MPC X, MPC Live, MPC One & MPC Key 61 Forum: Support and discussion for the MPC X, MPC Live, MPC Live II, MPC One & MPC Key 61; Akai's current generation of standalone MPCs.
User avatar
By justineastwick Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:18 pm
NearTao wrote:To be fair, it's really the same platform, just a few extra buttons, cv outs, and of course... a speaker. I don't think that's what anybody would have guessed when they thought mk2 a few years back :D

Yeah, I was against the speaker at first, but the MPC Live/Live 2 is kind of a very unique MPC. The first battery and now a speaker? I wonder what the MPC Live 3 is going to have... I know the MPC X is the flagship model, but it’s looking now like maybe the MPC Live 2 is. Less of those Q-Links, but more zany features.
By 40Beatz Mon Jun 21, 2021 1:32 pm
In A Weird Way...The Live 2 has become the Flagship lol....(IMHO)

I use my Live 2 More than the X
By sinik Sun May 22, 2022 9:37 pm
went back to this thread to search for some specs on the mpc x.
looked up the arm chip used in the current mpc line-up, and stumbled upon this:
https://forum.radxa.com/t/introduce-rock-5-model-b-arm-desktop-level-sbc/8361

seems like a new radxa arm chip is up for production. i do not have any technological knowledge of these things, but it seems like this is an update of the old/current chip they are using?

although it says SCB rather than SOC. so not exactly an update.

anyways, i was just wondering what other possible new chip they could use for a future line up of mpcs...

peace
User avatar
By NearTao Sun May 22, 2022 11:20 pm
so it's entirely possible for Akai to pick anything they want... though at this point I'd suspect that they are familiar enough with ARM as a platform that they'd probably stick with it.

I just read the specs really quickly, and it wasn't apparent to me that the SOC that the SCB is based on is a drop in replacement, though it is possible. The MPC X/Live/One is based on Rockchip RK3288, and this is the RK3588. This has a comparison https://gadgetversus.com/processor/rockchip-rk3588-vs-rockchip-rk3288/.

They both have the same ISA version, which would be a good sign for a drop in, potential for broad binary compatibility, but you need to remember that the MPC is made up of a lot more devices, and the OS layer probably cannot address (at least cleanly) a lot of the added features and functions. The biggest callout for this would certainly be changes in addressable memory and number of CPUs.

A few points, the single core speed for the new chip is a base 1.4ghz, which is likely kept lower to reduce thermals for running so many cores, and the older core runs at 1.8ghz, which may very well mean that the older chip could actually run faster, since they are both on the same ISA, if the RK3588 isn't able to run at 1.8ghz for long periods of time. I doubt this would be an issue, but I'm speculating that running all 8 cores would likely cause it to throttle lower. More compute power, but operating slower... and this can indeed cause problems in the audio domain for juggling buffers and such. Anyways... just a guess.

Max memory goes from 2gb to 32gb... which I am sure a lot of people would love, but this is likely cost prohibitive. Fortunately the memory bus speeds are much faster, which means that having more cores addressing the memory *shouldn't* be a bottle neck for large audio workloads.

Honestly though... the memory is probably the biggest upshot, and I doubt going from 4 cores to 8 cores would double the amount of CPU... sure it'd be nice, but are people going to be jumping to upgrade for *just* double CPU performance and more memory? The rest of the features called out like 8k video and stuff, hardly make sense unless they moved to having HDMI out in the first place... I guess I put it in the "nice to have" kind of upgrade space, but it doesn't look like something I think is massively compelling for them to move their product line to from a marketing standpoint.

anyway... enough techno babbling for now. I'm sure others that have more time could weigh in with better details.
By haz_mat Tue Jan 09, 2024 5:52 pm
Grateful to have found this to see the insides and try to get a sense before I opened mine up - I had the SD card reader get a card jammed into it (something forced the card inside) which broke the SD reader. From the pics I was able to find out a replacement for them - if anyone ever runs into the same issue, it's an easy solder job and a $1 part https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KY9TMWW