Technical questions for the MPC2000xl and the MPC2000
By mAxican Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:43 pm
Hi Guys,

since i'm pretty new to the whole MPC Topic I hope you don't burn me for asking obvious questions.

I recorded a couple of Samples to my MPC 2000, but when I tried to save them on my ZIP Disk it just didnt work. I pressed the Save Button, chose my ZIP drive as Destination but then nothing happened.
Does anyone of you have a clue how I can get my samples saved? Cuz its just more than effed up that I always had to load them in new.

Thank you guys for any answers!
maxican the MPC Noob
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By mr_debauch Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:39 pm
well when you choose zip, you should also have the choice what to save... such as "all sequences and songs" and "all programs and sounds" ...

at the top, you can use the jog wheel to select what you are saving.. actually you need to do both of the options I mentioned above to fully save a project. For just the sounds (if you haven't recorded a sequence yet or anything) the all programs and sounds should be fine.

Now, if you have done that... when it tries accessing the zip and you say nothing happens... do you hear anything from the zip drive?

lastly, have you ever had that zip drive working before on the mpc or any other gear or computer? It may be busted... which is very common with zip drives.. they all break eventually.. guaranteed. I highly suggest you use the mpc2000 floppy drive instead of the zip drive.
By mAxican Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:19 am
Hi Mr. Debauch,

thanks a lot for helping me out. I tried saving samples at the weekend again, and thanks to your description it worked pretty well :)

You hint with just using the MPC's floppy is quite a good idea, but i'm afraid the floppy doesn't have enough space for sound samples and sequences and stuff.
Or am I wrong?
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By mr_debauch Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:01 pm
mAxican wrote:Hi Mr. Debauch,

thanks a lot for helping me out. I tried saving samples at the weekend again, and thanks to your description it worked pretty well :)

You hint with just using the MPC's floppy is quite a good idea, but i'm afraid the floppy doesn't have enough space for sound samples and sequences and stuff.
Or am I wrong?


no, you are not wrong... but there are tricks you can use.

1) sample things in mono-L or mono-R... instead of leaving it on stereo.. this cuts the size in half.

2) trim your sounds properly.. dont sample a kick and leave 3 seconds of blank silence after the sample... that takes up valuable space.

3) you can save all sequences and songs first on the floppy... then do all programs and sounds.. if the disk gets full.. it will tell you. so you pop out that disk, pop in another blank disk.. and push do it to continue onto the second disk. (or you can choose to save a program.. and then save each sound one by one manually until you fill the first disk, and then pop in the second disk to put the rest)

4) on the save screen, on the right side... it shows you how much room is left on the disk.
By mAxican Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:54 am
THX a lot!
Thats gonna help me out for now.

BTW: Did I mention that this Forum is friggin Great?
Well, if i didn't....

THIS FORUM IS FRIGGIN GREAT!
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By mr_debauch Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:24 pm
mAxican wrote:THX a lot!
Thats gonna help me out for now.

BTW: Did I mention that this Forum is friggin Great?
Well, if i didn't....

THIS FORUM IS FRIGGIN GREAT!



haha, no problem..

now that you are a member... you have access to the off topic section of the forum
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By Harmoncj Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:05 pm
SOMEONE PLEASE CORRECT ME IF IM WRONG!


If youre having trouble saving over the scsi, it may be improper termination on the zip drive or the scsi receiver in the Mpc, (youd need to replace the scsi fuse).


And then this is just personal preference but just keep things safe and neat, what I like to do is store a "master" program. This program is just all the samples I'm going to use in the project assigned arbitrarily to pads, then stored to zip WITH sounds. From there I there I find a single floppy disk can hold all the sequence data and sub programs that use only the sounds from the "master" program. I feel like you have less chance of file damage using floppy as much as possible,
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By Harmoncj Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:06 pm
Oh yeah give every sound a unique name. I ruined a project once because multiple files were named sound000 sound001 sound002 etcetera... Never again!
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By mr_debauch Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:12 pm
when the zip gets the click of death... it doesn't matter what was stored on it... you just loose the ability to use the drive... it is a physical issue that happens with those.. it doesn't matter what you used it for (to save what parts of the song) if that is what you mean.

I also suggest using floppies over zips... because we all know floppy disks are not the most reliable things to save with either.... but when those get messed up you only loose one song instead of potentially hundreds of songs or piles of samples etc.

Also, floppy disks are easy to get brand new... they are cheaper... and you can make backups for very cheap. You can also get a usb floppy drive for cheap too and backup the contents of every floppy on your computer as long as all the file names are shorter than 8 characters long (not including the 3 character extensions like .snd or .pgm)