How do your organize your sounds via CF?

I just received my internal CF reader yesterday. (Bought an MPC3000 a few weeks ago and love it so far..coming from 2 years with Maschine)

I was wondering if anyone had advice on organizing my sounds on CF. I have a MacBook Pro and a Windows 7 PC. I don't have a preference of what system I store my sounds onto. I just want to know the best/easiest way to get this working. I'm on 3.11os but in the process of getting a copy of 3.5os. Not sure if it will make any difference once I upgrade. Is there a program I should use like MPC Editor? Should I put all my drum sounds on one card?

Just wondering the best route to go. Appreciate it!

I have not tried this myself, but will very soon.

You format the CF card in the MPC, which will divide it equally into a number of 30MB partitions, up to a maximum of 26 x 30MB partitions (780MB).

You might be able to get a computer to access the first partition only of an MPC3000 formatted card, partition A, but it will not access the other partitions.

It is recommended to use a separate disc/card for transferring to the computer and back, and not risk the computer messing up your the discs/cards that you normally save your MPC3000 work onto.

It seems that other users are having problems with Windows 7 not accessing the MPC3000 formatted Zip discs/CF cards at all, but that Mac OS X can access the partition A only as described above.

I am getting some things together to see if I can make Windows 7 access an MPC3000 disk/card, but since it seems to have not been working since Windows 95/96 (or Windows XP with MPC Editor), I do not like my chances.

Would be interested in how you go with it, since you have both computer OS to work with.

Thanks for the info. I don't understand what you mean from the computer and back it could erase? How would I transport some drums (maybe some 808s) on a CF from my computer to the MPC then?

I would like to sample some breaks from my computer into the MPC to get the special 'sound' and then save those chops to CF.. I am not sure if this is possible.. but one can hope! Right now I've only been sampling thru my mixer from my turntable to the MPC.

companyhen wrote:Thanks for the info. I don't understand what you mean from the computer and back it could erase? How would I transport some drums (maybe some 808s) on a CF from my computer to the MPC then?

I would like to sample some breaks from my computer into the MPC to get the special 'sound' and then save those chops to CF.. I am not sure if this is possible.. but one can hope! Right now I've only been sampling thru my mixer from my turntable to the MPC.

You can transfer both ways, just only use a separate 'transfer' CF card to move files back and forth between the MPC and computer.

Since the MPC3000 SCSI disc format is not exactly compatible with the Windows/PC/FAT12 disc format that it is based on, you do not want to put an MPC3000 card into the computer, if that contains important MPC3000 work on it that you can not afford to lose.

If you write some awesome beats on the MPC3000, and save them on a CF card, keep that MPC3000 CF card away from the computer. Use a different CF card to transfer files back and forth from the computer, so there is no chance that the computer will corrupt the MPC3000 CF card with your awesome beats on it.

Windows used to (still does?) write some sort of ID tag to the MPC3000 formatted disc, which I think corrupted it, for example. There was a work around to avoid that by editing the Windows XP registry, so that Windows XP does not write the ID tag, or writes the correct ID, or something like that.

All I am saying is that I would not put any MPC3000 formatted discs/cards into my computer, except for a specially designated 'transfer only' disc/card, which I only use for transferring data from the MPC to the computer and back, and which I do not save my MPC3000 work on for normal storage/backup.

Also, you will need to convert the audio files in your computer from aiff or wav files into the Akai .SND format for the MPC3000 to regonise them.

You will need software to do this.

There is a windows utility, not sure what there is on mac.

Try the free programs Wav2snd for PC and Translator Free 6 for MAc & PC...
http://www.mpc3000.com/wavsnd.htm
http://www.chickensys.com/downloads/translator.php

IMHO.. I'd use the WAV files on your 3000. .SND files supposedly load faster on MPCs but are a pain to use on sound editor programs without converting them.

update on computer transferring - good news, got it working - my cheap USB CF reader WAS the weak link, used a transcend PCM adapter slotted it into my 2004 mac laptop.

> am using RS-16x software on my new mac mini
> exporting PGM and SND files to a USB stick
> then transferring to a CF card via PCM slot in my older 2004 mac laptop
> CF card was formatted as hybrid partitions in my 3.5os MPC3000 - but even with regular 3.11os formmating you should get 1 partition come up you can use to transfer.

sorry for triple post guys - but its useful when people google these threads at a later late.

JUKE 179r wrote:IMHO.. I'd use the WAV files on your 3000. .SND files supposedly load faster on MPCs but are a pain to use on sound editor programs without converting them.

How do you load WAV files into an MPC3000?

I didn't think it worked with WAV, only SND?

WAVs don't work on the 3000 - simply isn't possible.

Yesterday when I sampled a song of around 2 and a half minutes into my MPC-3000 and tried to save it to my CF card, it said I have insufficient space to save the song. Are the 30mb partitions large enough to save a song of that size? Thanks.

I think it is approximately 10 MB per minute, if stereo.

did you sample right until your 3000 ran out of sample time?

if so you have a 32MB sample (if you have 32MB RAM).

Yeh it was close to max sample time. So if my sample is 30mb worth of memory then I won't be able to save anything else like drums in the same partition? If not, how would you be able to construct full beats and save them in 1 30mb partition? Thanks.

Bewareofthewolves wrote:Yeh it was close to max sample time. So if my sample is 30mb worth of memory then I won't be able to save anything else like drums in the same partition? If not, how would you be able to construct full beats and save them in 1 30mb partition? Thanks.

'Full beats' to original MPC3000 spec, is really only that it should to work up to 16MB, as it didn't really support 32MB from the factory (possibly for this reason?).

Most users probably don't use it to playback a 2.5 minute sample, it is a basic drum sampler, not really designed for what you are doing.

Maybe you could save your long sample to a separate partition from the rest of your program/samples, and then load it in manually after the rest of the program and samples are loaded.

Or, use mono instead of stereo or the long sample.

Or, get some equipment that is better suited to what you want to do (MPC4000 maybe?).

'Full beats' to original MPC3000 spec, is really only that it should to work up to 16MB, as it didn't really support 32MB from the factory (possibly for this reason?).

Most users probably don't use it to playback a 2.5 minute sample, it is a basic drum sampler, not really designed for what you are doing.

I am planning to chop the sample up and get rid of a lot of it, but I just wanted to save it as I was gonna chop it later in the day. I will just have to record the bits of the song that I want in future.