Reading CD-ROMs on MPC X

I'm old school in some ways. One way is using sample CD-ROMs to acquire some of my drums and samples. I have a multiple CD-ROM collections from LA-Riots to X-Static Goldmine. The point is I have hundreds of Akai CD-ROMs. I purchased a mint condition MPC X and I can't figure out how to read Akai CD-ROMs. I purchase a usb CD-ROM drive and I can't figure it out. Is it even possible? It seems that they didn't figure that wasn't needed in the firmware. I have multiple MPCs and it seems counter intuitive that they wouldn't include this feature in a "Flagship unit". I would expect, for as much as they are selling them for, that this thing would do it all.

They've moved on, not even sure it will recognise a USB CDROM drive, but even if it does those disks are likely in a proprietary format (Akai S1000?) so the MPC is not going to have the ability to mount the CDs, just like a computer cannot natively mount them. But you could use your computer with suitable software to mount and to transfer your CDROMs to a USB flash drive and load them that way. You'll have to search around to see what's the best software that supports your computer OS

This is one of the reasons why I haven't sold my Z4...

You'll have to dump those CD-ROM files on the Computer and convert them into WAV/MP3 so the MPC can recognize em

I gave up on my sample cd's until I got Halion which can still import AKAI/EMU discs.. None of the 'translators' I used ever made the program files properly, so all you basically get is a bunch of WAVs (hopefully the loop points are still intact after conversion). The program files usually have no envelope settings, no filter settings, etc..

I had Tran slator **** up entire discs where everything was panned all the way to the left on top of an envelope that just made a click when you pressed a key because it wasn't open at all.

I guess I shouldn't sell my 5000 then. Thanks for the help.

g0man1 wrote:I guess I shouldn't sell my 5000 then. Thanks for the help.

No way! The 5000 should be able to grab those from the CD as they should be (I think, they were really formatted for an S1000/S3000). The sampler itself in the S5000 is still quite a bit more advanced than the one in the current MPC's too. I do all of my sequencing from the MPC, but my E6400 plays most of my tracks because its got actual sound shaping capabilities in it.

You MIGHT be able to export those from the 5000 though and move them to the new MPC. I dont know if its still there, but in the 'early days' of 2.0, you could open the S5000's files natively (I think they were .S50 format?) as well as AKP files from a Z4/Z8. I tried almost all of those formats with Trans lator and they all came up as default programs though. All of them were panned all the way to the left, the envelopes were closed so nothing made any sound, etc.. Maybe if you save them on the 5000 and open them that way, they'll work better. I'd trust any sampler's built in engine over anything Chick en Syst ems have ever done hahaha.

Monotremata wrote: I'd trust any sampler's built in engine over anything Chi cken Sy stems have ever done hahaha.

Don't get me started on my 'Trans lator' experiences.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Don't get me started on my 'Trans lator' experiences.

I'm very happy Garth doesn't hang out here (or does he??).

That guys got a radar for every time someone mentions his halfass software over at Gearspace/slutz and KVR and comes out of the woodwork to always blame everyone else's setup for the reason that piece of crap never works right hah.

It's one of those things that sounds simple... translate from system x to system y... and when you start to think about it... it isn't as simple as you'd like. That said, the website has always made it look like "hey we can do pretty much anything to anything"... and when it's not there I remember seeing plenty of "coming any day now"... I have long since given up even checking for any of those any day now systems, as I've just moved on.

I suspect that the real problem is, there's not that much money to translate from old systems to new ones in this manner, which leads to doing the simplest thing possible... such as not bothering with envelopes, panning, or other settings... and just taking the most basic settings from system x and making the most basic settings for system y. And I get it... looping types vary from system to system, volume and filter envelopes vary, the actual filters and effects vary... you're just not going to make everybody happy, no matter how much you try and expand on the problem.

It is also why I feel like the auto sampler is, in general, the better solution, and only because it is simpler. You can throw time/memory at the problem and just call it a day. It is going to be sufficient for probably 85-90% of the use cases, and broadly you'll find that most people will be happy with it. Those of us who spent a significant amount of our lives dialing in and number padding it up to create specific sounds on this older gear weren't going to be happy with how it got processed/translated in the first place...

