Bought a MPC 5000...

I was scared after all the bad reviews but I'm not disappointed at all. I was using an MPC 1000 with JJOS and the switch was easy.

The OS need an update, that very true, but its workable for the kind of music I do, sample based hip-hop. Let's start with the bad thing, the GUI is sometime slow even for me, if you work with a fast tempo, synths, lots of fx and tracks, I can imagine how slow it would become. The worst is in trim and chop, using the data wheel is painful, but, if you use the qlinks, works like a charm, you just need to fine chop a bit after. Talking about fine chopping, the zoom window needs to zoom out more, but anyway TRUST YOUR EARS !!

I've noticed the phasing layering problem, not a big deal for me, I don't layer too much ( EQ is your friend to get your kick the way you want ) its even great, the machine do work for me, I could do a drum pattern with layered drums, resample it, chop it, and you got a couple different hits, easy as that. See it as its not a bug, its a feature !

I was bummed going back to the akai chop shop after using JJOS, but i've found a super fast way to chop, I think its even faster that using the divide and conquer technique by Nym ( check it on youtube). I trim my sample, get in the chop shop and select a number of chops greater than I need, chopped equally. I go the the last chop ( use the + and -) , use the qlinks to put all the chops to the end, then adjust the start point for each chop. Then fine chop. Bam !

The MPC 5000 is an underrated beast and could be the best MPC ever made if akai would listen to their customer, like JJ does for example.

Have a listen of what the 1000 did for me : http://felprezidente.bandcamp.com/album ... tape-vol-2
Click Buy now, enter 0$, download.

The 5000 will be on Volume 3 !
Peace !

I love my 5000. I'd like to see an update, but I can get the job done with it now......
What you said about using the q links is the way to go. The data wheel lag is really my only gripe I'd like to see fixed.

felprez wrote:The worst is in trim and chop, using the data wheel is painful, but, if you use the qlinks, works like a charm, you just need to fine chop a bit after.

Just watch your Q-Links.
My 5k would drive me crazy with fluttering numbers then I realized that if I leave the q-link all the way to either end it would sometimes start to translate as movement and cause the the value in a given field to fluctuate.
I just got in the habit of never leaving them maxed to either end when not in use.
I also stopped using them to trim.

Congrats on the 5k homie. yeah i'm a huge 5k user. love it. it just may be the best one yet. certainly is a beast. I thibk just like anything else you learn its limitations quick but once you learn its advantages the limitations (at least for me and my type of music) are minute. but still I will welcome a an update. until then I'm banging em out regularly without hassle on the 5k.

Yeah i whined about mine for a bit.. but now love it!!. I do the same with qlinks . I never use auto chop. as it never chops it the way i want it. I get around layering by using simult and use the crunchiest hardest sounding attack sample for that. And use a slow attack for the rest of the layers then resample . I also have started using the hard drive recorder to... Loading full accapellas on them and then doing live remixes.. And playing guitar and bass along with it!!Shit is aswome!!!

well other than the Q-link positioning the only problem the 5k has shown is I can't connect the Motif to MIDI output C.

If it's connected to MIDI C the 5k causes the Motif to have a MIDI ERROR message when the 5k boots.
Easy enough to clear but doesn't happen if connected to one of the other MIDI outs.

What I eventually did was connect the Korg to MIDI C since Korg monitors MIDI different than Yamaha.

Other than that the 5k has been trouble free since January 2010.

Im loving my 5000 a bit more everyday, but I'm scared sometimes when I get the "fx engine could not load" message... I've restored the OS, the message came once since. I still have just a little bit of hope that we might see an OS update soon with the Ren going out, but I can live without it !

felprez wrote:Im loving my 5000 a bit more everyday, but I'm scared sometimes when I get the "fx engine could not load" message..

What exactly are you doing/loaded when this happens??

dazastah wrote:

felprez wrote:Im loving my 5000 a bit more everyday, but I'm scared sometimes when I get the "fx engine could not load" message..

What exactly are you doing/loaded when this happens??

Just booting the machine straight up... no autoload
When I bought the 5000, I've had the error 1 every 4 or 5 boot, I've flashed the firmware, erasing settings before and after, had the error once since then.

By the way, with JJOS, we are told to restore the default settings before flashing the os, but in the Akai manual we are told to do it after. The JJOS way make more sense... installing a new OS on clean settings is better in my opinion.

The 5000 is a dope machine, never had the MPC freeze, never lost work, powered on for a couple hours ( sometime all day) almost each day. So far so good, but a new OS wouldn't hurt.

felprez wrote:The 5000 is a dope machine, never had the MPC freeze, never lost work, powered on for a couple hours ( sometime all day) almost each day. So far so good, but a new OS wouldn't hurt.

