe I did fix it.
I'll give it a look soon as I get a chance
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By RodmanSan Sat Aug 30, 2014 5:08 pm
I use a Cirklon sequencer as a master for my 5000...with this i can retrigger the start after every bar...this way the drift is not noticable.

Don't know if this is possible with other DAWs or sequencers...but surely something to look into.