why does this still happen???

when i first got the 4000, i noticed that even if i sample lets say a loop thats 2 seconds long. or a sample from a record for about 10 seconds. the free memory(time) meter will shoot to about half, and the time: falls from 26:XX (cant remember actual time), to about six miniutes. now i have the latest os. (1.60) and have the factory ram (272) but it still does this. is it just mine, or do others experience this.

retro,

It seems that you are setting the "Time" parameter (recording time) to much more than what you want to record.

What happens is that the MPC4000 is "reserving" the amount of RAM for the time specified in the "Time" field, even if you stop recording (using F6:STOP) way before it reaches that point.
For instance, if you have 26 minutes available in Free time and set the recording "Time" to 20 minutes, and stop recording after 10 seconds, the MPC4000 still reserved the 20 minutes that you specified. Therefore, the Free time drops to 6 minutes.

You can recover the unused "reserved" RAM by using the DEFRAGMENT option in the GLOBAL / MEMORY page.
In the example above, after using this function, the Free time would jump back to 26 minutes (minus the 10 seconds of your sample).

Sean

thought i had a problem for a miniute. i read the manual over and over. must have overlooked that if its in there. has'nt stopped me from working really. good look on the info though.