KAIF
This may be long winded, but it's worth reading....So here goes:
I use the same "pgm maker" program and it does work, I use a titanium g4 laptop, but there are a few things. However my 3000 has the zip drive installed from Forat...Does the LE have a zip drive (maybe a stupid question....clearly you're not stuffing a zip into a floppy bay, but you didn't mention.....)...But here goes:
1) Format the zip disc in the 3000 first BEFORE you connect it to your mac...The mac will still see the zip disk this way, but the 3000 cannot see it if it was formatted on your mac.
The thing is, the 3000 will format the zip in partitions....Choose the lowest number of partitions (4....A,B,C,D).
Now UNFORTUNATELY....Your mac will see the zip disk but will only see it as one partition (partition A..It' won't say "A" on your desktop, but this is what it sees.......)Which means that your 100 meg zip is now only a 25 meg zip...But you can work around...read on......
2) The 3000 cannot recognize file names over a certain length (6 or 8 characters? I forget...) as well as file names with certain text like underscore and dashes, decimal points....Again, I can't remember exactly, but you may want to rename your samples BEFORE you use them to create pgms for the 3000.
A good batch tool to do this with is a freeware program called R-Name (you can google it or find it here
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12 ... p/id/12259)
You can drag and drop a large folders of files and rename them sequentially or with different prefixs etc.etc....VERY useful tool for lots of file management
3) Allow the software to create the pgm file and save it to your computer (desktop, folder, wherever)...I just left it to the default "snd" setting, so the 3000 has less chance of not being able to "interpret" the wav file...
Besides, if you're using pgm maker, one would assume you already have these samples as wavs on your computer anyway.....
4) Drag/copy the resultant file to the zip disk but DO NOT try and create and folders or subfolders on the zip disk before you copy the file...Just drag/copy them as you create them.......I just handwrite the pgms on the zip disks themselves and when I load, just scroll and look for stuff because the 3000 doesn't support the whole folder heirarchy system. You just have to live with your pgms being "scattered" on the zip disks....Scrool the wheel unitl you find them and forget having them in neat folders on the zip.....
5) Even though it's a 100 meg zip, I have found that the pgms created this way won't be able to fill the entire zip disk....As I mentioned above, your 100 meg zip formatted with the 3000 is now really a 25 meg zip as far as your computer is concerned...Workaround? Load the pgms into your 3000 and then re-save them on all the other partitions on a DIFFERENT zip disk until you fill each zip disk...So you have to use a couple zips to transfer from the computer to the 3000, and then have a couple handy to re-save to,filling up all four partitions as you go.
After doing a few transfers with any one zip disk, you will have to re-format the zips in your 3000 to keep going back to the mac.....Just erasing them won't satidfy the mac, and it will tell you the zip is "full" even though you just erased the contents...re-format them in your 3000 and you will be fine.
I grabbed about 10 zip disks...I formatted them all on the 3000, and then used like 3 of them to transfer from mac to 3000, stopping along the way to SAVE the pgms to the fresh disks which don't go near the mac, until they were all full.
Because of the slow format time in the 3000, it takes a while to do this...And the back and forth and re-save is a pain in the ass BUT......
R-Name is lighting fast, and pgm maker is lighting fast and THERE IS NO WAY YOU WANT TO HAVE TO SIT AND RESAMPLE ALL YOUR STUFF MANUALLY INTO THE 3000......After maybe 6 hours (for you it will be 2 hours, cause I used 4 hours just to figure out all that I've told you
)I was proudly looking at 1gig worth of my sample collection ready for use in my MPC 3000........
And I have a 2000, 2000XL, 4000.....And believe you me, the SAME sounds in the 3000 programmed with the sound and feel of that machine left all the other machines in the dust....BELIEVE THE HYPE.....If you like groove over bells and whistles, you will understand why the 3000 is the most hyped machine that Akai ever built...It has a groove and a swing that is unmatched........Right now, I use my 4000 to audition samples (the convenience of the internal hard drive...they're all right there!), and then when I find what I want, I grab my labelled zip disks and load only the individual sounds I need and then I program the beat on the 3000...Dump to Pro Tools or whatever you're using, and you're breaking your neck for DAYS.....Almost any sounds playing any beat just ...FEEL.....way better.
Hope this helps....
Jeremy
