MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
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By Neurone Wed Sep 12, 2012 10:45 am
I've just been reading through the bugs section, not good, I'm seriously looking at the 5000, but beginning to have doubts.

Anyway.

I will be using one live, to play back backing tracks from the HD, use the onboard synth to play some sounds and maybe have an external midi drumpad trigger some loops/sounds.

My question is this.
How quick is the 5000 at loading a complete set from the HD ?

I'm currently using Ableton on a laptop and having to manually load each track (you can't load up multiple sets in Ableton) is a pain, especially if it's dark on stage and the trackpad lands on the wrong track.

Thanks
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By MPC-Tutor Wed Sep 12, 2012 11:06 am
It's not blisteringly fast by any stretch, even from the HD. In fact, loading from CF card in my MPC1000 is quicker than loading from HD in a 5000.

Obviously it depends on the size of what is being loaded. Remember synths and sequences are virtually instantaneous, it's only the samples that cause the delay.

What would be an acceptable load time for you?
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By MoreBuck$ Wed Sep 12, 2012 12:16 pm
Max out Ram, preload all samples?
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By Neurone Wed Sep 12, 2012 1:39 pm
Cheers,

I normally like to able to be up and ready to go in 30 seconds.
Guitarist might tune up or change guitar, and the vocalist sometimes plays bass.

So I like to be ready to go before they are, once I get the subtle nod, It's me who kicks things off.

Getting back to the bugs that have been reported, is everybody experiencing these or is it possible I might get away scot free ?
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By RodmanSan Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:14 pm
In my opinion you might get away scot free as up until now i didn't notice any bugs.

Besides of this i also use my 5000 in a live situation and it didn't let me down (yet).
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By Neurone Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:27 pm
Cheers,

How about the loading time ?
Better than 30 secs ?
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By RodmanSan Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:32 pm
Neurone wrote:Cheers,

How about the loading time ?
Better than 30 secs ?


All samples i use for my gigs load (every song mostly around 60MB) within 30 Seconds.

My experience with cards is that they are slower then my HD.

Besides of this i also swapped my IDE HD for a SATA one with the use of a converter.
This gave me a load speed bump of about 25%.
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By Neurone Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:46 pm
That's interesting, I have a spare 320gb SATA 2.5 HD here.
Will the 5000 see the entire drive ?
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By PrestoDone85 Wed Sep 12, 2012 3:35 pm
Neurone wrote:That's interesting, I have a spare 320gb SATA 2.5 HD here.
Will the 5000 see the entire drive ?


it should see the whole harddrive. i just installed a 1tb sata hardrive in my 5k. you just will need the ide to sata adapter which can be found on amazon for like $4.
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By RodmanSan Wed Sep 12, 2012 4:10 pm
I used the following adapter : SATA to IDE - Lycom ST-106

Worked perfectly out of the box, you just need to set jumper to the slave setting and your ready to go.
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By Neurone Wed Sep 12, 2012 6:13 pm
So,
Just to re-cap.
I could stream 8 tracks of audio from the HD, of any size.
Play the onboard synth with a master keyboard.
Sequence a few bass lines playing the onboard synth.
Have an external midi drumpad playing loops or hits.
Yes ?
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By RodmanSan Wed Sep 12, 2012 9:06 pm
Neurone wrote:So,
Just to re-cap.
I could stream 8 tracks of audio from the HD, of any size.
Play the onboard synth with a master keyboard.
Sequence a few bass lines playing the onboard synth.
Have an external midi drumpad playing loops or hits.
Yes ?


By my knowledge...Yes... :)
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By Neurone Wed Sep 12, 2012 9:24 pm
RodmanSan wrote:
By my knowledge...Yes... :)


Excellent !
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By otobot Thu Sep 13, 2012 2:40 pm
No, it won't work that way. In order to stream audio from the HDD, you have to be in SONG or HD RECORD mode, not in MAIN mode.

In Song or HD Record mode the 5K will only play the sample, keygroup and synth program tracks that are already recorded in the available sequences.
You can arrange and sequence the song structure and record new audio onto the HDD from there, but won't be able to add any new MIDI information that controls the sample, keygroup and synth programs.

For what you want to achieve you have to stay in MAIN mode and use Continuous Sample Tracks (utilizing the RAM, not the HDD) for the backing tracks. How many backing tracks you can use depends on whether you have the RAM extension.
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By Neurone Thu Sep 13, 2012 2:52 pm
I see.
So, If I'm song mode, I have a synth patch assigned to track 1 and the midi in is pointing to track 1.
If I play some notes, the synth won't play ?
Irrespective of any recorded midi data.