A letter of improvements to Akai

Fanu wrote:I admit, sometimes when I come across a bug in the middle of work (a crash, for example), I just curse it, reboot, and go on with work…you almost have to be in the right mindstate to go thru everything that reporting it takes.

That's where I struggled with beta testing. Reporting just a single bug could suck a couple of hours of my day out doing all the crap that's involved, it probably trebled the time it took to write my first Ren book. In the end I realised I simply don't have the time to be a beta tester, you really need at least 20-30 hours available each week to do a good job IMO and no one is interested in beta testers who can't be bothered to report their bugs correctly. It's really an 'all or nothing' type of job. That's why you don't get too many actual working producers beta testing.

Saiasan wrote:- add a option to use the +/- button as Locate button on the touch/live.

Dunno if you've noticed, but with 2.0, if you double tap on bar count, you can access locate screen and hop back and forth by bars and add markers.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

Fanu wrote:I admit, sometimes when I come across a bug in the middle of work (a crash, for example), I just curse it, reboot, and go on with work…you almost have to be in the right mindstate to go thru everything that reporting it takes.

That's where I struggled with beta testing. Reporting just a single bug could suck a couple of hours of my day out doing all the **** that's involved, it probably trebled the time it took to write my first Ren book. In the end I realised I simply don't have the time to be a beta tester, you really need at least 20-30 hours available each week to do a good job IMO and no one is interested in beta testers who can't be bothered to report their bugs correctly. It's really an 'all or nothing' type of job. That's why you don't get too many actual working producers beta testing.

Yeah man.
Mixing and mastering is my day job, and I've built my chain in Ableton Live using 3rd party plugins.
Whenever I come across a bug or a crash, it's effing painful to stop your work and go to the beta forum and write a detailed description and all that jazz as it's eating into your working time. Many times it's just "FFUUU----" and forget it. And if you don't do it right away, it's not like you can be arsed to do it later.
And if you do it, you gotta try and see if you can reproduce it and so on.
Also, sometimes it's about 3rd party stuff and you end up emailing with them, too…and then you'll be a middleman in the worst case. And all that is non-paying work.
Still, have submitted a ton and am happy to say that.

Letter to Akai sent. I didn't write down everything, but most of them.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

CMacPlayDrums wrote:Bug Fix: Each pad has a midi note number assigned to it. Example: PAD1A = C-2. PAD 2A = C#-2, etc. Assign samples to these pads via drum programs, connect a midi keyboard to the Live to trigger these pads and the midi note numbers will NOT align up. This is a big Oops by Akai. Example: PAD 1A should be triggered by C-2 on a midi controller keyboard but it doesn't. PAD 1A is actually triggered by C#1. That's a 2 octave plus 1/2 step error.

Drum programs in the MPC Software use the same MIDI note layout found in legacy MPCs, it's not chromatic, it's a modified GM layout. A1 = 37, A2 = 36 etc. All MPCs use this layout, it's not a bug although it's definitely a feature I think most people wouldn't be sad to miss.

Anyway, you can change this in the computer GUI at least. 'Edit > Program > Note Mapping' - set it up as you prefer. Save the entire project as a template if you wish, or (as individual program templates do not exist) save the program without any assignments and reload it as required.

Can this be done on the MPC Live standalone or are you talking about making the edit/note mapping template in the 2.0 software program?

Thanks for your response. I was hoping the error was with my understanding and not a serious software bug. I have not yet installed the 2.0 software yet. Maybe its time to do so.

Fanu wrote:Letter to Akai sent. I didn't write down everything, but most of them.

Haha, was just finishing my list. Oh well, I'll just send them to Akai.

Thanks for doing this Fanu, most of my wishes had already been mentioned.

CMacPlayDrums wrote:Can this be done on the MPC Live standalone or are you talking about making the edit/note mapping template in the 2.0 software program?

Needs to be done on the computer.

