New Mpc1000 Pads "upgrade"

Thought headz would wanna see some hard facts.
From Akai support:

Hello Mopieo,
In the near future there will be a pad upgrade for the MPC 1000. This will be handled through a few of our service centers:

TSI in Midland Park, NJ at 201-670-1767

VST Service in Pasadena, CA at 818-754-0467

We expect the pricing to be about $150 for the parts: PCB, Pad Assembly, Pad Holder, Pad Sensor Sheet, and Rubber Pads. The service centers can be contacted for their servicing rates at the number below.

Best Regards

not to sure how many years is "near future"

here we go folks. 150 - hah that's a familiar price, huh?

i should just copy and paste from my previous post about this matter but here it is again:

we need PICTURES of these items before i can determine how they have gone about doing this. my largest concern is the PCB.

the problem in the original pad PCB is this: 2 analog converters read the signal from all the pads (8 apiece) and converted it into digital information (pad A01 at 101 velocity, for example)

original MPC pads had a different pcb setup. there was no sharing of these AD converters. when they're shared like this, there's "crosstalk and delay."

we need to make sure this hasn't happened again.

decent A/D converters are expensive. 1 per pad = even more expensive.
Crosstalk is not a problem, even chapo multiplexers have decent isolation and this is low freq/DC stuff anyway. this should not be an issue.
Delay might be a problem, depends on scans per second of the key matrix and what sort of digitiser is used, i.e. time it takes to complete a capture, etc

I wouldn't like to speculate on anything until the thing is shipped.

I appreciate all the negative vibes due to the pad issues of the past, but let's try the pads and see if they work ok before moaning about any design decisions which may have been made.

the 3000, 2000xl and 4000 had a CPU dedicated to just the pads ("only for a sense" as jj put it).

the 1000 wouldn't have a problem on the spec level (only on the design level) if there were 16 a/d converters.

the scan time is very short. if it was long, a voltage peak couldn't be caught. the voltage of each pad is 3.3v.

before each A/D converter there is an amplifier. the eight inputs then run into their specific Analog SW (74hct4051), and according to jj, this is where the crosstalk and delay happens. if this hardware doesn't change, we're still going to have poor quality playback due to the delay.

"The problem of only a sensor does not have the bad reaction of PAD of MPC1000."

in short, even if we get Interlink Electronics FSRs, they must be arranged at LEAST like the 2500--WHICH it is worth noting does NOT have its own CPU dedicated to the pads.

individual A/D converters or bust.

the reason why i'm already suspicious is because they got incredibly lazy the first time around designing the 1k sensors and PCB. now they're making a fix and labeling it an "upgrade..." i wouldn't put it beyond them to be selling us the exact same technology again with an Interlink Electronics FSR patent sticker on it.

pictures are crucial here.

maybe we should tell them that there 31205 of us that would like to pictures and details of these things before we buy them. that might open some eyes. but i hear you on the lack of quality and sketchy stuff coming out of akai these days. its to bad too cause now that we have the jjos good pads are the weakest link.
maybe we should make a serious mod and put all the guts of the mpc1000 into a 2000xl, i guess thats pretty much a 2500.
nym, you should seriously start thinking of sending your molds over to china or down to guatemala or somthing and having a f***load of pads made up. that would put the pressure on akai to rethink their thought process. its starting to feel like microsoft all over again.

I don't think 16 A/D converters are required.
Each pad can have a peak hold circuit built around the amplifier with minimal cost. Then feed into the multiplexers, finally a single A/D.
The CPU overheads will be the same if it is reading one A/D, or 16!
All it has to do is have a simple round robin scan pattern of the pads and reset the peak detecter after a read - trivial stuff!

If the guts are the same as the 2500 (I suspect they are very similar) then hopefully the performance can be as good as the 2500.
Incidentally how does the 2500 do it? 16 A/D or not? Let's ignore the second CPU thing. Basic embedded controllers now put shame to even the 4000 CPU.

You have to appreciate that A/D are quite expensive and akai have to be competetive due to some guy making his own pads (how dare he :p)

oh yeah, i'm completely devoid of hope that we'll be getting an extra cpu for just pads

all i'm saying is that if the 500/2500 definitely have individual A/D converters per pad, then we GODDAMN well better as well.

dave g, have you ever read about Midisense? you should google it, some really cool stuff that i think you'd dig.

Just for more confirmation, I asked AKAI support and got this back:

"A pad replacement kit will be available soon for the MPC 1000. A firm
release date is not yet known."

still no release date?!?!

i guess they are torturing us because we all use JJ now..