1000 timing sloppyness proven

jigginz wrote:You know I used to be really anal about timing, but I'm starting to believe that a hint of sloppiness that is characteristic of all hardware sequencers is what makes them groove so nicely.
In these days of computer music everything sounds too rigid and I know you can program some random sloppyness into a DAW but it takes a lot of work.

Medway, loved that loop. That's the stuff I'm into. When I think back, some of my favourite house records were made using MMT8's and 909's running live, and these things are by no means tight but have a special groove all to themselves. Infact, I'm even thinking of picking up an MMT8 again just for it's aggressive funk.

I got the MPC for the same reason. Although DAWs do give you the ultimate control I realized I missed that little bit of error I got with hardware/atari sequencing. I just didn't expect this much.

this got me trippin a lil even tho I didn't encounter the problem myself yet...now I'm thinking bout returning the akai while I still can even tho they gonna knock off %15 of the price since it's open box now. Then save up for mpc2500, as originally planned. I wouldnt trippin at all if knew this can be fixed by an OS update, getting another sampler like S500 dont make sense to me cuz sampling is what I mainly bought mpc1k for...Still got my motif with maxed out with 512 of ram, but that thing dont come close to the akai when dealing with samples, pads feel much better too for doing drums than keys

im not too surprised about the whole thing...

i think akai just simply didn't try very hard with the 1k's whole sample engine.
that's wack cause i bought it for the compact size... i woud have bought a better model if there was one so small.

they should at least fix the os to be as tight as the 2.5k. maybe its cause the 2.5k received its latest os more recently.


otoh i got it mainly to sequence hardware, so it doesn't matter as much for me cause its still tighter than a pc when it comes to that, as far as i can tell.

if you're tracking your beats you're soloing out the tracks, right? this should eliminate issues with timing...

can someone send me a zipped package of a project in which this issue occurs? i would really like to take a look.

Heres a better clip of the 2500 example.

www.medwaystudios.com/media/2500.mp3

To be honest I don't hear as much of a difference now that the levels and mix is closer to mine. Still feels like the 1000 is a bit looser but the 2500 isn't doing as well either.

I think that with what I suspect the design to be, these timing issues make sense. There's one CPU, and that can only do one thing at once (unless it's dual-core, in which case it can do two things at once, but hopefully you get my point). If it has to run the MIDI sequencer, the sample playback, filters and effects, then timing probably will suffer a little bit. Maybe a stricter real-time OS might help, but perhaps the processor doesn't have the horsepower to keep up in that case.

The only way to avoid this is to have one CPU to send out MIDI events and individual processors to handle the individual sample playback/filtering etc. Did they do that on the older MPCs?

Sequencing external devices may be more solid because in that case the CPU only has to run the MIDI transmission, no sample playback, filters etc.

It wouldn't suprise me if these issues exist on all the other new MPCs (yes, even the 4k). You will most likely get some issues like this on a PC-based DAW too, when using external MIDI modules. (it's different for soft-synths since they can be rendered in a sample-accurate manner each time provided that your CPU can keep up with those demands). The issue there is that there will be MIDI timing jitter on your PC's MIDI interface. If you've got a PC, an external sound module (yes, the MPC will do) and a sequencer, record several bars of the same simple snare hit on the quarter notes onto two separate audio tracks. You will probably hear the phasing when you play those tracks back together.

Disclaimer: some of the above is based on guesswork, so I could be way off the mark

earwolf wrote:can someone confirm this once and for all please? i thought the timing issues (if any) were nailed in 1.07? did akai ever acknowledge any timing issues? i may pick up a 1k bk but this is a dealbreaker (i'm from planet 60ii where timing is tighter than albas a55crack)

Nah, if I recall correctly they never acknowledged it officially - But there where two bugfix updates for the mp.

The first one had a bugfix to "improve" the timing of the sequencer.

The second one had a bugfix for "improving" the timing of slaved midi external hardware.

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For me - that is definitely an inofficial acknowledgement that the sequencer has ISSUES.

But "improving" - does that really mean FIXED or maybe more something like CLOSE to.

Because when I bought my MP - before those 2 updates - the timing was absolutely HORRIBLE.

medway wrote:Ok so I had a friend take a seq of mine and play it in his 2500 and record for me. Results was that none of the sloppyness I've been seeing was present. Maybe due to the cpu in 1000 possibly being weaker (their explaination why there was no timestretch in the 1000 initially).

