Support and discussion for all of Akai’s modern standalone MPCs including the MPC X / X SE, MPC Live 1, 2 & 3, MPC One / One+, MPC Key 37/61.
By a7v7 Mon Dec 29, 2025 12:39 am
I am following the Key 61 Masterclass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4ziHAO8cIk&t=1694s. I am using v3.6.0 firmware. A few things I've noticed:
1. Looping is enabled: If I go to the grid view, I can disable loop mode. If I don't the sequence doesn't move past the first 4 bars. This seems to be true of all the demos too (at least all the demos I've tried).
2. When I load the assets from a USB stick, I get errors. Some have to do sample memory; many samples are not loaded. Also, several of the plugins are not loaded either. All of this (may) be related to low memory. If I try to load again (2nd time), most of the time "it passes". I think it loaded everything (although I can't be sure). At this point the Key 61 complains of "low memory". The RAM appears to be 80% full. To me that's not low; I think of 3% as low, but maybe Akai is being conservative.
3. Last, when I load a "new project" (which is ideally empty) -- the RAM is sitting at 29% usage. According to google, the Key 61 has 4GB of RAM. Let's say 1Gb used for Linux, etc. 30% of 3GB is 900Mb of samples. If it's 30% of 4Gb for Linux, etc., that's 1.2Gb used for system overhead. To me these numbers seem high. Does anyone have any insight?

Thanks,

ACV
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By MPC-Tutor Mon Dec 29, 2025 1:19 am
I believe a new project on the key 61 will load at least one plugin track (maybe more), in which case you'll definitely get a chunk of ram used up depending on your default plugin (which might be fabric XL). Change your project template to load no plugin tracks by default, or change the default plugin to one with with low ram usage (e.g tubesynth).

Errors when loading, that could just be down to running out of memory, or a corrupt USB drive. Would need more info on the errors (especially the plugin loading ones), but try alternative storage drives to rule out corruption (and configure the plugin track amendments above).

I don't own a 4GB model so cannot comment on how ram is allocated on those models, on the 2GB models around 1GB is used up by Linux and the MPC app itself.
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By Lampdog Mon Dec 29, 2025 1:11 pm
Brand new, by default, I remeber a few plug-ins are auto-loaded and I remember Fabric XL (heavy) being one of them. Go into PREFERENCES and tailor EVERYTHING to your liking. Doing this will stop many things that may take up memory/resources, give you excellent shortcuts to features/options and make beatmaking life a lil easier.

In preferences make sure to go into everything and scroll all the way to the bottom of all menus, find and UNCHECK “statistics” as well.