Even though I get it, I don't have to be happy with it though

OP, here is what you do:

1. Hook up that USB CD Drive to your computer
2. Move all of your .WAV samples over into a new file called (for example) "Drum Samples" on your desktop
3. With your MPC X Powered on
4. Hook it up to your computer via USB, then enter Controller mode
5. Move your "Drum Samples" file over into the drive of your MPC X (which will pop up on your desktop once you enter controller mode)

There you go!

Sucks that it has to be THAT many steps. But at least you still get to use your old samples...

The older Akai CD-ROMs didn't have .wav files... they were .snd or other file types, and the CD ROM formats were frequently not ISO compliant.

You may be right, but it's more likely that the OP isn't going to be able to take as simple an approach as you provided, as I'd be willing to bet that the computer won't be able to mount some, if not all, of the OP's CDs, at least not without special tools and other tricks, that aren't default on a windows install.

NearTao wrote:The older Akai CD-ROMs didn't have .wav files... they were .snd or other file types, and the CD ROM formats were frequently not ISO compliant.

You may be right, but it's more likely that the OP isn't going to be able to take as simple an approach as you provided, as I'd be willing to bet that the computer won't be able to mount some, if not all, of the OP's CDs, at least not without special tools and other tricks, that aren't default on a windows install.

Yeah you can't just stick an Akai/EMU/Ensoniq/Roland sample disc in a PC or Mac and copy stuff off it. They all used proprietary formats, and your computer can't even read the discs to begin with. Oddly EMU was on their way to switching to the FAT file format, but it was only available in the last beta OS that was released for the E4 Ultra samplers. My internal drives and SD cards are all FAT32, but all the EMU discs still use the older EOS format. The S5000/6000 and Z series used FAT for their systems but the sample cd's predate all those and were made with the S1000/S3000 in mind so they're a much older program type, and its in Akai's proprietary disk format as well.

OP - There was an old app around 1999/2000 or so called CDXtract that will do the trick. Its long discontinued, but you can find it. I use it wrapped in WINE here every now and then (it never made it to Intel Mac's and is only PPC, but the Windows version still runs in Win 10). It will probably do the same thing with the program files as Translator will, no settings really, but you can use it to extract everything as WAV files too if you just want those. It should keep any loop points set in the samples intact too, so its not too hard to re-create the original program for the most part.

In used this a while ago:

https://www.lsnl.jp/~ohsaki/software/akaitools/

NearTao wrote:It's one of those things that sounds simple... translate from system x to system y... and when you start to think about it... it isn't as simple as you'd like. That said, the website has always made it look like "hey we can do pretty much anything to anything"... and when it's not there I remember seeing plenty of "coming any day now"... I have long since given up even checking for any of those any day now systems, as I've just moved on.

I bought it specifically to translate my new stuff back to legacy MPC format. I wasn't expecting miracles, assumed there would be a lot of tweaking involved, but I just wanted something to bulk convert into the basics and I could polish up in the actual machine later.

It seems like he has come up with some interesting ideas, like converting keygroup into legacy DRUM formats. But...big BUT. Very few of the MPC conversions seemed to work as promised. For a start the app itself was constantly crashing (v6 on a Mac Mojave at the time,). After some back and forth with him I finally got to the stage where I was ready to try some conversions and everything I tried wasn't working. For example, MPC4000 akp files were unrecognised by an MPC4000, app crashes while converting, lots of other issues, couldn't understand how any of this had never been picked up previously, some of those conversions must have been in the app for several years. But the latest XPM conversions were also very poor.

I have a very extensive set of back and forth emails with them over several months, I was just reading through some of them now, it's crazy I stuck it out for so long.

At one point he said it was unusual for people to want to convert 'down' instead of 'up'

Ultimately I pointed out that I was not interested in being a beta tester and I just wanted the software to work as advertised. He was willing to fix everything, I can't fault that, but I was not willing to spend many hours bug testing it all for him in the first place, so I moved on. v6 doesn't even work on my current system and I have no interest in paying to upgrade to v7 to see if anything has been fixed. Waste of 130 EUR (plus the USB CDROM drive I had to buy to install it in the first place), and a massive waste of my time.