MPC Thread : MPC Live - MPC X - MPC One (Part 1)

The Lounge Other Gear
#5265

Yes, when this first happened to me, I was working from a 32-gig SanDisk Ultra SD card (80 MB/s). Naturally, my first instinct was to blame the card, so I installed a 250-gig Samsung 860 Evo SSD. The gratuitous saving issue happens on both storage devices.

The only possible explanation I can come up with there is, perhaps it depends on which parameters have been changed…?

I started this project on 2.4 (upon purchase of my MPC) and I’m now on 2.5. This behaviour has persisted through both operating systems, despite the fact that I have saved the project anew, with fresh samples, to a different location, under a different name, etc.

The fact that you are also working from an external drive, and haven’t been able to consistently reproduce the issue, blows a theory I’ve been crafting that maybe the problem simply doesn’t occur for people using the MPC’s proprietary drive. Anyway…

I don’t know, lads, I’ve been involved in the development of a lot of new tech over the years, hunted down a thousand bugs in that time, but I’m at a loss here. All I know is, it’s very predictable behaviour on my MPC. I can reproduce the issue faithfully. That said, admittedly there are a lot of variables to consider here.

At any rate, I appreciate you guys taking this to task with me!

Cheers!

#5266

I’m not on GS, MW, or the Akai forum; but if any of you want to quote me there, or if you happen to have a direct line to Dan or whomever, feel free to copy and paste anything I’ve written here, and keep me posted. In the meantime, I will stick with the “customer service” route, and see if that yields an answer —Ahem!

Cheers!

#5267

Hey John,
Let’s check some things…Your disks are formatted in exFAT right?Are you able to try saving your project to a 3rd different external drive (USB,SD,another SSD or whatever)? and check again?3rd is the lucky charm sometimes :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Any tech specs for these samples (bit rate etc.)?
Definitely not a normal behavior to start saving the samples again…

#5268

Well, as previously stated, all the samples were recorded and saved using the MPC, so the file format (sample rate and bit depth) is of Akai’s own design, whatever that might be. If I open the files on the computer and click on properties, they simply appear as .WAV files, averaging around 1MB in size, depending on the sample (let’s say roughly 5 seconds per sample), at a specified audio “bit rate” of 1411kbps, for whatever that’s worth.

All my storage devices are indeed formatted - exFAT - and I’ve had no issues with any of them otherwise. And yes, I have also tested this using several different drives at this point. The behaviour is always the same, as described above.

For the record, my MPC has always done this, and I was suspicious of it from day one; but it wasn’t until I started noticing noise accumulating in my samples that I became concerned about it. From there, it was relatively easy to determine that the corruption was somehow a result of the saving process, because I made a separate folder containing the original samples, as I captured them, from which I could then make a direct comparison to the duplicates stored in the program and project folders. And, now that I know what I’m listening for, I can demonstrate that the samples do become more and more degraded with every save, based on how many times the program has been saved, versus how many times the project has been saved, etc. Again, I say, every time the MPC overwrites the samples, it is essentially making a copy of a copy, so the gradual degradation does make sense in that respect (theoretically). That’s not to say that it’s normal, but it is plausible.

Cheers!

#5269

I think what might be happening here is party due to the way the MPC upconverts everything to 32bit audio internally. Somehow, repeated overwrites of the samples might therefore introduce redundant bitdepth conversions, which might end up creating artifacts in the sounds beyond a certain number of reconversions… (?)

3 Likes
#5270

To suspect this from day one maybe indicates a hardware issue all along?I’m curious…Maybe an issue with the board when mounting external drives?
Have you tried saving to the internal storage and check if it does the same?

#5271

I don’t know, it’s not like I had a precedent to go by. I mean, I thought it was odd behaviour, sure, but I had no reason to suspect that it was a hardware fault. Now, had I heard noise in my samples from day one, that would have been another story altogether; but the overwriting issue just seemed like lazy coding to me. Perhaps naively, I figured Akai must have their reasons, and that it was otherwise of no real concern.

At any rate, no, I have not yet tried saving anything to the MPC’s internal drive. Honestly, I was hoping to avoid mixing my stuff up with Akai’s mess; especially on a drive that I can’t access directly from my computer. Maybe I’ll try saving a dummy project to the internal, just to see how it behaves… Bah!

Thanks for helping, Yorgos.

Cheers!

