how come i cant play two sounds in a sequence.

just got the LE and im trying to make a sequence. i have a 2bar drum loop sample playing. i have another sample that i want to play in the sequence but when i hit the pad the drums cut off. on top of that the sample won play all the way through, it plays for about half a bar then cuts off and the drums come back on. can anyone help me with this? please.

oh and both sample are mono.

i'd like to know this also.

i've sampled some stuff and when i try to play more than one sound from what's been chopped from that sample sample i get cut off.

change the mode under parameters from mono to poly.

parameters would be located where?

It's in program/params

mine is set as poly! wtf?

next to play use poly and all you chop will play toghter..

program/params goto play on top of the screen and use play..
voice overlap should be - mono

Hello,

This is a problem that I am constantly coming up against. I have posted about it before on this site and the best I got was some smart alec basically telling me to stop wasting everyone's time and do a thread search. He then told me that my problem was obviously that I wasn't changing "one shot " to "note on" (and he was an "expert" member). No use at all.

I love this machine and use it a lot. I appreciate what people are suggesting regarding setting the POLY mode in the sample parameters and I've tried all that many times but it's not the solution to the problem I am having. I think I pretty much know my way around this machine but this problem frustrates me time and time again.

I apologise in advance for being so long winded but I need to solve this problem otherwise the MPC is not going to be any use to me. I'm gonna now explain the current situation. Any useful suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I'm working on a sequence (it's only a 4 bar loop). I've got 2 programs loaded, 1 containing my drum samples the other a couple of music samples I've taken from a record. Track 1 in the sequence has one of the music samples recorded in it. Track 2 has my beats. In both programs all the sample parameters are set as they should be. The problem is that my music sample just cuts out (always at the same point) after about half way through the first bar. This happens whether I record it in to the sequence or just press the pad to play along with my beats.

My beat track is not particularly complex although does contain 14 different drum samples. I've been racking my brains as to why the sample keeps cutting out as to hear it you'd think I'd set the program up for that sample to mute (but I haven't).

Now I don't know whether this has anything to do with it but in desperation I looked in the Step Edit of my beats track cause sometimes when I'm playing beats in and have the machine looping I have a tendency to repeat notes. I noticed that there were certain steps where up to 6 different pads were being hit simultaneously. I "thinned" the track out and then my music sample played through to the end but then my drums didn't sound how I wanted them to. I was wondering if something similar to what can happen on a software sequencer where you get a "bottleneck" of midi notes was occuring in the MPC. I then tried moving each individual drum sample in the sequence to a seperate track, so now my sequence has gone from 2 tracks to 15 tracks. One of the tracks (track 7) has a tambourine recorded in to the sequence on a note value of 1/16, if I mute this track then my music sample on track 1 plays through to it's end but the moment I unmute it it's straight back to the music sample cutting out after half a bar. It's as though the mpc is not coping with the amount of data it's having to cope with and so somethings got to give. I can't believe that this could be the problem though as I'm not working it hard at all.

Again sorry to go on about it. I hope I'm just being stupid and there's a simple soultion but honestly, I've tried everything. Can anybody please help.

Thankyou.

i would just drop the tambourine ...
is the tambourine that important to the beat?
or copy the tambourine to another track....
i dont know but all the problems im hearing about the mpc 2500
sounds crazy because im not having any and im using akai os 1.23
and it works just like my mpc 2000.............

Thanks supreme 7g,

Unfortunately yes, the tambourine is important to the beat and I have already tried copying it to another track. I hear what you're saying re all the problems people are having, I used to feel the same until I came up against this. I sometimes wonder whether I'm expecting too much but know that I'm not. I've been using this mpc for over a year and to begin with all I really did was make beats with it but now I'm at the stage where I want try to produce an albums worth of completed tracks within the mpc. Don't get me wrong, I really love it's possibilities it's just that it's not delivering for me (on something that I thought was pretty fundamental to the mpc). The last thing I want to do is to go back to staring at Logic.

Thanks for your suggestions anyway.

original poster: your PROGRAM is set to monophonic playback. upper right hand corner of program mode or gpe

2nd poster w/ long post - you're running out of polyphony. search for the term polyphony mismanagement. this is a user error, not a machine error.

32 voices. use them wisely. mono when stereo is not necessary, mono when poly is not necessary

Antonym,

Thanks, the 32 voice issue had occured to me and I think you're probably right but I'm only using one stereo sample in this particular instance. Still the moment I reduce the number of drum sounds in the sequence then my original problem is resolved. That said I still think I'm working well within the mpc's capabilities which is why I'm finding it so frustrating.

actually you'd be very surprised about that. but don't worry, with a readjustment of your program you'll be fine. i use snares that often eat up 4 voices unto themselves and i get away with it. my songs usually top out at around 28-30 voices, i try to leave 2 just in case i'm using input thru. though i do occasionally have a problem with completely maxed polyphony, i can always compensate.

edit - by using the techniques i describe you won't have to reduce the number of drum sounds in your sequence, you'll just have to modify the way they talk to you.

i'll go ahead and give you my well-rehearsed polyphony mismanagement speech. this will help you a lot.

imagine you have a ride sample, that's a mono file, and you put it in on every 8th note.

tssstssstssstsss, correct? well, you'd think so.

ride samples are often very long. you're playing your ride sample overtop of itself. if the sample is set to POLY, this means the ride will overlap. the ssssss of the first ride will overlap the tsssss of the 2nd. depending on the length of your ride, you can find yourself using 12 voices--just for the ride!

answer. set your ride sample to MONOPHONIC. this way, you will only ever be using 1 voice for that pad. 12 voices, or 1 voice--imagine the difference that alone will make.

the same is true of snares, kicks, and hats. those should all be monophonic typically, unless there's a huge reason not. same with all drum sounds for the most part.

2nd - if a sample is in stereo and the sound is virtually identical on both L and R, convert it to mono. you're wasting that extra voice. i always sample my main sample in stereo though just in case. if need ever be, after chopping and sequencing that stereo file, i can always batch convert the chopped samples to mono and create a duplicate "mono" version of the program for particularly busy points in the song.

running out of polyphony is a very frequent trait of an intermediate/beginner user. you can know your way around the mpc yet still not quite grasp the concepts of maximizing your 32 voice polyphony.

Antonym,

Thanks very much, I will take your advice, put it into practice and hope for a better performance.

Cheers.

Cool, this makes a ton more sense now. I'm still confused as to why I never had this problem on the 2000, but glad to see there's a work around. Trying to troubleshoot this has been making me want to cry.