Questions about the mpc 5000: shoot

Still waiting for the MPC 5000 and the Fantom G. But I am still curious as to why there is no mention of the Akai MPC 5000 in Japan.

Askia Shaheed wrote:Still waiting for the MPC 5000 and the Fantom G. But I am still curious as to why there is no mention of the Akai MPC 5000 in Japan.

Because they don`t have it and when they will get one they don`t know.

i wanted to know if its possible to downswitch the 960 ppqn resolution to ol' standard 96ppqn

emu1820 wrote:i wanted to know if its possible to downswitch the 960 ppqn resolution to ol' standard 96ppqn

I will attempt to shed light on this (please correct me if I am wrong).

To get 96 ppqn on an MPC (2000/2000XL/25000, etc) you have to turn off quantize. Once it is turn on you get:
1/8 = 8 ppqn
1/16 = 16 ppqn
1/32 = 32 ppqn
1/32(3) = 48 ppqn

With the MPC 5000, you get 960 ppqn when quantize is turned off. When it is turned on, you get what I wrote above. Now...I am not sure if I am calculating this correctly, but if you set quantize to 1/64(3), that should give you 96 ppqn

Blue Haze wrote:

Askia Shaheed wrote:Still waiting for the MPC 5000 and the Fantom G. But I am still curious as to why there is no mention of the Akai MPC 5000 in Japan.

Because they don`t have it and when they will get one they don`t know.

That is obvious...but the same is true for Akai in the US and UK. Yet they have the MPC 5000 advertisted unlike the Akai Japan website.

Anyway, I am mostly curious as to who is designing this product. The MPC 2500 was mostly designed by Japanese programmers/engineers. MPC 5000?

Askia Shaheed wrote:Now...I am not sure if I am calculating this correctly, but if you set quantize to 1/64(3), that should give you 96 ppqn

yup.

Askia Shaheed wrote:

Blue Haze wrote:

Askia Shaheed wrote:Still waiting for the MPC 5000 and the Fantom G. But I am still curious as to why there is no mention of the Akai MPC 5000 in Japan.

Because they don`t have it and when they will get one they don`t know.

That is obvious...but the same is true for Akai in the US and UK. Yet they have the MPC 5000 advertisted unlike the Akai Japan website.

Anyway, I am mostly curious as to who is designing this product. The MPC 2500 was mostly designed by Japanese programmers/engineers. MPC 5000?

This is obvious not the japanese in fact most of the Japanese side were fired as for as programmers it is a British/American design from now on.

I will attempt to shed light on this (please correct me if I am wrong).

To get 96 ppqn on an MPC (2000/2000XL/25000, etc) you have to turn off quantize. Once it is turn on you get:
1/8 = 8 ppqn
1/16 = 16 ppqn
1/32 = 32 ppqn
1/32(3) = 48 ppqn

With the MPC 5000, you get 960 ppqn when quantize is turned off. When it is turned on, you get what I wrote above. Now...I am not sure if I am calculating this correctly, but if you set quantize to 1/64(3), that should give you 96 ppqn

No, that's not it. PPQN= Pulses Per Quarter Note, with each quarter note being a beat in length. So it's like this -

1/8 = 2 ppqn
1/16 = 4 ppqn
1/32 = 8 ppqn
1/32(3) or 1/48 = 12 ppqn

IMO, 960 ppqn is overkill. Nobody's gonna hear that.

I'm kinda worried about the bass lines.. does the new mpc have good bass samples in it? if not... what would you suggest me to use/buy for my bass lines?

Avene wrote:

I will attempt to shed light on this (please correct me if I am wrong).

To get 96 ppqn on an MPC (2000/2000XL/25000, etc) you have to turn off quantize. Once it is turn on you get:
1/8 = 8 ppqn
1/16 = 16 ppqn
1/32 = 32 ppqn
1/32(3) = 48 ppqn

With the MPC 5000, you get 960 ppqn when quantize is turned off. When it is turned on, you get what I wrote above. Now...I am not sure if I am calculating this correctly, but if you set quantize to 1/64(3), that should give you 96 ppqn

No, that's not it. PPQN= Pulses Per Quarter Note, with each quarter note being a beat in length. So it's like this -

1/8 = 2 ppqn
1/16 = 4 ppqn
1/32 = 8 ppqn
1/32(3) or 1/48 = 12 ppqn

IMO, 960 ppqn is overkill. Nobody's gonna hear that.

PPQN is Pulses Per Quarter Note or Parts Per Quarter Note.

I was under the impression that MPCs refer to ppqn (Parts Per Quarter Note) as 1 bar/measure. Which is why if you set T/C to 1/8, you will have 8 steps in 1 bar/measure. Setting it to 1/16, you will get 16 steps. Setting it to 1/32, you will get 32 steps. Turning T/C off, you will get 96 steps per bar/measure..which is why I assumed that MPCs are advertised as having 96 ppqn. This is how my MPC works...I apologize if I am using the wrong terminlogy or misunderstanding what is being written here.

just to clarify:

a quarter note is a beat and not a bar/measure.
The terminology is derived from the idea of dividing up a bar: divide a bar into 4 and you get 4 1/4notes or a bar of 4/4, a note length which is an eighth of a 4/4 bar is an eigth note and so on.