This seq only had about 12-15 tracks total (I do house/techno). While not what I'd consider minimal it deffinatly wasn't that heavy or dense.

I solved the timing issue buy taking some of my sounds and loading into an S5000 and triggering that from midi. Seems the 1000 can trigger midi fine but not internal samples which is fairly ironic since thats what its supposed to be good at.

wow thats pretty crazy

@ucacjbs

i believe the 'cpu' is actually a dsp. i won't go into the ins and outs of dsp programming vs. standard cpu programming (partly because it's complicated, but mostly because i haven't a clue what i'm talking about!) but basically, so i'm led to believe, providing the os is designed to run on a dsp (which the mpc1k has) then it would run much more efficiently than using say C+ on a general purpose cpu.

as for your comment on the cpu having to do many tasks at once, that's not strictly true because it is only running one program, ie. the mpc's os. it is more likely that there is work to do on the programming than the 'cpu' not being able to cope.

fell free to



if i'm way off the mark.

Hehe, here I come, in my nose-diving biplane,

You're right, there is a difference between a general-purpose CPU and a DSP; typically the DSP has some dedicated hardware circuitry that's good at certain operations, and you buy a DSP that's good at the stuff you need to do a lot of. And in fact, in some architectures, some of those specific parts can run in parallel. Today's DSPs also typically have a CPU-like 'general-purpose' core too, in addition to their specialised number-crunching parts.

I guess I didn't explain myself too well about the number of things that the CPU/DSP has to run. Yes, the over-arching task is the OS. But, let's say that as part of that, the DSP has to handle the MIDI sequencing and the sample playback engine. So, what happens when you get to tick 01:01:00 and you've got both a kick and a hi-hat to playback at the same time? The CPU has to switch between rendering both samples; if you've got filters and fx in place, it also has to compute the filters and the run all the samples through the fx engine too. In this case, the DSP has more than one thing to do at once.

Of course, for all I know there could well be separate chips to do sample playback and fx computations, in which case the above paragraph is entirely moot and I will hide in the corner and .

If there is separate playback hardware for each sample, then there's no excuse for the sloppiness, and Akai should really get their act together. On the other hand, if the hardware is distributed like that, then suddenly the price of these units makes more sense.

Maybe I should take a closer look at some of those pictures where brave souls have dismantled their 1Ks, and then some of my future guesses might be pulled from a place where the sun does shine.

Dont mean to be rude, but those examples of the 1000 and the 2500 are not too good.

For starters the swings settings are stiff, and the tempo could go up a notch, dynamics could do with a little tightening (decay), kicks need more punch (compress on its own), etc, etc.

I bet i could make a beat on a 1000 sound damn tight... and guess what, i have many times when i owned one.

The tightest machine thats came into my life is the MPC 4000, and that was after quite a few swap outs.

Im gonna try my new 2500 as well when i get a chance and compared it to my old XL (which i also love for its own timing).

yo groove u still use the mpc4000? this is offtopic but what can u tell me about the mpc4000 that hasnt been said before? is it really thats beast im debating myself on purchasing one well after taxes of course lol.

Antonym wrote:if you're tracking your beats you're soloing out the tracks, right? this should eliminate issues with timing...

can someone send me a zipped package of a project in which this issue occurs? i would really like to take a look.

I dont track my beats I mix it all live.

Groove66 wrote:Dont mean to be rude, but those examples of the 1000 and the 2500 are not too good.

For starters the swings settings are stiff, and the tempo could go up a notch, dynamics could do with a little tightening (decay), kicks need more punch (compress on its own), etc, etc.

I bet i could make a beat on a 1000 sound damn tight... and guess what, i have many times when i owned one.

The tightest machine thats came into my life is the MPC 4000, and that was after quite a few swap outs.

Im gonna try my new 2500 as well when i get a chance and compared it to my old XL (which i also love for its own timing).

Yes these examples are rough as this is a loop I started a while ago so you don't hear some of the fine tuning I've done.

That does not excuse the sloppyness though. A beat should sound tight regardless. That same loop programmed with a softsynth sampler would not exhibit any of these problems.

I cant say that I hear that much sloppines on that example mp3, is everything quantizied or...?