MPC5000 reviews, bug reports and fellow user support on the most recent standalone, hardware MPC from Akai
By Onkobu Wed Aug 13, 2008 5:09 am
Askia Shaheed wrote:there seems to be some latency from the time I hit the pads and hearing the actual samples.

Can someone check this out?

Now as you talk about it I remember it. I did nearly the same, including chopping, but I used 8 parts. I thought it'd be the screen update. When you hit the pad, it's name and settings appear on screen and maybe this needs some time to get written. But now I compared with a freshly started 5k and the same program: no latency. It's only a small amount, maybe 200ms, but it's definitely there. Maybe CPU usage increases for some reason or there's a memory leak causing fragmentation (data spread over whole RAM so addressing is not possible by just increasing the address but needs complex translation operations).
User avatar
By scd Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:27 pm
tomazzzi wrote:Hitting " overdub + play " often make a little jump that desynchronise the midi when the MPC is in External Sync mode.

How to reproduce it :
Sync the MPC in Slave mode with a software sequencer or a drum machine.
Add another drum machine to the MIDI OUT 1 2 3 or 4
Press play on the master.
1 Hit overdub + play to record something on the MPC.
2 Release overdub.
Do the same process a few times (1 & 2)
You should hear what i m talking about ...
I guess the MPC is sending another start message


No, the MPC is sending a "continue" message (which causes the same trouble).
Added to the bug base.
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By scd Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:38 pm
MPC-Tutor wrote:Continuing where the last bug report thread left off - please list any outstanding bugs after the recent OS update.

EDIT: Please note that this isn't a 'rant' thread, nor is it a 'fix this now' thread - I just want to collect all outstanding bugs in one place.

JOG WHEEL BUG:

Jog Wheel increments still not picked up 100% in screens like program sample assign and mixer screen.


Added in bug base.
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By mmcerda Sat Aug 16, 2008 4:47 am
Something I experienced today, dunno if anyone has reported it (sorry for not reading the whole post, but have been short of time lately). I was playing a sequence and decided to load a program while de sequence was playing. As soon as I hit the DO IT button the sequence playing went out of sync and started playing slower than usual speed. This happened during the whole time it took the new program to load. I think it should not happen
Cheers
By tomazzzi Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:54 am
Something I experienced today, dunno if anyone has reported it (sorry for not reading the whole post, but have been short of time lately). I was playing a sequence and decided to load a program while de sequence was playing. As soon as I hit the DO IT button the sequence playing went out of sync and started playing slower than usual speed. This happened during the whole time it took the new program to load. I think it should not happen
Cheers


I also experienced this a lot of times.

I don t load programs anymore while playing ..

Hitting " overdub + play " often make a little jump that desynchronise the midi when the MPC is in External Sync mode.

How to reproduce it :
Sync the MPC in Slave mode with a software sequencer or a drum machine.
Add another drum machine to the MIDI OUT 1 2 3 or 4
Press play on the master.
1 Hit overdub + play to record something on the MPC.
2 Release overdub.
Do the same process a few times (1 & 2)
You should hear what i m talking about ...
I guess the MPC is sending another start message


No, the MPC is sending a "continue" message (which causes the same trouble).
Added to the bug base.


THanks !!
User avatar
By scd Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:06 am
Askia Shaheed wrote:I am a little tired but I need some help in case I am imagining this....

I created a sample based songs with two programs. One program was one of the drum kits that came with the 5K...and the other was created using Chop Shop w/ 16 chops.

I created a sequence with the chop program. Next, I used the drum kits to try to program a drum loop. While programming from the 5Ks main screen..everything is good. However, if I am in the Program Edit Mode and trigger the pads....there seems to be some latency from the time I hit the pads and hearing the actual samples.

Can someone check this out?


I did. Added to the bug base.
By Onkobu Thu Aug 21, 2008 6:27 pm
1. Power On
2. Choose a Midi Program for Track #1 (instead of Program select "No" and some number including some Midi Out assignment, I chose B01), record some notes the "normal" way (REC+Play)
2.1 switch on Send Program Change, no bank signals
3. Choose OFF as Program for Track #2
3.1 select same Midi Out for Track #2 as Track #1
4. Record some notes for Track #2 in Grid Edit Mode
5. Select one of the recorded events without leaving Grid Edit Mode and press Window-Button...FREEZE

It happens all the time...even without any Midi gear hooked to the 5k.
By 4dahaterz Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:03 pm
Onkobu wrote:1. Power On
2. Choose a Midi Program for Track #1 (instead of Program select "No" and some number including some Midi Out assignment, I chose B01), record some notes the "normal" way (REC+Play)
2.1 switch on Send Program Change, no bank signals
3. Choose OFF as Program for Track #2
3.1 select same Midi Out for Track #2 as Track #1
4. Record some notes for Track #2 in Grid Edit Mode
5. Select one of the recorded events without leaving Grid Edit Mode and press Window-Button...FREEZE

It happens all the time...even without any Midi gear hooked to the 5k.