#5272

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know enough about that to speculate one way or the other. If support would just get back to me… Argh! I mean, corrupt files aside, you’d think someone at Akai would, at very least, be able to confirm whether or not saving a program or project should result in the files being repeatedly overwritten like this. Like, if it’s not supposed to be happening, if it does indicate a hardware fault, then I need to get it fixed or replaced ASAP. I’ve got work to do here, damn it!

Cheers!

#5273

The best way to get Akai’s attention, AFAIK, is via gearslutz, and especially adressing xparis001 directly

#5274

Thanks, tsutek.

Honestly though, I’m not going over there. Getting involved in yet another forum, especially gearslutz, really doesn’t interest me. I have too many online conversations to track daily as it is; never mind one as long-winded and volatile as the GS thread. Besides which, if there is something wrong with my MPC, I shouldn’t have to initiate a warranty claim in a public forum. I will continue, albeit possibly in vain, to try to get a hold of Akai through proper avenues. Hell, I’ll go through the dealer or one of my other sponsors if I have to. I have my ways. :wink:

Thanks again, one and all, for attempting to help me suss this out anyway.

Cheers!

#5275

By the way, in an effort to find other examples of my MPC’s behaviour, I took to watching a few tutorial videos from “mpc head” on YouTube. There’s one video in particular, wherein he covers the basics of creating and saving a drum program. In that video, he first makes a drum program from scratch, and shows you how to save it… As expected, his MPC (a Touch in this case) visually collects all the samples and writes them to the program folder. He then proceeds to make some changes to that program and resaves it… And his MPC, just like mine, can be seen collecting all the same samples - again - and indeed overwriting them in the program folder. He does this several times throughout the video, and it happens every time. So that much is consistent with what I’ve observed here. Now, just imagine that the same thing also happens every time I save a project, provided that I’ve shutdown the MPC between saves…

Cheers!

#5276

You could also give a try at the official AKAI MPC Live forum John:


As i recall two representatives Eliza and Nick are answering questions there…

2 Likes
#5277

Ha!

Ya, I’ve seen their “answers” there. Maybe if I fall on desperate times here… :wink:

Cheers!

1 Like
#5278

ah interesting - so in that case (a Touch) it’s even happening in the MPC Application context, not just standalone. Wow, feeling your pain.

#5279

you are making pretty good points and observations… however… my sets usually contain very long samples from 30 seconds to 3 to4 minutes so the name is up for quite a long time when saving… (dunno if that matters, but all my content is sampled into the device and not transferred, so all samples are ‘native’)

if I just change the sequencer or scoot a few notes around and don’t change the samples, saving is done in an instant… if I alter one of the samples (trim them a bit), only one sample displays for a longer period in the saving dialogue and the other’s seem to get skipped… if I change just 2 samples… 2 names pop up for a bit longer… and so forth…
maybe I just wish you are not right as this would be quite troublesome indeed. but i cant see the behaviour you are seeing

what you are DEF right about though is that even if changing slices (ie. no audio changes), the whole sample seems to get written again… this seems unnecessary indeed.
as you can tell, I haven’t read all the recent posts here fully and maybe that’s what you mean in the first place, i just can’t confirm that all sample are being written all the time

#5280

I have the same experiences as you. This is a mystery…

#5281

I don’t tend to slice samples much. Might be why I don’t seem to be hitting this problem…?

#5282

Hmm…

Incidentally, each of the 128 samples in the drum program that I’m using in this particular project, just so happens to be a sample-chain unto itself: each is comprised of 4 hits, that I’ve saved with non-destructive slices, and I have each slice mapped respectively to the 4 velocity layers per pad.

That said, I never change or move those slice points, so…

I’m clearly just grasping at straws here (smirk).

Cheers!

#5283

LOL!

I just got the following email from the faceless, but modishly named “inMusic”…

Yep, because I’ve got all the time in the world for this runaround, right? Grrr! So, we’re skipping the “support” part, and jumping straight to the “customer satisfaction” survey. Oh, it’s on now! Time to call in some favours, find an unlisted number, and call someone on the Akai team at home. Perhaps I’ll wait till 5a.m.

My favourite part of the email is the link back to the page from which I first contacted them.

Serenity now, serenity now, serenity now…

Cheers!

1 Like
#5284

I love when they recommend to talk to the smiley face in the corner of the software (to submit bugs etc)… infuriating on a bad day

2 Likes