+1

maybe not new but updated.. mine has a weird smell to it. every time i powered it on... i love it.. but i get scared at the same time...

felprez wrote:I was scared after all the bad reviews but I'm not disappointed at all. I was using an MPC 1000 with JJOS and the switch was easy.

The OS need an update, that very true, but its workable for the kind of music I do, sample based hip-hop. Let's start with the bad thing, the GUI is sometime slow even for me, if you work with a fast tempo, synths, lots of fx and tracks, I can imagine how slow it would become. The worst is in trim and chop, using the data wheel is painful, but, if you use the qlinks, works like a charm, you just need to fine chop a bit after. Talking about fine chopping, the zoom window needs to zoom out more, but anyway TRUST YOUR EARS !!

I've noticed the phasing layering problem, not a big deal for me, I don't layer too much ( EQ is your friend to get your kick the way you want ) its even great, the machine do work for me, I could do a drum pattern with layered drums, resample it, chop it, and you got a couple different hits, easy as that. See it as its not a bug, its a feature !

I was bummed going back to the akai chop shop after using JJOS, but i've found a super fast way to chop, I think its even faster that using the divide and conquer technique by Nym ( check it on youtube). I trim my sample, get in the chop shop and select a number of chops greater than I need, chopped equally. I go the the last chop ( use the + and -) , use the qlinks to put all the chops to the end, then adjust the start point for each chop. Then fine chop. Bam !

The MPC 5000 is an underrated beast and could be the best MPC ever made if akai would listen to their customer, like JJ does for example.

Have a listen of what the 1000 did for me : http://felprezidente.bandcamp.com/album ... tape-vol-2
Click Buy now, enter 0$, download.

The 5000 will be on Volume 3 !
Peace !

I was messing around with one the other day. I think it's going to be like the 4k, in the way that it's slept on when it came out because it's different than the MPs that came before it and people didnt want to invest time in it to get over the learning curve.But in a couple of years people are going to start copping it for like 800-100 dollars and loving and appreciating it, and start claiming its the best MP ever.

MPCWeapon1 wrote:
I was messing around with one the other day. I think it's going to be like the 4k, in the way that it's slept on when it came out because it's different than the MPs that came before it and people didnt want to invest time in it to get over the learning curve.But in a couple of years people are going to start copping it for like 800-100 dollars and loving and appreciating it, and start claiming its the best MP ever.

No learning curve on the 5k it's pretty much an expanded 1k/2500 so it's pretty easy to grasp.
Honestly the 4k was easy as well.

The 5k had 3 defining points that hurt it:

-Akai shipped it with bugs then put the new OS on the web site.
They should have just delayed the delivery so the bugs of the product to prevent an ugly release.

-Just Blaze's rant based on version 1 when he was to lazy to download the new OS that was already available when the units shipped.

-That classic lie about the displays burning up and smoking started by an individual who first stated he came home and they had a power surge that melted the light fixture.
He later tried to make it sound like the 5k had a factory problem not that it got damaged during the surge and he tried to repair it.

These 3 things created a real bad perception of the 5k that the internet jumped on and used to give the 5k a bad rep.
This hurt 5k sales and cause Akai not to move forward on 5k development.

Akai did a real bad job of damage control and it hurt them in the long run.

The worst part is the majority of the people who bashed the 5k have never even used one, how sad is that?

felprez wrote:Im loving my 5000 a bit more everyday, but I'm scared sometimes when I get the "fx engine could not load" message... I've restored the OS, the message came once since. I still have just a little bit of hope that we might see an OS update soon with the Ren going out, but I can live without it !

I get this too when I turn mine on sometimes. I've checked the net and can't find anyone who has recreated the issue or has a fix. I usually just restart it and it goes away. But it does worry me. Other than that, awesome machine.

MPCWeapon1 wrote:But in a couple of years people are going to start copping it for like 800-100 dollars and loving and appreciating it, and start claiming its the best MP ever.

I see that coming also, when all that Ren hype is gone.

ntalec wrote:These 3 things created a real bad perception of the 5k that the internet jumped on and used to give the 5k a bad rep.
This hurt 5k sales and cause Akai not to move forward on 5k development.

Akai did a real bad job of damage control and it hurt them in the long run.

The worst part is the majority of the people who bashed the 5k have never even used one, how sad is that?

Exactly ! But its never too late for akai if they want to redeem themselves with the 5000 community...

MeSoHordey wrote:I get this too when I turn mine on sometimes. I've checked the net and can't find anyone who has recreated the issue or has a fix. I usually just restart it and it goes away. But it does worry me. Other than that, awesome machine.

I've read 1 or 2 post here on the forum where people had this constantly on their machine every boot... not good, definitively looks like a defective hardware, my issue seemed to be more on the software side.

Fel, how come you don't just use Recycle to chop? That would be much faster than any of those processes. Then just throw them in a folder in the 5000, and theres a feature on the 5k that automatically creates the program file for all the samples within the folder.