Just got my first MPC today! And I think it's broken...

So, my cousin bought an MPC 4000 like 6 years ago when he was doing pretty well financially. He never really learned how to use it and left it sitting in storage for the past 5 years. Anyway, he was willing to sell it to me, and today it arrived.

First thing, I plugged in my headphones and tapped the pads to hear: nothing.
I was able to browse through the samples, and hit the "audition" button and hear sounds, but still nothing on the pads, although on the sensitivity tab under pad assign, it does detect them, so I don't think they're dead. Likewise on the main screen, when you hit any of the pads, you can see the "IN" meter go up and down.

I adjusted a bunch of settings relating to output, connected the MPC through the 1/4" TRS jacks on the back, the same results, it only made noise when I hit the audition button, or hit record and start, the metronome was audible. I notice when the metronome is on, the "OUT" meter has signal.

I decided to take it apart to see if I could find a lose wire or something. I started with just the top case. I didn't see anything, so I put it back together, only this time, when I turned it on, it stopped detecting both of the drives.

I called my Cousin to ask him if he knew anything. He said he hadn't used it in a long time, but when he did use it, he used the XLR outs, not the TRS ones... that's the only difference he could think of.

Then I opened up the bottom. Nothing loose, nothing charred. I swapped a few different hard-drives into it. Most of them it detects with a "UNKNOWN VOLUME", but will fail to detect the CD-rom. I switched out the ribbon cable, and more than one CD-ROM as well, so far only one of these hard-drive, and cd-rom combos (that aren't the factory ones) are detected. Although its problematic because it still says "UNKNOWN VOLUME", and it's not really a hard-drive I wanna forfeit to the MPC.

What the hell did I do?

I guess one at a time... Any ideas of why the pad's would be detected, but not make any sound? I don't think the port is completely dead, you can hear the Metronome through it.

Why won't the system detect the factory hard-drive and CD-Rom combo now?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to make fun of, I might deserve it. Thanks!

You have to assign a programme to the track,song your using on the main screen.Like programme 1.......Then you will be sweet.Still gets me to this day lol.Cant remember exactly but about half way down the middle of screen.Adjust.Maybe you will have to create a new programme first?Anyway pushining open window around the place will reveal interesting stuff.Oh yeah,i forot to add-RTFM,,....cheers

Jeezus, read the manual before you start taking things apart.
The sounds aren't just there on the pads when you turn it on, you need to assign them or load an existing program or multi.
Hopefully you haven't done any damage

If you don't have the manual, click the button at the top of this page and download it.

lmao at someone who's so DESPERATE to avoid reading the manual that they'll send half an hour opening up the case with a screwdriver.

right, i think that -take it apart- routine is in the manual too

appendix:
if your pads don't make any sound ; unscrew me!

The classic newbie error, think you can just turn it on and make beats like a drum machine lol. This aint' no toy, welcome to the legendary MPC4000 'learning curve' son...

clint246clint wrote:The classic newbie error, think you can just turn it on and make beats like a drum machine lol. This aint' no toy, welcome to the legendary MPC4000 'learning curve' son...

aww man.....first mpc AND it's a 4000?????????? He's in for a fun time....

Keep em' coming fellas.

But Ah yes... In the midst of all this, I did read through some of the manual. Including the parts on how to take it apart. I suppose if I can get the drives to re-detect I'll experiment more some of your suggestions, although I've gone through a lot of this already.

Yes the 4000 is my first. I look forward to learning it. Hopefully it's a decent enough device I can keep around the lab for a few years.

Any ideas of why the drives would stop detecting?

Don't feel bad. My "first" MPC was an XL that I 'aquired' through ill gotten gains. The first MPC I paid my hard earned cash for was the 4000 I own now.

The BoogieMan's MPC 4000 guide to success.

1. Get the actual reference manual (downloadable here)

2. Go to Office Depot

3. Flirt with the ugly girl that makes the copies.

4. Make her print & bind said manual.

5. Tip her $20

6. Start on page 1

7. Smoking in front of coughee table? (READ MANUAL)

8. On the throne? (READ MANUAL)

9. In front of MPC and confused... (READ INDEX)

Mike Boogie wrote:3. Flirt with the ugly girl that makes the copies.

I couldn't find one so I had to pay £20, worth every penny though.

sirparksalot wrote: aww man.....first mpc AND it's a 4000?????????? He's in for a fun time....

