Xpand as a Standalone Plugin

Why does anyone want more RAM? When talking about audio, there are two ways to use RAM: (1) fill it by recording, (2) fill it by loading from "disk" i.e. mass-storage device. Loading from mass-storage is slow, unless you have a fast disk connected to a fast bus. On-demand disk streaming would reduce the need to spend time loading a full project or sound set to RAM, and at the same time free up RAM. I'm not convinced that 2 GB is too little for significantly larger projects and sound sets, if there was proper disk streaming, but bus and CPU speed is still a question.

And I'm not at all convinced that multi-gigabyte sample sets make sense for a sampler that only has four velocity layers and no disk streaming. And even if they make sense, are they necessarily in any way "better" because of the gigabytes. How do you know that the gigabytes aren't there just because of lazy work. Making good use of sample storage space, good loops etc. takes manual effort and skill.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Why does anyone want more RAM? When talking about audio, there are two ways to use RAM: (1) fill it by recording, (2) fill it by loading from "disk" i.e. mass-storage device. Loading from mass-storage is slow, unless you have a fast disk connected to a fast bus. On-demand disk streaming would reduce the need to spend time loading a full project or sound set to RAM, and at the same time free up RAM. I'm not convinced that 2 GB is too little for significantly larger projects and sound sets, if there was proper disk streaming, but bus and CPU speed is still a question.

And I'm not at all convinced that multi-gigabyte sample sets make sense for a sampler that only has four velocity layers and no disk streaming. And even if they make sense, are they necessarily in any way "better" because of the gigabytes. How do you know that the gigabytes aren't there just because of lazy work. Making good use of sample storage space, good loops etc. takes manual effort and skill.

I completely agree that we don't need more RAM. 2GB is plenty if you purge extra samples and learn to work within the limitations of the MPC. I just want more plugins. Hype, Solina, MelloTron, and Odyssey were great! Now just give us the AIR Virtual Instruments that already have a working Touch UI in Controller mode!

KaoticShock wrote:

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Why does anyone want more RAM? When talking about audio, there are two ways to use RAM: (1) fill it by recording, (2) fill it by loading from "disk" i.e. mass-storage device. Loading from mass-storage is slow, unless you have a fast disk connected to a fast bus. On-demand disk streaming would reduce the need to spend time loading a full project or sound set to RAM, and at the same time free up RAM. I'm not convinced that 2 GB is too little for significantly larger projects and sound sets, if there was proper disk streaming, but bus and CPU speed is still a question.

And I'm not at all convinced that multi-gigabyte sample sets make sense for a sampler that only has four velocity layers and no disk streaming. And even if they make sense, are they necessarily in any way "better" because of the gigabytes. How do you know that the gigabytes aren't there just because of lazy work. Making good use of sample storage space, good loops etc. takes manual effort and skill.

I completely agree that we don't need more RAM. 2GB is plenty if you purge extra samples and learn to work within the limitations of the MPC. I just want more plugins. Hype, Solina, MelloTron, and Odyssey were great! Now just give us the AIR Virtual Instruments that already have a working Touch UI in Controller mode!

Ram is not 2gb. It's somewhere between 800mb and 1gb.

Straker wrote:Ram is not 2gb. It's somewhere between 800mb and 1gb.

One of you is wrong, you or MPC Tutor https://www.mpc-tutor.com/how-much-memo ... ive-mpc-x/

The MPC Live/X/One all have 2gb of memory. It is a fact.

The amount of available memory for sample time is different and depends on which firmware you are on, and presumably how much sequence data, fx, or other possible factors may come into play.

NearTao wrote:The MPC Live/X/One all have 2gb of memory. It is a fact.

The amount of available memory for sample time is different and depends on which firmware you are on, and presumably how much sequence data, fx, or other possible factors may come into play.

Mpc tutor says is 1130mb of Ram.
Someone else said around 800mb.
I don't know but for sure 2gb is shared between OS and Ram, so it cannot be 2gb of Ram anyhow.
I just cut it short and consider around 1gb for Ram and 1gb for Os more or less.

What tutor is talking about in the article is available memory for sampling, not total memory on the MPC.

The MPC is a computer, and yes the 2gb of memory is split for OS, samples, sequences, fx, etc... just like if you have a laptop or desktop computer. While you may install some amount of memory on your home PC, a lot of it is reserved for the operating system, applications, caches, and other needs.

Are you trying to be clear how much physical memory the MPC has (2gb), or how much sampling memory is available?

NearTao wrote:What tutor is talking about in the article is available memory for sampling, not total memory on the MPC.

The MPC is a computer, and yes the 2gb of memory is split for OS, samples, sequences, fx, etc... just like if you have a laptop or desktop computer. While you may install some amount of memory on your home PC, a lot of it is reserved for the operating system, applications, caches, and other needs.

Are you trying to be clear how much physical memory the MPC has (2gb), or how much sampling memory is available?