Man, bummed that you already sent it. Here are some other things I have found that have not been mentioned. There might be ways to do some of these things, but I haven't yet found them:

-Currently there's no way to copy effects settings from one pad to another or save an effect's settings as a preset
-Currently, editing multiple pads does not allow you to edit multiple effects, or assign the same effect to multiple pads
-Currently no way to load samples from sd card to mpc without adding them to a program (in other words, no way to put your sample library on Live without installing a SATA drive, and even then there's no way to transfer samples to internal memory without adding them to a program)
-Currently no way to simultaneously add a sample to a program AND assign it to a pad (as far as I can tell)
-Currently no way to view hardware's samples in 2.0 software, make beats with those samples in the software (?!?! wasn't that the whole draw of 'move seamlessly back and forth between hardware and software"?) or make changes to that sample list
-Currently no way to move samples between folders on MPC (in fact, there are almost no editing abilities in the browser system alone except for 'delete')
-Currently only options for deleting samples from project are individually (which is a multi-button step process), "delete all", or "delete all unused". Would be nice (and normal, in 2017) to have a 'select multiple' option so you could remove samples that were, say, accidentally loaded when you loaded a kit you didn't mean to select
-In grid mode there's currently no way to select multiple events, although there IS the ability to *de-select* multiple events by holding down shift. This makes no sense: shift should work for selecting as well as for de-selecting.
-Currently no way to set default behavior of samples, e.g.'note on' behavior on sample load instead of one-shot, or velocity to amp = 0.

Things that would be nice to have:
-the ability to play a pad chromatically without it being in a "key group". You can do this on the Maschine and even on the Octatrack (although I should add that you can't do this directly in Ableton drum racks, although you can play different notes with a sample chromatically by, say, adding an arpeggiator midi device in front of it, so the functionality does exist in that way)
-the option for the extracted sample to be automatically assigned to a pad after using 'extract' in the sample editor


I'll echo other things that have been said above:
-Currently no way to map external midi CC's to the Live (which is a huge wtf: you mean I can't assign a knob from my midi controller to sweep the filter on a sample or adjust the effects? Seriously? In 2017?)
-I would add to that that midi control over sampling functionality (e.g. sample arm) should also be standard. For those using the MPC live it would be nice to assign a midi foot controller to start sampling
-More modulation destinations. Sample start and end, as well as effects (even send amounts would be nice!) are standard modulation destinations on most samplers—even something as basic as the Op-1. Those would be a nice start
-Crossfaded looping for samples

Some of the features that people suggest above have already been addressed by Akai and will likely never be implemented in this version of the MPC hard/software, such as VSTs/synths in standalone or ability to access the Live as a disk when plugged in to the computer (the product page FAQ states this is not possible, so I'm guessing there's a reason and they're sticking to it). Other features like streaming samples from disk will probably not get implemented because they involve too radical of a change to the basic architecture of the program/hardware design from an engineering perspective.

Other feature requests, such as warping in hardware and bluetooth midi, have been addressed by Akai as "coming soon" (although HOW soon remains an open question...)

So you can't start a beat on the live in standalone and then open it up in controller mode to complete? That can't be true

Anyone with issues with the Live, Dan Gill is posting at gearslutz.com answering.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electro ... e-135.html

J.O.BEATS wrote:So you can't start a beat on the live in standalone and then open it up in controller mode to complete? That can't be true

Who said that?

Fanu wrote:

J.O.BEATS wrote:So you can't start a beat on the live in standalone and then open it up in controller mode to complete? That can't be true

Who said that?

I thought that's what midilifestyle was implying but I reread and it looks like he was just referring to not being able to access samples on live from software

Ill-Green wrote:Anyone with issues with the Live, Dan Gill is posting at gearslutz.com answering.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electro ... e-135.html

Frustrating that Akai would go to Gearslutz to answer questions one-to-one and not here, i.e. the 'mpc' forums, bit of support back wouldn't go amiss.

Just spoke to Dan, he says everyone with a unit can help improve the machine by hitting the beta-feedback button and that goes straight to Dan and Pete.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

Ill-Green wrote:Anyone with issues with the Live, Dan Gill is posting at gearslutz.com answering.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electro ... e-135.html

Frustrating that Akai would go to Gearslutz to answer questions one-to-one and not here, i.e. the 'mpc' forums, bit of support back wouldn't go amiss.

I'm not surprised, Dan was threatened on this forum because he said 2.0 would drop last year. He should man up and come and talk on the main MPC boards.

People shouldn't take stuff so seriously..