My review of the MPC500

Lion of Judah wrote:The only real problem I have with the 500 is the polyphony stuff. It's tiresome having to track out various tracks just to be able to hear what it REALLY sounds like.

Has anyone actually determined if there is a polyphony problem?

How many sounds does it playback before it starts dropping sounds?

Stereo voices would probably use 2 voices for each sounds, out of the possible 32.

Maybe people have blank space at the end of their samples, which would still take up voices while playing the silence.

Lots of people complain about it, has anyone ever tried to work out exactly what is going on?

SimonInAustralia wrote:

Lion of Judah wrote:The only real problem I have with the 500 is the polyphony stuff. It's tiresome having to track out various tracks just to be able to hear what it REALLY sounds like.

Has anyone actually determined if there is a polyphony problem?

How many sounds does it playback before it starts dropping sounds?

Stereo voices would probably use 2 voices for each sounds, out of the possible 32.

Maybe people have blank space at the end of their samples, which would still take up voices while playing the silence.

Lots of people complain about it, has anyone ever tried to work out exactly what is going on?

I get this problem with maybe a maximum of 3-4 samples (kick/snare, hat, instrumental sample) playing at the same time. There is no real silence at the end of the samples either, even if there were a short silence I don't think there shouldn't be a problem, since I'm only playing 6-8 (12-16 if there in fact is some silence overlapping the next iteration of samples) out of 32.

I'm pretty new so I could be taking a ride on the short bus.

Lion of Judah wrote:I get this problem with maybe a maximum of 3-4 samples (kick/snare, hat, instrumental sample) playing at the same time. There is no real silence at the end of the samples either, even if there were a short silence I don't think there shouldn't be a problem, since I'm only playing 6-8 (12-16 if there in fact is some silence overlapping the next iteration of samples) out of 32.

I'm pretty new so I could be taking a ride on the short bus.

Are you on the latest OS version, 1.11?

I'd check that your samples have the silence trimmed off.

Do you make beats on the short bus with your MPC500?

SimonInAustralia wrote:

Lion of Judah wrote:I get this problem with maybe a maximum of 3-4 samples (kick/snare, hat, instrumental sample) playing at the same time. There is no real silence at the end of the samples either, even if there were a short silence I don't think there shouldn't be a problem, since I'm only playing 6-8 (12-16 if there in fact is some silence overlapping the next iteration of samples) out of 32.

I'm pretty new so I could be taking a ride on the short bus.

Are you on the latest OS version, 1.11?

I'd check that your samples have the silence trimmed off.

Do you make beats on the short bus with your MPC500?

I am using the latest version (1.11) and the samples have no silence at the end. The polyphony is still acting up. I have sent a mail to Akai asking if it's a common problem, or if my unit is flawed.

Haven't gotten around to make beats on the short bus, but I'll make sure to get to it .

Edit: I just checked the drum samples I've been using. They do infact have these long ass silences at the end. I guess I was just excepting too much out of Akai's stock drums lol. I haven't really gotten to sampling my own drums yet. Wanted to get the basics down before I moved on to that.

Thanks for opening my eyes.

Peace.

Lion of Judah wrote:Edit: I just checked the drum samples I've been using. They do infact have these long ass silences at the end. I guess I was just excepting too much out of Akai's stock drums lol. I haven't really gotten to sampling my own drums yet. Wanted to get the basics down before I moved on to that.

Thanks for opening my eyes.

Peace.

No problem.

You should go into trim mode and get rid of any silence at the end of the samples and see if that helps.

Overlapping silence will eat up polyphony for sure!

Good stuff Simon. I just want to go on record saying that I have never had any polyphony problems at all.

never had a problem either , even when i had a sample repeat at every 16th note for a "pad" effect with a bunch of other stuff goin on:kick , snare, hats, 2 or 3 other samples, at the same time and no problems

Even with trimmed samples, my 500 hates stuff like long crashes or cymbals

I had a polyphony thread before..

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php ... highlight=

Simon did some math there which pretty much cleared that up. There are some examples of how you may be overloading the 32 voices if you're not paying attention.

I am still curious to why the description of '32 voices (depending on processing)' is no longer in the 500 specs.. Was this changed after the 1.1 update?

solah wrote:by the way...the sp-1200 has practicly the same damn screen as the mpc 500...and they still made a music that defied a generation

true dat.

i never had problems playing long samples because i cut those long samples into 3's 4's or 5's to play them...it might seem like a hassle, but i have avoided those problems you have by accident.