Stiff pads gone

what's sad is that Jamon's first points are 99% accurate
(his followups and tangents are self-defeating)

the 500 has a notoriously bad note-on voltage threshold
playing without the rubber is completely valid if that's what it takes - even better is laying the pads upside down overtop the sensors as he described and playing backwards. tis may cause ghost notes but for some it still may be better than the gappiness.

eimer's 1mm rubber mod and the silicone glue patch is the best technique, but akai really needs to lower the note on threshold like jj did

i think many of you folks are hesitant to admit that there are serious shortcomings in the 500. some of you never encounter them/never know you encounter them, others deal with them elegantly. others get pissed and post on the forum. for real, if i had bought a 500, i'd be saying the exact same things/trying the exact same things -

but hopefully i wouldn't sink my own battleship with language the mpc forums is not equipped to handle

Ur right Nym, a lot of these mp's have bugs and hick ups. But I think u'd blow it all out of porpotion once someone starts saying that the mpc is unusable and that we (mpc users) are dumb ignorant sheep who are tricked by Akai's marketings, pursuing our dreams to be a rap millionaire.
Can understand someone's complaining, but there are limits

Nym wrote:...
(his followups and tangents are self-defeating)
...

Self defeating maybe, yet cerealy awesome!

I hope you guys didn't chase him off.
I'll be disappointed if we dont get to see what he does for an encore.

ssnedden wrote:The Mods not being here reminds me of in public school, back in elementary grades. When teacher called in sick and the sub never came in, and everyone kept the secret. And it was the best day of school ever.

Some of the Mods have other commitments at the moment, so it's been a bit of a 'free for all' around here lately. I rarely come to this forum myself, but it seems to hold some 'interesting' threads...

we (mpc users) are dumb ignorant sheep who are tricked by Akai's marketings

i feel like i was tricked.
not by the marketing, maybe, but because of a derivative of it - this cultural BS that has built up around Akai MPCs being THE MACHINE to buy to make hip hop beats

coming from acid, i remember looking at the specs and being like "128 mb ram lol wat"

but i bought the 1000 anyway, age 19, and while i don't regret the time in between now and then, i do feel like i was tricked when i bought it based on the bugs, the hardware flaws, and the general disrespect shown by akai.

something can be unusable to one person and usable to another depending on what other gear the person has/has used and also how desperate that person is to make some damn music.

Jamon wrote:feels so much better



without the rubber

More pics ->

would you post up a picture of the pads upside down lying flush I'd like to see that, and how is the performance in that way?

make sure you don't forget to trim your finger nails...

All I know is when I buy a car I check it out. Sit in it to see if I can feel comfortable at the wheel. Check the engine to see if its stable. Take a ride with it to see if its performance can fit my driving. Then through all those trial and errors I make a decision. I don't look at a car and buy it because it's cool looking. If you was the sucker to fall for Akai's campaign then thats your problem. I bought my 500 as a successor to the MS1, because it was more of what I liked from that sampler.

So if you think everything has to be to your standards then you're a genuine @sshole, Jamon.

Chill man. The guy is sensible.

modular wrote:Chill man. The guy is sensible.

You've been cracking me up all day!

This thread literally had me in tears.

Slight movement if you try and slide them around, will fall out if you tilt more than 90degrees.

With raw sensors it's a softer touch, basically no pressure. With the stock pads you'll see people using two fingers to bang just to do something like go into program mode, imagine if you had to do that to click a mouse. With no pads, you gently touch the square and it goes to the mode, way more chill.

With the pads flipped, it's very similar, but there's a micro-delay as the pressure has to be transferred through the rubber. That means, instead of a no-pressure touch, you feel the slightest bit as your flesh is pressed against bone, and this bends the rubber slightly, and the sensor is triggered.

For fast complex fingerwork, playing it like an instrument, the problem with raw is that, without adding risers to the sensor board, there is a gap. This slows you down a little because the fingers have to land inside the well and come back up. But with the pads flipped, you can glide more horizontal.

See before, with the stock setup, triggering a pad with a single finger required so much force that it needed a hammer action on each strike. This makes it practically impossible to do fast fingerwork because hammer actions are slower than fast glides. Now, I can use 4 fingers, and trigger 4 pads in series fast.

Even the pinky! Tiny pinky can trigger with almost no pressure. This is closer to how the machine should work. On videos of old MPC models I see people triggering with single fingers and lightish pressure. On new models lots either use 2 fingers for lots of pressure, or strike hard like a hammer. That's broken to me.

Now that I've had a taste of how an unbroken machine works, I can see the fun in pad grids vs keys. It's a shame Akai cripples their products. They should send everyone free rubbers that are gapless, transfer the touch better, and fix the software to trigger better or allow more customization of threshold values.

Just did a test, I can trigger the pads flipped over at 1/32 120bpm fairly easily. That's pretty fast. No way I could do that before, and if I did it'd feel like a jackhammer. This is just tapping fingers like people do on the table. Wake up Akai, you could've had a nice product. Fix the pads, fix the OS, then you'll get earned praise.

Nym wrote: i wouldn't sink my own battleship with language the mpc forums is not equipped to handle

This line speaks volumes. Thanks Nym it needed to be said.

I wonder how it would work if you got a sheet of something still soft but thicker that would fill the gap up to the face plate.
Maybe something like the quarter inch foam material that they make wetsuits out of.
That would look a little more aesthetically intentional and your finger wouldn't have to travel so far into the well where your flesh would be pressing against bone.
It would also seal the gap to prevent dust and various accumulation from getting under the face plate and inside the machine.

great...exposing the circuitry, that just really defeats the purpose of being portable.