Post your questions, opinions and reviews of the MPC1000. This forum is for discussion of the OFFICIAL Akai OS (2.1). If you wish to discuss the JJ OS, please use the dedicated JJ OS forum
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By effekt Sun Jan 18, 2004 10:01 pm
NO
good luck trying to exceed 100000 :)
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By kid truth Sun Jan 18, 2004 10:07 pm
So how many of these will a kid normally use in one song? And wit the 1000 how many songs can i store on this thing and what is the best way to store alot of samples and loops (pc or what)?

By tiger vomitt Sun Jan 18, 2004 11:26 pm
kid truth wrote:So how many of these will a kid normally use in one song?


think of it this way... try tapping your fingers on a desk 100,000 times :)
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By MPC-Tutor Mon Jan 19, 2004 8:50 am
I have a song that takes up nearly all the sequencer capacity on my XL - the song is made up of around 50 sequences with over 30 tracks per sequence. No idea how many sequencer notes it uses, but the ALL file takes around 50 seconds to load from zip.
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By DoncaMatic Mon Jan 19, 2004 1:34 pm
You know...

While I don't have an mpc yet, I know a lot about how sequencers and midi work. I think you'll get a better grasp of the mpc sequencers capabilities knowing that the 300k/100k figures are for midi *events*, for example note on and note off. Counting only note on/off, you'd get 50.000 notes in the mpc1000 as each note on requires a note off. That's a lot, but we're not there yet; most (popular) music is repetetive with recurring themes and sections, or patterns in sequencer-speak. Most of the time there is no need to store each of these sections as separate entities, you simply tell the sequencer to repeat sequence A and B, X times in an A-A-B-A succesion for example. A song! 8)

So, in a "does this make alot of importance in hip hop based beats?" kind-a-context, a 100.000 events is plenty.

However. Modulation, pitchbend, fader and slider movements generate a lot of events. Likewise if you want to embed synth patch data, in the form of system exclusive messages, so your external gear is set up with the right sounds for the song. Still, looking at it from a practical view, a little preparation goes a long way. You can quantize fader/modulation movements for example, reducing the resolution (number of events) of the movements. Most gear have plenty of patch storage meaning instead of storing patches in the mpc seq/song, you'd simply call them up from the mpc with program change messages, which are a whole lot slimmer than system exclusive chunks. Keep in mind that midi/sequencer data in turn is quite skinny compared to sample data. Which means that (live performance in mind) with the mpc1000 sample ram maxed out, you could load all of the samples for a set in one go and then if required load different seq/songs as the set progresses, minimizing the time between songs.

By mpc3000 Mon Jan 19, 2004 3:46 pm
MPC60 has something like 75,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC3000 has a 100,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC2000 has a 100,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC2000XL has a 300,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC1000 has a 100,000 event capacity, all of a sudden everyone is concerned about capacity.

Needing more than 100k is a rare exception (Akai knows this and made a cheaper MPC).
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By DoncaMatic Mon Jan 19, 2004 5:21 pm
Yau...

"Needing more than 100k is a rare exception (Akai knows this and made a cheaper MPC)."

It comes down to the style of music, the role the mpc takes in it, and what other external gear is sequenced from it. I'm personally also interested in using the mpc1000 for carrying a live show with a lot of things going on.

Take for example an ambitious techno or trance project compared to the requirements of someone using it for banging out beats solely. In the latter case 100k is not a problem. In the former there is usually a whole lot more going on midi/sequencing wise, with all the controller tweaking and often very dense phrases. Musically it's another story, I'm not knocking any style here, just looking at it from a technical viewpoint.

Back in the days when mpc's were almost exclusively used for drum sequencing, ram was also more expensive, and the 75/100k capacity was less of an issue and made both musical and economical sense for sure. Today, post the acid-house, techno, drum'n bass, and jungle revolutions, the possibilities and requirements have changed. I think it's a little surprising that akai gave the mpc1000 less sequencer capacity than the 2kxl.

Still, should one hit the limit, there are plenty of workarounds, some of them offering possibilities you would'nt have with midi. Making audio samples of sequences for instance. And if you're offered a fat touring ticket, you could always get another mpc.

So, if the exception is rare, or even an exception to begin with, depends on style and application. Music and technology has come a long way since the 80's.

By jocks Mon Jan 19, 2004 9:13 pm
mpc3000 wrote:MPC60 has something like 75,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC3000 has a 100,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC2000 has a 100,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC2000XL has a 300,000 event capacity, no one complains.

MPC1000 has a 100,000 event capacity, all of a sudden everyone is concerned about capacity.

Needing more than 100k is a rare exception (Akai knows this and made a cheaper MPC).

hi there,
isn't the event capacity set in the OS? a future upgrade could use more RAM reserved to the sequencer if users demand increased event capacity ?

By mpc3000 Tue Jan 20, 2004 3:33 am
"isn't the event capacity set in the OS? a future upgrade could use more RAM reserved to the sequencer if users demand increased event capacity ?"

The sequencer memory is not necessarily in the RAM and may be on the processor memory (which is quite small to begin with). This would make it hardware limited. I can try to find out.