If you read the manual it's no problem if the MPC4000 is your first. And this forum has a lot of information

@MC Bill Regal
Yes, reading the manual and putting it into practice takes a very very very long time but he the MPC4000 is a monster. I don't mind because it keeps me loving this machine every day more and more.
If you are new to the MPC than download the User Guide too. Some people don't like it, I got a lot of information out of it. The first section describes the parts and their functions, how you can connect audio/midi devices and the structure.

Have a lot of fun and don't break it.

Thanks fellas. I fully intend to read the manual, and it's not like I was trying to avoid it, but this things been sitting in a garage in Northern California for 5 years. I'm not even sure its functioning properly. Once I know it works, and it's fully capable of everything, then I'll start reading through the manual and learn how to operate it.

Still working on it though... I reloaded the OS system. Hard drive still not detected. My desk-top can detect it, but cannot open it either. I think the Hard-Drive might just be failing, it is the original one that came with the machine in 2002 or whatever. A few times while trying to load samples it froze up (like maybe the file was corrupted due to the failing drive), and I had a few outright corruption errors. I have another HD-drive the MPC detects fine, except that it's NTSF, so I'll be formatting it to FAT32 tonight, and i'll install it with an updated CD/DVD drive. If that fixes the drives detection problem, and the OS is fresh, theoretically, I should be good to go...ish.

MC Bill Regal wrote:Hard drive still not detected. My desk-top can detect it, but cannot open it either. I think the Hard-Drive might just be failing, it is the original one that came with the machine in 2002 or whatever. A few times while trying to load samples it froze up (like maybe the file was corrupted due to the failing drive), and I had a few outright corruption errors. I have another HD-drive the MPC detects fine, except that it's NTSF, so I'll be formatting it to FAT32 tonight, and i'll install it with an updated CD/DVD drive. If that fixes the drives detection problem, and the OS is fresh, theoretically, I should be good to go...ish.

If you lost the Original MPC 4000 Disc data you can find it in the first post of this topic http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=159718. Copy it to the MPC's HDD. There are program files and samples so you can check if it is working.

In case you didn't knew. Save to HDD, or something else, before putting the power off, otherwise you lose what is in the MPC's memory.

Got it. I finally found it. Even though no one here might care, I assume at some point this thread may come up in someone's search so... In the spirit of sharing the info to help it, I'll tell you what was up.

Basically, the hard-drive in there, was malfunctioning, more than likely this was not caused by me messing with the case.

Like I said, I had a few hard-drives lying around. I plugged em all in, the MPC couldn't read any of them out-right, but one stuck out more than the others, as it detected all the drives on the IDE cable, while the others did not.

I formatted this drive and dropped it in. No luck. Apparently Windows has Fat32 formatting capabilities like a PHucking dickhead. It can only properly format drives up to 32 Gig. I searched for free programs that could convert NTFS to Fat32, and would go above the Windows limit. A lot of them were bullshit. The two that worked, and were free, were SwissKnife and Guiformat (FAT32). Swiss kept having writing errors, so I tried Guiformat. I was kind of disappointing though, as when I went to format, it had an allocation rate of like 32000... I figured this was like the 32 Gig limit Windows has on Fat32. I figured a 32 Gig hard-drive is better than nothing so I went with it.

Surprise. Not only did the Fat32 format work, when I popped it in the MPC it recognized not only my custom Drive name, but also all 186 Gig of space (Yes, internally). I also installed a DVD-RW writer, which the system recognizes as well. I pulled the drive back out and loaded it full of samples, as AkSys does not work on Windows 8 systems. I put it back in, and it loaded them fine.

As for the pads not making noise. I figured that out too. Browsing through some of my samples, just for shits and giggles I loaded one... Not knowing what the hell I loaded, or where, I hit the program button... through a series of look and sees, I finally noticed when I hit the pads, it played the sample I selected at different pitches. So, they do in fact, work. Now I just have to figure out how to actually load and use em... so I suppose it's off to reading my manual.


PS: If anyone is trying to format a drive, and screws around and somehow the drive letter disappears on your My Computer (which happened when I tried to let Windows Format Fat32...), you can get it back by going to My Computer/Manage/Disk Management. If you can see it in there under your Drives section, you can right click, assign a Simple Volume or something to it, and eventually, along with a few other things, it will ask you if you'd like to assign a drive letter... Click yes and you can access it again.

Dude, you need to READ THE **** MANUAL.

You do not format your drive in Windows
you let the MPC4000 format it, by selecting that option from the appropriate page. I can't remember which page its on, but I don't have to, cos I can look it up in the manual if I need to do it.

The Akai hard drive format is FAT32-based, but has some proprietary quirk of its own. And the MPC4000 OS can only access 128GB. The end.