FW 3.4.2. seems totally unusable for serious music making

Since I am planning for a future live set, where I want to use the MPC X as a MIDI sequencer for various outboard synths/drummachines, as well as an audio- and audio plugin player, I conducted a stress test with it today with a friend. I was (and am) excited about the new 3.x software in terms of UI and features but…

Using the latest 3.4.3 stand-alone software we created various projects to investigate its limits.
1. Project with just 8 audio plugins
2. Project with just 8 audio tracks
3. Project with both 8 audio plugin as well as 8 audio track.

*None* of the projects could be played without hearing random plops, ticks, outbursts of noise or disappearing audio, sometimes all audio, sometimes with random tracks.

Now, I am under the impression that 3.4.3 is not a beta firmware anymore is it? On Akai’s website 3.4 beta 3 is the last FW that has the word “beta” in it, and in the versions after that they do not use “beta” in the name or description anymore.

It was a very disappointing experience and I can not understand that anyone would take the stage with this MPC firmware.
I mean, you have bugs and you have bugs. I can live with the “LFO phase is inverted” kind of bugs, but when the MPC can not do it’s core task of playing back tracks without glitches, plops, speaker killing audio or, just as worse, disappearing audio, it becomes useless.

scd wrote:Since I am planning for a future live set, where I want to use the MPC X as a MIDI sequencer for various outboard synths/drummachines, as well as an audio- and audio plugin player, I conducted a stress test with it today with a friend. I was (and am) excited about the new 3.x software in terms of UI and features but…

Using the latest 3.4.3 stand-alone software we created various projects to investigate its limits.
1. Project with just 8 audio plugins
2. Project with just 8 audio tracks
3. Project with both 8 audio plugin as well as 8 audio track.

*None* of the projects could be played without hearing random plops, ticks, outbursts of noise or disappearing audio, sometimes all audio, sometimes with random tracks.

Now, I am under the impression that 3.4.3 is not a beta firmware anymore is it? On Akai’s website 3.4 beta 3 is the last FW that has the word “beta” in it, and in the versions after that they do not use “beta” in the name or description anymore.

It was a very disappointing experience and I can not understand that anyone would take the stage with this MPC firmware.
I mean, you have bugs and you have bugs. I can live with the “LFO phase is inverted” kind of bugs, but when the MPC can not do it’s core task of playing back tracks without glitches, plops, speaker killing audio or, just as worse, disappearing audio, it becomes useless.

3.xx is terrible on mpc.

What's the cpu usage look like when you hit play on each one? The clicks, pops and glitches usually denote the cpu being over run. Now that there's all this extra goofy shit in the rom it seems that there is less cpu going to the places where we need it. This is what happens when akai tries to utilize an ancient arm chipset a decade past its end of life. We are running outta bandwidth to process all the crap simultaneously and its all because the mpc had no future proof planning in physical design. Even the crap they are selling now is exactly the same. Same 32bit arm chipset with quadcore arm7 cpu from a decade ago... i tried to tell people this 5 years ago but they didnt seem to care, it was sacreligious for me to challenge the boxes design aspects. Nobody made a stink of it and it is still going on and now there is nothing users can really do other than take it up the tail pipe. Instead akai just decided newer units only require more emmc and ram while neglecting its ability to process streams the most crucial element. Eventually they are going to run outta resources and deadlock the damn device, i feel thats what they did for us with 3.xx.

Without the resources to process all these silly bells and whistles akai should really be focusing on making the rom appliance-like with fewer functions and a rock solid MPC like experience where they kept focus and allocation toward processing audio in real time without fail. This right here is not MPC worthy.

The softwares demands are too much for the box to process now. Like getting a new operating system for your gutless old pc and being let down like krusty calling sex chat.

CPU usage spiked mostly at the moment of starting/restarting the sequence. We did that tens of times (as well as reloading the projects). When the cpu meter spiked, it became red, and numbers above 100% were visible (like 127%). When the sequence was running, cpu values moved around 40-50%. But I did not notice cpu spikes when those clicks and plops appeared. There were also no cpu spikes when audio just disappeared while a sequence was running.
Audio also disappeared randomly when we slowed the 8 audio-tracks-project down from 120 to 20 BPM.
Most failures seemed to appear after loading a project and then playing a sequence in it's first loop.

I made an account just to complain about this update. I am really upset at the bugs I'm experiencing.