I think it's quite clear.
Ram is memory, OS is operating system.
Not all 2gb is Ram, available memory or anyway you wanna call it. It's half of that.
Because the other half is not Ram or available memory or anyway you wanna call it. It's for the operating system, otherwise Mpc would not work.
So it's not 2gb of Ram.
Then if you wanna consider Ram as memory shared between OS and available memory, keep in mind that Akai tried to do that to advertise 2gb of Ram on Mpc but had to remove the stickers after a long debate on internet.
Now you can see that in every shop in Italy, Mpc is advertised as 2gb of Ram but only 600mb (!) of available memory.
On Mpc Live quickstart guide, it's written 2gb of Ram for sampling, which is flat out wrong.

So it's just a debate about words.
Your Mpc has more then half of memory used by OS and that's it.

You keep using a lot of computer terminology and I don't think you know what those terms really mean. Please stop spreading misinformation. While some of your concerns may be valid, you clearly are conflating two different concepts.

Please provide sources for information where Akai states 2gb of RAM specifically allocated for samples, and only for sampling. Below is a picture of the side of the box. It does not state 2gb of memory for sampling, it just says 2gb of RAM, this is a shared resource, whether you like it or not.

NearTao wrote:You keep using a lot of computer terminology and I don't think you know what those terms really mean. Please stop spreading misinformation. While some of your concerns may be valid, you clearly are conflating two different concepts.

Please provide sources for information where Akai states 2gb of RAM specifically allocated for samples, and only for sampling. Below is a picture of the side of the box. It does not state 2gb of memory for sampling, it just says 2gb of RAM, this is a shared resource, whether you like it or not.

Ok, google Mpc Live quick start guide and read what's written on it.
Same for Mpc X quick start guide.
2gb of Ram for sampling.
This disappears on Mpc One and Mpc Live II quick start guides and becomes just 2gb of Ram.
Something happened, isn't it?
And then you can easily go for a walk and stop bothering me.

Touche... it's an old typo... sorry for bothering you.

NearTao wrote:Touche... it's an old typo... sorry for bothering you.

No problem mate.
Sorry for being a bit unkind.
One strange thing is that all italians shops advertise Mpc Live II as "2gb of Ram with 600mb of available memory".
But I don't read that in any other international shops.
I wonder why they write 600mb when some serious testers put the available memory at 800mb or even 1130mb (Mpc tutor).
Anyway, at the beginning I was a bit upset about this memory issue but then I realized I never run out of memory even using long samples.
So at the end it's a good balance.

600mb is very low, but probably specified so that they never have to say that they lied about not having enough... experimentation on free sample time is a nightmare anyways, and it is hard to tell if it is due to memory fragmentation issues or something else is going on.

honestly the whole thing is a mess because Akai *ought* to state sampling time, but I suspect due to the application architecture they are not able to give a specific amount of sampling time. It's complicated due to the fact that it converts any samples loading to 32bit (at whatever sample rate)... but they should be able to specify an approximate amount of sample time, as size doesn't mean anything as you could load a 3mb .mp3 file that turns into a 30 minute sample.

I checked my Live, X, and Live mk2 Akai Pro downloads, and it appears they've since scrubbed the quick start guide from what I can tell. All the google links point to external referrers that seem to be for rather old versions of firmware that had the mistake.

My take is that the marketing team probably took liberties with "2gb RAM" and just assumed it could all be used for sampling... you'd similar statements for older MPC models, but they weren't running a full stack operating system and large application on top of it... so you wouldn't loose as much memory to sequence, fx, and other stuff... so more could be assigned to sampling.

NearTao wrote:600mb is very low, but probably specified so that they never have to say that they lied about not having enough... experimentation on free sample time is a nightmare anyways, and it is hard to tell if it is due to memory fragmentation issues or something else is going on.

honestly the whole thing is a mess because Akai *ought* to state sampling time, but I suspect due to the application architecture they are not able to give a specific amount of sampling time. It's complicated due to the fact that it converts any samples loading to 32bit (at whatever sample rate)... but they should be able to specify an approximate amount of sample time, as size doesn't mean anything as you could load a 3mb .mp3 file that turns into a 30 minute sample.

I checked my Live, X, and Live mk2 Akai Pro downloads, and it appears they've since scrubbed the quick start guide from what I can tell. All the google links point to external referrers that seem to be for rather old versions of firmware that had the mistake.

My take is that the marketing team probably took liberties with "2gb RAM" and just assumed it could all be used for sampling... you'd similar statements for older MPC models, but they weren't running a full stack operating system and large application on top of it... so you wouldn't loose as much memory to sequence, fx, and other stuff... so more could be assigned to sampling.

The fact is that, as you said before, we are used to think in terms of computers where 600/800/1gb is not that much.
But actually is a lot for a groovebox, people have been using old Mpc with a fraction of that memory.
The only issue for me is with keygroups because high quality ones can be 100mb and that's a good portion of available memory.
For the rest, it's more then enough for me.
And if they really make disk streaming, the problem is solved.

The OS and GUI uses some of that RAM