New OS Beta?????

Does anyone know if it's still scheduled to drop this week? Sean W said it would be out the last week of October. Hopefully we'll get word on it by the weekend.

oh you bugger! i thought you were announcing it

let's hope it's exciting news!

jim

It will be here as Akai prides themeslves on the fact that these things are NEVER late.

Pigs also fly BTW

Richard

the longer it takes the better the out come (i think) Im cool with the os we have now but ill welcome new additons any day

Here is the what Sean said on DPS world mpc 4000 forum or what ever it's called.

"Our current plan is to release the next MPC4000 OS update before the end of this year.
I am not at liberty to provide information on the list of new features yet.
We will most likely go through the same Public Beta process as for V1.60, I am guessing, starting some time late October."


If you notice he said "I am guessing" It might be in November before we see something.

it's the last working day of october ... and i guess a weekend release is unlikley

so ......

Let's hope we get hard disk recording and and playback streaming among all the new added features.

I've actually just finished a song complete w/ vocals all done in my 4K the other day. The song uses about 200+ megs of RAM so you can just imagine the long wait I have to put up with every time I load it up.
Speaking of hard disk recording, does anybody know if a workstation keyboard with audio tracks other than the Triton Studio exists? I'm looking for a similar keyboard controller to buddy up with my MPC.

Summer2000 wrote:The song uses about 200+ megs of RAM so you can just imagine the long wait I have to put up with every time I load it up

i'd be interested to know exactly how long ... well not to the nearest millisecond but you know what i mean

long boot up times bug me on computers it'd be a shame to see it on hardware

jim

(not a 4k owner yet btw)

I really hope they dont make it a harddisk recorder. (or it must be as save as a Macintosh computer) I cant think about the problems we will run into. Think of all the HD problems people allready have now.
Instead, recording virtual tracks to the memory would be tha bomb! And much more reliable and save.

Vocals, basses, guitars, sax and all are all recorded mono, so the max memory will do just fine for virtual recording. Maybe if we can mod the 4k like an MV with a gig of ram ...

And if you stream constantly from and to HD, the 4k will loose its flexibility and zill be much much muuuuch more slower and its allready the slowest MPC ( no? )
And off course recording to HD and loading it into the memory later on has no effect, just takes a hell of alot time.
If you for example want to chop up a sample, you have to do this on HD, if you want to apply an effect, again from AND to hd.. So fixing 1 single sample would take about 5 minutes like this!!

It would be supadope, dont get me wrong but it has to be as fast as working in the memory.

Besides... are they really gonna implement this?? Or are ya guys all are dreaming bout HD recording? And just yapping around?

I made a list of the thing I would like to be different. This all must be possible I think. ( for next, next OS that is.. )

What you guys think?

-quantizing from 0 - 100% (o% beeing no quantation. 10% beeing some, and so on... so the notes snap a little to grid ) LIike in Props Reason... -> This would be soooooo cool!
-delete and insert switches from place to both sides of window in song view, so no delete button can be hitted by mistake. Im talking bout the F-keys (this may sound stupid, but I do this too often)
-time correction window = shift + time correction key
-in main page, when cursor on trk: and hitting block cursor down, cursor must jump to part instead of simul play!
-ability for adjusting the fequency and adjusting the curve's breadth on filters (like the small red, half rack EQ in Propellerhead's Reason) So we have at least 1 EQ on all samples and programs. This way you can choose between a normal filter and a 1 band EQ.
-merging sequences wich difference in time and scale
-copy and cut segments of bars
-adjusting the volume of individual sequences and tracks.
-main volume with fx slots
-more fx per track. Loose AB and CD! instead let us choose between combinations.
-adjusting the volume of a region from a sample. Now only reverse, delete, silence etc. Maybe add fx, fades and more!
-Automatic chopping of a sample. With finding the db levels. Like in Proppelerhead Recycle
(Maybe Akai can co-work with those guys from Propellerheads! haha just kiddin )

And then off course recording virtual tracks.

Sean?

I just hope they announce this update v.v.soon. Been waiting for an akai for a long time to be in the country, and now Newmark are distributing, they are available.(at last), but, Before i spend my hard earn't cash on a 4K, i want to know what direction there taking it. All I want:

-The ability to loop tracks at different lenths and time signitures.

-The ability to render loops of sound/samples (with the option to select 1/2/3 or 4 bars of rendering). I know you can do a workaround for this but its sooo long winded its silly. Im not an owner yet but have been using the 4K.
At the moment to do this I have to make sure my sounds on each track are in mono. Then I pan them to say the left side, then I have to put a kick or hat (my marker) panned to the right at the beginning/end of the bar and sample the whole lot down as a stereo file. I then have to chop the sample at my markers (in this case the kick/hat on the right side of the sample), then delete the right side of the sample and convert back to mono. Silly...Yes, very. and doing this for 5-12 tracks...banana's. A rendering option would turn the 4k as it is into a hard disc recorder. No Messing.

ps. Ive sent this to akai but just cant help but express my need for these 2 very simple important options.
peace.
My workflow could truly flow.

If you have the ADAT board in your mpc, you can render to pc without loosing quality. And then throw it back in via USB. Its not ideal but its a good workaround.
Nevertheless rendering to HD would be nice.

ikke wrote:If you have the ADAT board in your mpc, you can render to pc without loosing quality. And then throw it back in via USB. Its not ideal but its a good workaround.
Nevertheless rendering to HD would be nice.

Unfortunately no ADAT board on this one, only the analogue outs and I dont intend to pay £250'ish for the board when I get my own machine, just to be able to 'render'. I also dont want to use a PC (apart from mixing). Just wanna build phat tracks with the 4K 'n' outboard.
Thankyou for your good suggestion though.

jellyjim wrote:
i'd be interested to know exactly how long ... well not to the nearest millisecond but you know what i mean

long boot up times bug me on computers it'd be a shame to see it on hardware

jim

Just timed it....the size of the song is 227MB. It took 5min 30sec to load.

ikke wrote:I really hope they dont make it a harddisk recorder. (or it must be as save as a Macintosh computer) I cant think about the problems we will run into. Think of all the HD problems people allready have now.
Instead, recording virtual tracks to the memory would be tha bomb! And much more reliable and save

I don't get what you mean by recording virtual tracks into memory. What would be the big difference with the way we currently record long samples into memory? V-Tracks in sample ram would still mean that we'd get stuck w/ long load up time.
As mentioned before, It took me 5 and half min to load up a 227mb size song. Just imagine how long it would take for a 512mb one. And let's not even try to go there w/ 1gig of ram as you suggested.

My vote still stands for HD recording and streaming. As I stated b4 in a previous post, the Triton Studio already can do this w/ 2 audio tracks. Would you say that the Triton is more powerful and stable than the MPC4K to handle such a feature? I doubt it (unless I'm wrong )
Now whether if this is in the works or not is totally up to Akai to make that decision. Hopefully the next beta update will be out any day now and we'll all have some idea of what we can expect feature wise.