Sample Loading Issue

Hey Guys. I'm new to this forum and to the MPC. I have a 2500 that i've been playing around with and i just installed the internal DVD drive So i created a sample, saved it, it sounds great but once it try to assign it to a pad it sounds terrible. Not sure what i'm doing wrong and ive been reading the manual as well. When i go into load and select the sample and click play it sounds the way it should but something is happening when i try to assign to a pad. Can anyone help me? Much appreciated.

Can you give some more details? Like are you sampling from the CD drive? I really don't ever use the DVD drive on mine and any sample I load off the HD, CF card or sample through the inputs sounds the same in sample mode/edit modes as it does assigned to a pad/PGM.

But if you're sampling internally from the DVD that might be a clue as to why you ended up with distorted sound.

A lot of MPC issues are process of elimination, so again anything more you can tell us always helps.

Hey thanks for the quick response. Basically i took a CD, put it into the internal drive on the MPC, then went into record mode, took like 20secs of a track on the CD, made a sample, played back what i created and it sounded they way i wanted. Then i wanted to load it onto a pad so that i can build a song. During the loading process it had a "play" option so that you can hear what it sounds like and that even sounded great. Once i hit "Do It" then it prompted me to select a pad which i did. After this i went back to main and hit the assigned pad and the sound that came our was nothing like what it supposed to. Not really distorted but very quiet and no bass. Just plain old flat. Hope this can help you help me man.

TriniBeatz wrote:Hey thanks for the quick response. Basically i took a CD, put it into the internal drive on the MPC, then went into record mode, took like 20secs of a track on the CD, made a sample, played back what i created and it sounded they way i wanted. Then i wanted to load it onto a pad so that i can build a song. During the loading process it had a "play" option so that you can hear what it sounds like and that even sounded great. Once i hit "Do It" then it prompted me to select a pad which i did. After this i went back to main and hit the assigned pad and the sound that came our was nothing like what it supposed to. Not really distorted but very quiet and no bass. Just plain old flat. Hope this can help you help me man.

I'm no expert or anything, but it's a big forum so the more info the posts have the more likely it is more people can offer suggestions, or in some cases someone had the exact issue and remembers the solution.

But anyway, that play by play you provided helps, because now at the very least I can attempt the same thing on mine and see what happens.

One more thing though, what OS does your 2500 run? (Wanna try to make my test over here as 1:1 as possible)

Cool man thx. I'm running 1.24

Just previewed then sampled and assigned to pad off a CD in JJOS-XL, everything was totally normal.

I'll try it with the Akai OS.

If this persists you might want to try to install the free version of JJ OS

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/mpc2500/

If you're not familiar with it it's 100% proven and you can freely switch OS's from Akai official 1.24 to JJ OS Free 3.10. JJ Free is basically the Akai OS with more bugs fixed and a couple handy additions like Global Program Edit. (GPE lets you change parameters on all 64 pads at once when needed. Akai OS is going to make you do 64 tweaks separately.

Installation - http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/mpc ... ate310.htm
(Hold "Window" button" when restarting the machine after installing an OS)

I'm not saying JJ OS will automatically solve your problem though. It's just such an improvement generally that anyone who posts here and mentions they are on Akai OS, we ALL wilol say the same, try JJ.

Think of the Free JJ like an Xbox game after the first Xbox Live update, minor stuff but bug squashing and a tweak to a menu or feature is good.

Have you checked the settings to the pad?Q link?Or tried manual assign to a different pad?

I just tried it but same result. It just blows my mind why in the load screen when i hit play it sounds great and clean but once it assign to a pad it sounds soooo messed up.

Metatron72 wrote:Just previewed then sampled and assigned to pad off a CD in JJOS-XL, everything was totally normal.

I'll try it with the Akai OS.

If this persists you might want to try to install the free version of JJ OS

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/mpc2500/

If you're not familiar with it it's 100% proven and you can freely switch OS's from Akai official 1.24 to JJ OS Free 3.10. JJ Free is basically the Akai OS with more bugs fixed and a couple handy additions like Global Program Edit. (GPE lets you change parameters on all 64 pads at once when needed. Akai OS is going to make you do 64 tweaks separately.

Installation - http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/mpc ... ate310.htm
(Hold "Window" button" when restarting the machine after installing an OS)

I'm not saying JJ OS will automatically solve your problem though. It's just such an improvement generally that anyone who posts here and mentions they are on Akai OS, we ALL wilol say the same, try JJ.

Think of the Free JJ like an Xbox game after the first Xbox Live update, minor stuff but bug squashing and a tweak to a menu or feature is good.

Hey Thanks man. I'll look into JJ for sure. Is there a huge learning curve or is it pretty much the same? I'm still getting used to the MPC and getting it to do what i want it to do

If you opt for the $123 XL version it's is a bit more to learn, but maybe not more difficult really. I know that may sound odd, but JJ OS's especially the XL one kind of are filled with all these additions or tweaks to the Akai OS that even beginner and intermediate user are often like, "yeah that makes more sense, or is less cumbersome". A lot of "why didn't Akai just do it that way in the first place?"

