My mpc is lagging making a horrible crunching sound!

So I bought an mpc last month and set about recording all my songs (sequences). I started noticing that there was a loud lagging and distorted crunching at the beginning of each turnaround of the sequence and it only got worse. My songs are each about 10-16 programs on a 12 bar loop and when everything is unmuted there mega crunching and lagging/ slowing down and even just stopping. Sounds awful!

So I tried my friends mpc and I’m now in the middle of setting the programs to the tracks (and un-transposing them?!) and it’s starting to do the same crunching lag! (Albeit not as bad as in my mpc!)

Any advice!??

If it helps most of the songs are made with the 808 and a DX7 keyboard plugins.
And I’m using and SD card with plenty of space. the internal memory had 1 or 2 GBs free so i don’t think space is the problem (although it says memory is almost full) but I don’t understand why it would be full.

I was thinking of buying a new mpc1+ but if it’s just going to do the same problems maybe it’s a waste of money.

Please help as I’m going on tour next week and I’m starting to pull my hair out over this.

Thanks

Do you have an external usb card? if so try plugging it into your mpc and switching from "internal" to the usb card and then switch back to internal and disconnect the usb card.. that sounds like a rate or blocksize issue as it hits the playback buffer internally. it shouldnt crunch unless the buffer is getting filled with either the wrong rate or size.

Another thing to keep an eye on is cpu bandwidth. if you pin your cpu, you will have this same issue as the system cant seem to process audio frames fast enough.

the reason i say to plug a usb card and switch back and forth between cards is because the mpc software detects rate and size when you switch. whats good for the goose isnt always good for the gander. an external may run at 44100 but the mpc iirc prefers 48000. when you switch it re-inits the device by detecting compatible rates and selecting one. Ive seen those settings carry over and cause this very problem. switching back and forth de-inits the internal and re-inits it. your last owner likely powered off with the external card selected, then yanked the usb cable and sold the mpc.

I hope this solves your error so we can become mortal enemies. there can only be one... *throws a sword down* pick it up!

Could you record a video showing this (private on youtube) and link it here? Maybe you're using some super heavy stuff like heavy plugins with super long samples?
Have you purged all unused programs/samples from the memory?