MPC Sample - Rumours & Leaks

J.O.BEATS wrote:Im not dick riding Akai, I have spilled plenty of ink calling them out

Sure, they should probably have realized dudes would try to load MPC3 projects into and so maybe could have built in a fail safe. But just like opening up the machine which it wasnt made to do you're risking something bad happening. Should I get mad at Akai for opening up my Live, **** something up and breaking it?

They clearly stated mpc3 compatibility was coming later, so why they hell would you try it knowing it isnt built into the OS? Do stupid things expect stupid results

No excuse, Akai should had file blocker if the loading that would brick the box. Their file system on the other units is BS in how people can delete files & mess up the box. They could at put in the manual and or make a video on what's we shouldn't mess with.

where is the **** up project located? sd card/internal? maybe replace it with a sane dummy of the same name?
does the mpc bin run as root?
is the firmware signed or can one modify it to run a script on boot which replaces the project file?

B-Wise wrote:

J.O.BEATS wrote:Im not dick riding Akai, I have spilled plenty of ink calling them out

Sure, they should probably have realized dudes would try to load MPC3 projects into and so maybe could have built in a fail safe. But just like opening up the machine which it wasnt made to do you're risking something bad happening. Should I get mad at Akai for opening up my Live, **** something up and breaking it?

They clearly stated mpc3 compatibility was coming later, so why they hell would you try it knowing it isnt built into the OS? Do stupid things expect stupid results

No excuse, Akai should had file blocker if the loading that would brick the box. Their file system on the other units is BS in how people can delete files & mess up the box. They could at put in the manual and or make a video on what's we shouldn't mess with.

I gotta disagree here. occam's razor, common sense and all would tell you that trying to load projects from non supported files wouldnt work. Its clear that cubilese thought it was supported and thats why he was doing it. You can tell from his comments on reddit that he thought mpc3 projects were supported. Not Akais fault

I agree with the rant. Bricking the device just by reading a wrong file format is a huge design flaw. One that states the product hasn't been properly tested.

Classic Akai/Inmusic behavior, anyway.

Given that it runs 'fully fledged' main executable app, it means it contains all of the functions of its bigger sisters. It does even contain all internal/non-qubiq plugins released to date. I can see the scenario where there is no input sanitization and ibecause of that it just parse the project file with all its bells and whistles, meaning - trying to load plugins or a track type that is not intended for this device or it could try to load multiple tracks while it support one only (afaik). The only thing that I don't understand is how it was possible to corrupt emmc on the device beyond repair/recovery without resaving the file on the device itself. Also all file operations are handled by linux kernel not by the app that runs in user space (?) so in my mind it's either flash memory corruption preventing the device from loading properly and as Ultros said it's being upheld by CMOS or internal battery either there's more to that story.

I was gonna edit the text and add something like "he bricked my sampler", but I don't have that much time/patience...

A little more info, the entire process was:

Save Sample project.
Load that project on an MPC One (latest fw) - I assume he means 3.7.1
Save project on MPC One.
Load project on Sample.
Save on Sample.
Bricked Sample.

So it wasn't the loading, it was the saving of that project that bricked it.

I am pretty sure many people will of course be trying this, because you'd have to assume that the worse that can happen when loading unsupported files would simply be an error message 'unsupported project file format'. And once successfully loaded, I'm 99.9.% that no one is going to expect the saving process, of what is now an 'MPC Sample' project, should cause permanent bricking on their machine.

In all honesty, I personally would have tried this (my MPC Sample still hasn't arrived). I am also wondering why there are not failsafes in place for this on a publicly released product, this is 100% on Akai. It's not like the guy is trying to force-install an unsupported firmware on the machine, it's just a project file, and it allowed him to load it.

Seems to me that Akai intended this to be used as a mobile sketchpad, at least regarding users with a One / Live / X, so you can being projects into your main studio MPC to finish & develop further - kind of like Ableton with the Move.

Can't really expect it to work the other way though, although I do agree it shouldn't brick a device by trying it!

Still amazes me the amount of people that absolutely have to get one on day one, & then hit reddit up for instructions on how to use it, because reading the manual is too hard, but somehow expect everyone else to know how it works..

I am sure they are now well aware of it and are likely fixing it behind the scenes. Just be paitent I guess for now and keep it in mind to be super gentle with the system.

Who knows for all we know this dude just corrupted his flash card and the damn thing isnt booting up cus the fs on his sdcard is wrong or something.

We can speculate all day but we can never know unless we have it happen to us atleast once and we work our way through this issue.

Whoever this happens to next, please come back and lets see if we can work through it. I still have my suspicion that it's likely not bricked just stuck somehow.