Over the years JJ has added so much to the XL version it's fair to say he's made the 1000 and 2500 double the machines they were under the Akai OS's. Both Akai OS's on those machines just got a few updates and that was it.

But as far as the free one it's generally the same as the Akai one. With more stability and the GPE I mentioned, which if it's free is certainly worth trying. (GPE is a lifesaver).

The comparison charts are here.

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~mpc1000/mpc2500/chart.htm

Scope out the first two columns and you'll see the exact differences between JJ Free and Akai 1.24. Again the screens themselves are not so different that your Akai manual can't be still used. You'll just notice little bits are slightly different, and just more logical.

I still have to flash the 1.24 OS over here and see what happens with a CD on that one. Not sure what time zone you're in but I'll have that done and post again tonight. Although it might be one of those things that isn't repeatable on another machine.

That the CD played right previewing it and while sampling it would seem the drive itself is OK. So if the gain was too high or some weirdness with the threshold setting (I just left it at default), I can't think why that happened when what you did was so basic. (rec/sample. preview, assign...)

Dude thanks so much for the help man. I'm on the west coast i.e. Vancouver so let me know what you find on yours. The other thing to note is that with the internal dvd drive you're not able to adjust recording levels (it even say it in the manual). So basically what you hear during the recording and playback is what you are supposed to get. Which all sounds great until i try to assign to a pad. Anyway man thanks again for the help.

TriniBeatz wrote:Dude thanks so much for the help man. I'm on the west coast i.e. Vancouver so let me know what you find on yours. The other thing to note is that with the internal dvd drive you're not able to adjust recording levels (it even say it in the manual). So basically what you hear during the recording and playback is what you are supposed to get. Which all sounds great until i try to assign to a pad. Anyway man thanks again for the help.

Yeah it's digital internally so the level would be set, so it's not too much gain. And that is basically what I got, the pad assign played back exactly what I had just heard.

So it's likely some kind of sample rate issue (main cause of distortion when it's digital to digital sampling), but I can't imagine the what or why.

I hate to say this before even checking on Akai 1.24 over here, but did you plan to use the DVD tray to do a lot of your sampling? Because you can always just rip the tracks to 16 bit 44khx WAV in iTunes or whatever and then use the USB to put them on the internal HD if you have one or copy to a CF card using USB.

Because it's all digital it would sound the same as sampling from the DVD drive (when working right of course). It's not like going through the analog ins if you were recording some vinyl and want to capture the "character" and lovely sound of vinyl in general.

I guess I'm just saying if you can't fix it, you'd only lose the least most used way to sample in a 2500. Of course you'd rather it just worked but you wouldn't have your hands completely tied as far as still getting busy on the machine.

Did the same steps on Akai OS 1.24, worked fine.

I'm at a loss as to what's going wrong, sorry.

Maybe i'm doing something wrong then. Can you walk me through what you did. Esp after to created the sample. Once you have the sample and its saved as an example. If you hit mode then load, you find the sample, you hit play and you hear what u expect to, then you hit do it, then the load sample window appears, assign to a pad is off, so select pad 1 as an example so now it says assign to pad:A01, hit play at the bottom of that same load a sample screen and its all good still, then hit keep and it come back to the load from screen, then i hit main and i'm back to the main screen and i hit pad 1 and its the same sample but it sounds a messed up non-base version of my sample. Are you doing the same thing and yours sounds great?

I just hit record, then play, stopped it. Was given the do you want to assign prompt, chose do it or keep (I forget what the label is).

I also after assigning the recording to Pad 1A, saved the sample to my HD. I was able to reload it and assign it fine using the Mode+Pad 7 Program screen.

TYPO wrote:Have you checked the settings to the pad?Q link?Or tried manual assign to a different pad?

I think TYPO was asking if you are on the Mode+Pad 1 screen. It says Pad Assign on that screen but that is to assign the Q-Link controls as TYPO mentioned.

So it's possible you had the sample already on a pad, and perhaps by accident the Mode+Pad 1 screen got set to assign a Q-Link to your pad with an effect. I'm thinking maybe the Tuning assigned to Q-Link or maybe the Low Pass Filter as you said all the low end was missing from your sound in comparison to the straight original recording.

If it's not that, I can't think of what would make this happen. With the issue you couldn't 100% say the drive is faulty because the normal playback/recording/and preview seem to indicate it's fine.

I hope it's just maybe the Q-Link assigned without you realizing it as opposed to mechanical issue. Did you like most people buy the machine used? And have you sampled to it through the analog inputs and/or digital SPDIF input? And does loading a normal folder that is sounds that you didn't record in that session work normally?