Yeah... Routine repeated steps often causes the MPC 5000 to freeze :lol:


Nah, but seriously, it does
By thevanityfair Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:55 pm
Still receiving "effects engine failure" message on start up.

Also.... I'm having trouble triggering events with an external midi controller. The actual performance is played the way I want and sounds fine while laying down the track, however when playing back the recorded sequence, the MPC seems to take the events and scramble them or move the individual notes around a bit. I've played with the time correct function, but even when turning it off, the problem still occurs.

I would say it's the midi controller, except it's worked before with the MPC4000 as well as various other synths and sequencers without problem..... and again, it's only during playback that the problem occurs.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated :D
By 4dahaterz Sat Aug 23, 2008 1:42 am
i had so many issues today... i just cant remember and write em down in time.... I even had a MPC 2500 and 1000 user discovering issues... but I dont find em until we are in a crunch on studio time with someone
By ritec Sun Aug 24, 2008 2:29 am
The tempo of a track will decrease if a program is loaded while the track is playing... pretty weird. It's like the cpu gets slower or something. It also happened when going from the save screen to the load screen.
By Onkobu Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:12 pm
From time to time I take a look in the manual and this time I found some interesting EFX parameters which were never implemented (Manual, p136++):
Phaser 1/ -2 / -Sync: Depth, Reso, Stages
LP Filter Sweep/ HP -/ -Sync: Mod Amount, Cutoff, Pole Select
Reverb Spacey: Whole EFX missing

I didn't mention the unmentioned parameters like Distortion Fuzz' Tone while it was replaced with more sophisticated frequency dependend parameters or Transient Shaper EFX or Frequency Shifter, not even mentioned in the manual.

BTW I found out, that you can operate EFX as Insert (in EFX screen "Direct" to off, no dry signal routed parallel to EFX to Master Out) or as Bus ("Direct" to on, dry signal and EFX signal routed to master out).
By F n A Thu Aug 28, 2008 5:03 am
So I turned on my machine, made a drum program, made some sequences then went to the rom to load a synth.
All the folders in the rom were empty....wierd. I was positively in the load menu and nothing was in any of the rom folders.
I reset the machine and they were back.

Also, has anyone noticed that the overall responsiveness of the 5000 has had a little lag occasionally after the latest update :?:
By Onkobu Thu Aug 28, 2008 5:31 am
I think it was already mentioned as 1.01-bug: I took a 4 bar 130bpm sample, used Trim->Change Tempo and shifted to 132bpm with Overwrite-Option. Finally the sample was garbitsch (didn't play when I pressed the pad I assigned it to) and saving whole memory complained "element not found". The sample was saved to disk but playing or loading it is impossible (format not supported).

Seems to happen only from time to time. I tried various other samples and sometimes it occurs, sometimes it's fine for hours.
Last edited by Onkobu on Fri Aug 29, 2008 10:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
By Onkobu Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:45 am
Maybe not a bug, but if you fix other features you may drop some lines of code: Trim->Time Stretch - can't stretch from 60 to 180, snaps always to twice the speed. If I stretch by factor 4 I do it intentionally to achieve that stuttering stretch sound. Don't limit possibilities.

And another new bug:
1. Create a 2 or 4 bar sequence and stuff it with at least 9 events (sufficient to strike a single pad 9 times)
2. Copy this sequence, so you have 2 instances
2. Go to Step Edit, no matter for which sequence, make sure the screen is filled with 9 lines of events
3. Insert->"Effect" (event to switch effect sets - great feature)
4. Go to Main, choose 2nd sequence
5. Go to Step Edit
Eeky...there's a "Effect" artifact still on screen, also event editing in step mode is absolutely buggy. Moving the Effect event was only possible in forward direction. When I exceeded bar boundaries (e.g. from 01.01.000 to 02.01.000) I couldn't move the event back again (Edit->Move->01.01.000 shifted the event to 03.01.000 which is totally different from move in Grid Edit [absolute vs. relative, didn't try -01.01.000]). And after processing 4 or 5 sequences this way (Insert->Effect) my 5k intended to do nothing at all, not even an orange blinky

I also encountered various delays when using Effect-events while playing a whole song. The 3rd or 4th effect switch made the song stutter for at least 16th note (sometimes Effect-event and Pad-event are at the same time).