I bet a more advanced user could find a solution to this issue... cant really expect everyone to be one of those people who can just solve a puzzle fast. might be able to write a beautiful song but just arent good with electronics in that way.

whatever they going to give him to solve it, I want "autorun" "script" and ".check" files, don't care about payload

So this is my current understanding. As seen in the Loopop review, forthcoming MPC Software release (April?) will have an option to export the current project as an 'MPC Sample file'. This is actually a folder which contains all the samples, track and sequence data. It will likely be this entire folder that gets transferred over to your MPC Sample and not an XPJ file.

So the only files that you can load from existing projects and expansions are the WAV samples, do not try to load anything else. Wait for the MPC Software update and use that to create the special MPC Sample file/folder.

That said, it's unfathomable that the MPC Sample is able to actually load any type of unsupported file, it should simply display an 'unsupported file type' message, or even better, simply not display unsupported files in the browser in the first place. It's also completely insane that this actually leads to a complete bricking of your unit, no one would or should ever expect this. This is entirely on Akai and they should obviously have expected users to try loading existing MPC kits and projects.

There are no warnings about this in the manual - saying 'MPC3 project support coming in April' is not a warning, it's marketing. Even if there are specific warnings, these should be supplemental to them actually building the software to simply not allow unsupported file types in the first place.

J.O.BEATS wrote:Im not dick riding Akai, I have spilled plenty of ink calling them out

Sure, they should probably have realized dudes would try to load MPC3 projects into and so maybe could have built in a fail safe. But just like opening up the machine which it wasnt made to do you're risking something bad happening. Should I get mad at Akai for opening up my Live, **** something up and breaking it?

They clearly stated mpc3 compatibility was coming later, so why they hell would you try it knowing it isnt built into the OS? Do stupid things expect stupid results

To make it worst he posts on reddit making it sound like akai dont know what there doing.

MPC-Tutor wrote:So this is my current understanding. As seen in the Loopop review, forthcoming MPC Software release (April?) will have an option to export the current project as an 'MPC Sample file'. This is actually a folder which contains all the samples, track and sequence data. It will likely be this entire folder that gets transferred over to your MPC Sample and not an XPJ file.

So the only files that you can load from existing projects and expansions are the WAV samples, do not try to load anything else. Wait for the MPC Software update and use that to create the special MPC Sample file/folder.

That said, it's unfathomable that the MPC Sample is able to actually load any type of unsupported file, it should simply display an 'unsupported file type' message, or even better, simply not display unsupported files in the browser in the first place. It's also completely insane that this actually leads to a complete bricking of your unit, no one would or should ever expect this. This is entirely on Akai and they should obviously have expected users to try loading existing MPC kits and projects.

There are no warnings about this in the manual - saying 'MPC3 project support coming in April' is not a warning, it's marketing. Even if there are specific warnings, these should be supplemental to them actually building the software to simply not allow unsupported file types in the first place.

There is several ways to try to recover it: button combo, web server, reset switch inside or in worst case UART. Don't know which method he tried (web/key combo) but I wouldn't trust az0x-webserver to be properly configured. Also, don't remember from the top of my head but there is several ways to push the update via web server (direct upload, specify server ip etc...), there's also possibility that web server doesn't have required permissions and it simply doesn't write the update down. in my opinion the best bet would be upload it via SD card and key combo but idk its just me rambling. I'll check the webserver endpoints in a couple of hours.

Certified Beatz wrote:To make it worst he posts on reddit making it sound like akai dont know what there doing.

And he's right. Ultimately the MPC Sample should not allow you to load unsupported files in the first place. They shouldn't even appear in the browser. And if they do load, worse case should be an error message, not bricking.

How people are putting this on the end user is beyond me. If I try loading an MPC3 project file in Maschine I expect it to just refuse with an error message, but there should be no dire consequences for me trying it other than wasted time. It's not even a fair comparison as we're currently talking about files from the same ecosystem. Akai have no excuse for allowing these files to be loaded in the first place, they should be blocked in the software.

Seriously, did Akai really think no one is going to try loading an XPM or XPJ file into this MPC? This is basic file type sanitation and should have been coded in from the very beginning when developing the product.

Yes, blaming the end user for a seemingly catastrophic outcome (hopefully not) to a fairly ordinary manoeuvre is a bit weird.

If I had an electrician rewire my home and he decided he'd add the fusebox/circuit breakers a week or two later, I'd be a bit annoyed if my house burnt down in the meantime as a result.

And even more if all my neighbours said, "well, you shouldn't've put the toaster on, should you?"