As far as whether you have 96ppqn with quantize on its a matter of perspective. If you have quantize set to 1/8ths you could say that you still have 96 ppqn but just that the recorded or quantized notes are assigned to only two possible values :either on 0 ticks or on 48 ticks. If you then shift the timing of individual notes (or set shift timing as a quantize setting) you still have access to all the other ticks in each quarter note.To me this makes more sense, cause its not like if you turn on quantize the numbers change in step edit to reflect "8ppqn" or whatever,but rather the numbers are listed as described above (where an offbeat eight note hits at .48 ticks).

To check ppqn on your mpc go into step edit and go to 1.02.00 for example (in this case the second beat of the first bar)From there move back one tick and the read out will be 1.01.95.(the last tick of each beat is "95"the first tick of each beat is "0" giving a total of 96 ticks per quarter note.)

The problems for me with only 96ppqn come when recording with quantize off,because in a different sense there is always a small element of "quantize": In that each hit is moved to the nearest 1/96th of a beat.This can make some of your hits from live playing closer to the beat you intended and others further away,albeit only by a 1/96th of a beat! With a higher ppq these differences aren't as big, and your unquantized playing should sound more like how you actually played, with neither to much flattery when you're near the beat,nor too little when your a little off it.

mikolo wrote:just to clarify:

a quarter note is a beat and not a bar/measure.
The terminology is derived from the idea of dividing up a bar: divide a bar into 4 and you get 4 1/4notes or a bar of 4/4, a note length which is an eighth of a 4/4 bar is an eigth note and so on.

Thanks for cleaing that up.

mikolo wrote:As far as whether you have 96ppqn with quantize on its a matter of perspective. If you have quantize set to 1/8ths you could say that you still have 96 ppqn but just that the recorded or quantized notes are assigned to only two possible values :either on 0 ticks or on 48 ticks. If you then shift the timing of individual notes (or set shift timing as a quantize setting) you still have access to all the other ticks in each quarter note.To me this makes more sense, cause its not like if you turn on quantize the numbers change in step edit to reflect "8ppqn" or whatever,but rather the numbers are listed as described above (where an offbeat eight note hits at .48 ticks).

Yes. It is a matter of perspective. Turning quantize on, your recorded notes will only land on 0 or 48 ticks. Using shift timing, it will still only land on two possible positions (+1 shift timing will land on 1 or 49 ticks). Shift timing can be adjusted +/- 3 to 23 ticks depending on your settings. So unless you enter notes manually in step edit (overriding quantize), you don't really have access to all ticks when quantize is turned on. When quantize is turned on, you can visualize the changes better in grid edit.

My purpose in responding in this thread was to discuss 960 ppqn vs 96 ppqn. Using quantize (as many do), I believe fans of older MPCs shouldn't have any issues. As you pointed out, turning off quantize and having 960 ppqn will be closer to having your sequences sound closer to as you played them. If you use the current MPCs, simply use audio tracks (unlimited resolution) to get this "live sound".

Additionally...research indicates that MIDI sequencers that boast 960 ppqn is all marketing hype since MIDI cables have a limited bandwidth and can't actually support 960 ppqn Any Comments?

On the MPC itself, the higher resolution does make sense.

While you guys are on the topic of timing, I just wanted to ask what is probably a fairly straight-forward question...

I've been out of the MPC game for a few years now ( I still have my trusty 2000XL but the PC has taken over production duties ), but one function I love in Cubase is the ability to nudge individual tracks by as little as 1ms at a time. In practice I tend to nudge in 10ms intervals as this usually corrects basic timing issues and avoids the need to quantize everything, but I can't recall what I used to do as a workaround in the MPC. In fact I don't think I was quite so meticulous back then!

This is by no means a deal breaker but I would be interested to know if there is a quick and easy way to shift audio around without having to quantize.

For the first time in 8 years I am actually quite excited about the possibilities with this new MPC!

Cheers in advance,

Coz

Coz,

At 90BPM, one beat is 0.66 seconds, or 666.66ms. One beat (on the 5000) is 960 ticks. So one tick in milliseconds is 666.66/960, which equals 0.694444ms. So that means if you move a note by 15 ticks, you'll move the audio by about 10.4ms.

On the 2kxl, just divide those numbers by 10. So one tick would be 6.944444ms at 90BPM.

To calculate the tick resolution at different tempos:

milliseconds per tick = 60000/(bpm*ppq)

per the example above:

seconds per tick (MPC 5000) = 60000/(90*960) = 0.69444444
seconds per tick (2kxl) = 60000/(90*96) = 6.944444

At 62.5BPM, one tick on the 5k is exactly 1ms, and on the 2kxl it would be exactly 10ms.