Akai 2.8.1 anyone tried it yet?

HiGrade1 wrote:yet every day they throw ads at us to buy more expansion packs... they seem to be on top of that aspect... smh

of course they are, they are a company and they have to make money. Why do you think people got fired at akai? Y'all might have heard of this corona thing going on.. couple of people died, couple of people fired.. It's pretty simple business; if the revenue stops, people get fired and development gets put on hold.. because.. there is NO money.

And yes, i know y'all have ''invested'' a lot of in Akai. But nobody is stopping you to return your mpc or sell it..

I know this is an old thread and version 2.9 is out now. However, I just bought an MPC X that came with 2.8.1 when it arrived. Everything seemed to work just fine until last night when I noticed occasional audio dropouts while the sequencer was running. At first, I thought it was my audio interface/mixer until it happened again while I was looking at the MPC screen and noticed the meter display on the main screen also freezes during the brief audio dropouts which happened randomly and unpredictably on occasions.

I'm hoping this is only a software problem and not hardware related. Before I upgrade to 2.9 (which I just read introduced more bugs, some of which are serious) or return the unit to the store (thinking it's a lemon) for an exchange, I would like to know if any of you have experienced similar random audio dropouts or freezing in 2.8.1? That way I would have at least some confirmation that this is a software problem and not a hardware issue. BTW, I'm using the MPC X as standalone.

I'm going to try and do a system reset the next time I mess with it.

Ok. I will definitely try that as soon as I get a chance. I'm hoping that will fix the dropouts. If it doesn't, I will have to consider returning and exchanging the unit. I'll let you know what happens.

It's an open box item that I bought at a discounted price. Hmmm. I wonder if this was bought and returned before because of the same issue?
Thanks, Lampdog!

I only have experienced audio dropouts when MPC is playing in standalone and you scroll through audio tracks only when the record button is armed and this behaviour stops when greyed.

Ok. I just spent a lot of time with my MPC X yesterday and overnight. Before doing a reset, I spent some time just basically learning how to do certain things with this machine that I'm accustomed to doing on my other MPCs and learning the workflow. While doing so, I did continue to experience dropouts from time to time and even experienced a crash while working within a program and the machine reloaded the current project. I'm glad I wasn't working on anything serious!!!!

At that point, I decided to go ahead and do the reset in preferences. From then on, I experienced no more dropouts, freezes or crashes while playing around with it several hours afterwards. I was feeling much better about it at that point. I then found out there was a newer 2.9.1 release that fixed some of the bugs in 2.9.0 and people who tried it confirmed it fixed the issues I was concerned about. As a result, I decided to download it and try it out for myself.

One of the issues reported by people using 2.9.0 involved midi ports not being recognized or remembered on connected USB midi interfaces and midi data not being remembered within projects that used midi ports from externally connected USB interfaces after loading those already saved projects (previously saved from within 2.8 I presume). This means you would need to setup all of the midi port information again for those tracks within that project, which sucks!! The other reported issue was not being able to save new projects that use midi data associated with external USB midi interfaces.

After downloading 2.9.1 and updating my MPC, I tested out all of the issues I was concerned about. Before and after updating from 2.8.1 to 2.9.1, MPC easily recognized my Emagic Unitor 8 midi interface I have connected via USB and all of of it's ports immediately appeared and were identified by name. Wonderful!!! After the update, I made a beat using sounds from my keyboard that I had connected via the midi ports on the externally connected Unitor 8, saved the project, and reloaded it successfully!!!! On top of that, I continued to no longer encounter any more audio dropouts, or freezing, or crashing. To add icing on the cake, the new Drum Synth plugins are NICE!!!! That brings me to where I am right now, currently running 2.9.1. Hopefully, everything will continue to go just as well the next time I turn my machine back on.

If for whatever reason, I experience any unexpected issues in the future, I'll keep ya posted.

Thanks.

Thanks, Lampdog.