MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
By seiko Fri Jun 05, 2009 9:18 am
Hi,

I timed it yesterday > it takes 6 minutes to load 30 MB of samples in MPC5000 from CF , all short one shot samples nothing special
I am going to buy the memory extension, but this means that I will have to wait 15 minutes before 190MB is loaded...a bit too long

I have a 2GB ULTRA 2 card which says 15 mb per sec.

Is this normal it takes that long from CF ?

I know I can use the harddisk, but I disconnected it as I can t stand the noise it makes while making music.

Anyone who uses the CF to load from, how long does it take for how many MB ? I have the feeling it s not the speed of the CF that is a bottleneck, but speed of MPC...if I copy the 30 MB from the CF to a harddisk on my PC it only takes a couple of seconds so I figure the CF is fast enough
Last edited by seiko on Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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By NorthernElite Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:18 am
seiko wrote:I know I can use the harddisk, but I disconnected it as I can t stand the noise it makes while making music.


I find this interesting - can you tell me more about this noise?
By seiko Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:23 am
well it s just the normal noise a harddisk makes I guess, not only when loading or writing but when it s doing nothing
i hear a very high pitched noise but i m quite sensible to this
when i mix with some volume i don t hear it, but if I stop the MPC then I hear it clearly

so for the moment i disconnected it and work from CF card...which is slow
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By NorthernElite Fri Jun 05, 2009 2:08 pm
^^^ Yeah I wonder how many others have had this HDD noise issue?

I had a lot of noise from the standard 80gb hard disk that was factory fitted, it very often made a random noise like you described.

It sounded like the drive was spinning up for absolutely no reason - even if I wasn't near the MPC it would stay spinning for approx 10-15mins and then just stop on it's own. If I accessed disk mode whilst it was making the noise, it would instantly stop. It just got really annoying after a while because I couldn't understand why it was making the noise.

At one point I reformatted the drive to see if it would fix it, it was quiet for a little while then it went back to being just as noisy.

Since then I've installed a larger 250gb drive and so far it's been as quiet as a mouse (I've got about 60gb of samples on there) and the drive is regularly used for HDD recording - hope it stays quiet.

For your information I raised an entry on the Akai Bug Tracker about this very issue, but there did not seem to be many others having this issue so nothing came of it.

A new feature on JJOS is to disable all drive activity unless in load or save modes - I'm assuming JJ did this to limit unwanted disk noise - so I requested a similar thing to Akai for the 5000 OS.

Anyway changing the HDD fixed the issue for me now, but I didn't expect to have to do this to a brand new unit.

That's why I said I was interested - I know how you feel bro.
By 4dahaterz Fri Jun 05, 2009 3:26 pm
NorthernElite wrote:
Since then I've installed a larger 250gb drive and so far it's been as quiet as a mouse (I've got about 60gb of samples on there) and the drive is regularly used for HDD recording - hope it stays quiet.




What kinda drive does the MPC take? i think im gonna swap mine out
By b-righteous Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:56 pm
It sounded like the drive was spinning up for absolutely no reason - even if I wasn't near the MPC it would stay spinning for approx 10-15mins and then just stop on it's own. If I accessed disk mode whilst it was making the noise, it would instantly stop. It just got really annoying after a while because I couldn't understand why it was making the noise.


Thanks for the info. That is EXACTLY what I experienced. Thought the drive was going bad or the OS was spinning it for no reason. It stops when you access the files like you said. Good to know a drive replacement will solve this.

For those who want to replace the disk, NorthernElite posted on how to open up the MPC and install so check the sticky. Make sure it is an IDE drive like he said. The MPC can only access 120 GB from disk so don't waste money on a 500+ GB drive. Some drives are quieter than others so look for the ones with the lowest noise from hardware reviews.

Curious if the load/save times are improved at all by the RAM and HD upgrades? The slow load times made me not want to bother upgrading. In fact, this is one of the few reasons I just returned my 5k but if there is another update I will probably buy again.
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By NorthernElite Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:28 pm
b-righteous wrote:Good to know a drive replacement will solve this.

I get the odd HDD click now and then which is normal for a Hard disk, but I'm certainly getting none of the random spin-up noise I had before swapping out the drive - huge improvement.

b-righteous wrote:The MPC can only access 120 GB from disk

Hmmm where did you get this info? - My MPC 5K addresses the full 250gb drive well, it reports the drive as approx 230gb(ish) after format.

b-righteous wrote:Curious if the load/save times are improved at all by the RAM and HD upgrades

Can't comment on the RAM as I've had mines installed from day 1... ...but I did perform access tests to compare the new and old drive and they were too close to call, but then they're similar specs, so I guess that's to be expected.

Big difference not having all that background HDD noise though - I'm kinda glad that others have experienced this also, thought it was just my lousy luck to get a bad HDD, but it appears there's more than just me then ;-)

Glad to help.
Last edited by NorthernElite on Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
By b-righteous Fri Jun 05, 2009 6:53 pm
Where did you get this info - My MPC 5K addresses the full 250gb drive, well it reports the drive as approx 230gb(ish) after format


Sorry. I probably got that from the limitation on earlier models.

Thanks.
By seiko Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:14 pm
ok but does anyone has some loading times from the CF card ?

I am trying to find out if a loading time of 6 minutes for 30 MB is 'normal' or not...
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By Lampdog Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:52 pm
seiko wrote:I have a 2GB ULTRA 2 card which says 15 mb per sec.

That is the speed the card is advertised as. The card doesn't control speed of transfer.
The MPC does. Is your mpc actually capable of 15mb per sec data transfer?

Create a sample in your audio editor for the size of 15mb. Place that into your mpc, and load it then save it.
Use a stopwatch, maybe http://www.online-stopwatch.com/full-screen-stopwatch/.


Create a sample in your audio editor for the size of 30mb. Place that into your mpc, and load it then save it.
Use a stopwatch, maybe http://www.online-stopwatch.com/full-screen-stopwatch/

I don't think you will ever see 15mb per sec in an mpc.
By seiko Sat Jun 06, 2009 7:23 pm
well, I did that and 30 MB takes 6 minutes
I m still waiting for someone else to confirm they have the same speed...

eventually you don't need to load 30 mb, load up whatever mb and check the time it takes to load then I can extrapolate wether my timing is more or less the same...

No one loading anything from CF ?

(and indeed it s not related to the speed of the CF asI can copy 30 mb on my PC from it in a couple of seconds...so it HAS to be the MPC)
By seiko Mon Jun 08, 2009 7:47 am
I even did another test, load 30 MB from Harddisk in the MPC...this takes 4.30 min

So if I would have to load 192 MB, this would take 27 minutes !? this can't be true...

Can please please some people just post how long it takes to load up a certain amount of MB so I can see wether my loading times are correct or not
By seiko Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:04 pm
ok, so 100 people read this and not one of them is able to respond how long it takes them to load some MB of samples ?

I start wondering how much people have an MPC to bragg about it and how many do really use it

I would think about anyone who uses an MPC5000 loads samples from CF or HD...meaning about everyone should be able to help
By b-righteous Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:42 pm
Just returned mine or I would have answered. It is a good question. I can tell you what you are experiencing seems normal from what I remember. I did not time it but loading from HD is slow as hell for a modern device. I was shocked they did not improve this after all these years. CF may be slower than HD but both are slow.