I save projects (new ones mind you, not old MPC 2 projects), load them and then get a message saying: "Couldn't find these samples". If I press abort, the project isn't loaded. If I press resolve, this problem is simply ignored. I would have expected that I'm at least given the chance to point to where the samples are, but not even. What's more, there is no reason this should be happening in the first place. The samples did not move. They are not even on my SD card, since they come from saved drum programs which are saved locally on the MPC.

Then there's other random stuff, e.g. I load up a project and I need to slice a sample again, for no apparent reason. I can't think of anything else right now, but those two issues are enough to drive me mad.

Yes, I feel your pain. And I read about even more (serious) bugs that can be show stoppers in various situations.
I have been a betatester for various brands, including the MPC5000 and Renaissance, but I don't think I have ever experienced this kind of A+ bugs in official firmware.

Yet they're about to drop new hardware?Pretty infuriating if they don't fix what they already have out.

There's some fairly obnoxious bugs in 2.15.1 that still have not been fixed (dating back to at least 2.8 ), so the lack of stability clearly isn't stopping them from carrying on with new product releases or new plugins and so on. Until people vote with their wallets there's no reason for them to prioritise fixing any of these bugs.

That's quite a comment for someone who is the site owner and writer of the MPC bibles... But you're right of course.

scd wrote:That's quite a comment for someone who is the site owner and writer of the MPC bibles... But you're right of course.

He's usually one of the first ones to find them. You can't write the MPC Bible without knowing it like the back of your hand, and what do you do if the shit you're trying to write about doesn't work in the first place?

Watching Andy Mac demonstrate any new box of tricks with this bug ridden garbage should be funny.
Needs telling in force too.

Wul wrote:Watching Andy Mac demonstrate any new box of tricks with this bug ridden garbage should be funny.
Needs telling in force too.

The irony is that he manages to make it work and look good, the trick to andy making it look good is he is very light on the load he puts on the box. Heh its funny I kinda like Andy Mac, he was polite to me. First impressions last a life time.

Version 3, a total different workflow. No time to learn it as i have a gig next sunday and i decided to give the mpc a go because of the battery.

I went back to version 2.12.3


Version 2.12.3 seems to be fine like the original workflow and speed. Does anyone know an even better version.

Ultros wrote:

scd wrote:Since I am planning for a future live set, where I want to use the MPC X as a MIDI sequencer for various outboard synths/drummachines, as well as an audio- and audio plugin player, I conducted a stress test with it today with a friend. I was (and am) excited about the new 3.x software in terms of UI and features but…

Using the latest 3.4.3 stand-alone software we created various projects to investigate its limits.
1. Project with just 8 audio plugins
2. Project with just 8 audio tracks
3. Project with both 8 audio plugin as well as 8 audio track.

*None* of the projects could be played without hearing random plops, ticks, outbursts of noise or disappearing audio, sometimes all audio, sometimes with random tracks.

Now, I am under the impression that 3.4.3 is not a beta firmware anymore is it? On Akai’s website 3.4 beta 3 is the last FW that has the word “beta” in it, and in the versions after that they do not use “beta” in the name or description anymore.

It was a very disappointing experience and I can not understand that anyone would take the stage with this MPC firmware.
I mean, you have bugs and you have bugs. I can live with the “LFO phase is inverted” kind of bugs, but when the MPC can not do it’s core task of playing back tracks without glitches, plops, speaker killing audio or, just as worse, disappearing audio, it becomes useless.

3.xx is terrible on mpc.

What's the cpu usage look like when you hit play on each one? The clicks, pops and glitches usually denote the cpu being over run. Now that there's all this extra goofy shit in the rom it seems that there is less cpu going to the places where we need it. This is what happens when akai tries to utilize an ancient arm chipset a decade past its end of life. We are running outta bandwidth to process all the crap simultaneously and its all because the mpc had no future proof planning in physical design. Even the crap they are selling now is exactly the same. Same 32bit arm chipset with quadcore arm7 cpu from a decade ago... i tried to tell people this 5 years ago but they didnt seem to care, it was sacreligious for me to challenge the boxes design aspects. Nobody made a stink of it and it is still going on and now there is nothing users can really do other than take it up the tail pipe. Instead akai just decided newer units only require more emmc and ram while neglecting its ability to process streams the most crucial element. Eventually they are going to run outta resources and deadlock the damn device, i feel thats what they did for us with 3.xx.

Without the resources to process all these silly bells and whistles akai should really be focusing on making the rom appliance-like with fewer functions and a rock solid MPC like experience where they kept focus and allocation toward processing audio in real time without fail. This right here is not MPC worthy.

The softwares demands are too much for the box to process now. Like getting a new operating system for your gutless old pc and being let down like krusty calling sex chat.

Bro a 4 core processor is PLENTY for what the MPC software is doing. What do you think it needs exactly? An 8 core Intel processor? That would be crazy overkill. The processor in the MPC is just fine for what it is doing. It's a purpose built closed ECO System box that they can code for. For the same reason why a console game can look just as good as a PC game is why the modern MPCs are fine with what they have.

Everyone has the same game console with the same hardware. You don't have to worry about performance hitches because someone only has 8GB of RAM or 16GB as opposed to 32 or 64GB. Going into the design of your system, you know exactly what hardware all of your end users will have. That's why all the MPCs rock with the same processor. Sure the MPC X SE and MPC Key 61 have 4GB of RAM, but that's just a bonus for people who own those. The 4 core ARM processor the MPC has is plenty for what the modern MPCs are doing in their closed OS. Hell you could probably run MPC OS on a Raspberry Pi as long as you optimized the coding for it...

Skeeter_Woo wrote:Bro a 4 core processor is PLENTY for what the MPC software is doing. What do you think it needs exactly? An 8 core Intel processor? That would be crazy overkill. The processor in the MPC is just fine for what it is doing. It's a purpose built closed ECO System box that they can code for. For the same reason why a console game can look just as good as a PC game is why the modern MPCs are fine with what they have.

Everyone has the same game console with the same hardware. You don't have to worry about performance hitches because someone only has 8GB of RAM or 16GB as opposed to 32 or 64GB. Going into the design of your system, you know exactly what hardware all of your end users will have. That's why all the MPCs rock with the same processor. Sure the MPC X SE and MPC Key 61 have 4GB of RAM, but that's just a bonus for people who own those. The 4 core ARM processor the MPC has is plenty for what the modern MPCs are doing in their closed OS. Hell you could probably run MPC OS on a Raspberry Pi as long as you optimized the coding for it...

BRO, a game console and its games, are optimized for the specific hardware it's running on. The performance on my Xbox Series X playing Doom Eternal is the same as the guy across the street playing it on his. Now what happens when we switch over to a PC? You're comparing a device built within a specific set of specs to a music instrument that needs to scale and adapt to multiple scenarios.

An MPC needs to be dynamic and adapt to your workflow, my workflow, Ultros's workflow, Enoch's workflow, etc.. And guess what some folks can bring the thing to its knees really **** easily. Connect a USB audio interface, guess what, there goes more overhead. Start using the stems feature, watch it crawl. Start adding too many plugins, watch the CPU meter hit the roof. Its a 10 year old '4 core' processor inside, and in case you didnt notice, the Akai team is not so good at optimizing things. Its awesome you can get by with it, not everyone can and its been proven time and time again here (some of us have had these things for quite a few years now).

Monotremata wrote:
BRO, a game console and its games, are optimized for the specific hardware it's running on. The performance on my Xbox Series X playing Doom Eternal is the same as the guy across the street playing it on his. Now what happens when we switch over to a PC? You're comparing a device built within a specific set of specs to a music instrument that needs to scale and adapt to multiple scenarios.

An MPC needs to be dynamic and adapt to your workflow, my workflow, Ultros's workflow, Enoch's workflow, etc.. And guess what some folks can bring the thing to its knees really **** easily. Connect a USB audio interface, guess what, there goes more overhead. Start using the stems feature, watch it crawl. Start adding too many plugins, watch the CPU meter hit the roof. Its a 10 year old '4 core' processor inside, and in case you didnt notice, the Akai team is not so good at optimizing things. Its awesome you can get by with it, not everyone can and its been proven time and time again here (some of us have had these things for quite a few years now).

There's an age old saying in the motoworld: "there is no replacement for displacement." It applies to electronics as well. More ram and more bandwidth is never a negative thing until the gains outweigh the electrical cost which imho is around 65 watts. (The average requirement of a modern laptop or cpu in a desktop.)

They do make mpc for intel its the pc software and technically its better than anything the box can do. The box just gives us the control interface we need to manipulate it with convenience.