It seems to be a common misconception that RAM sizes can be chosen arbitrarily and they’re only ever small for cost-cutting reasons. Not everything works like a desktop PC – it’s more likely that the system-on-module board they’re using has a fixed RAM size. They could have selected a different SoM, but there could be a hundred different engineering reasons why they didn’t, putting the added cost aside.
strange can’t gety this to work, what are your settings?
i’m getting lots of pop and clicks
i’ve made sure that the mx-1 is set to 44.1 but still getting these pops and clicks…
oh yeah found this alternative manual for you mx-1ners, maybe useful
If I remember right, the FCC filling for the MPC mentions it uses a Radxa Rock2 SoM which is available in 1, 2, or 4 GB of RAM.
You are quite right that those SoM board usually have limited amounts of RAM. the Raspberry Pi 4 for example has “only” up to 8GB of RAM. And back when the MPC Live came out, the biggest rPI was the 3B with 1BG of RAM.
Back when people were figuring this out, someone found out that akai had bought a ton of both 2gb and 4gb boards, so they bought them all at the same time and have planned this all along… back then we were speculating what the 4gb boards could be used for… now we know.
I wonder, do we know for certain that the one mk 2 is getting a 4gb board? Was that in the paperwork for the filing?
Is it possible to have a q-link control a parameter that varies depending on which pad is selected? I want to have a drum program with a load of different stab sounds that I can control the envelope of during a jam.
Not that I know of.
Don’t think so. I think you can on the Force. I really, really hope that the new update (if and when it comes) brings assignable macros, which would then make such a thing possible as part of a project.
Sitting with my MPC now on the sofa watching the rugby and jamming away. The only thing it’s missing for me (compared to the Force) is the user assignable macros as that allowed me to do some more live tweaking away from just the XY stuff when I had the Force (like master filter sweeps, delays, individual instrument cutoffs etc)
Update: Strangely enough I figured out how to stop the clicking and popping… after turning on the mx-1 first, then turning on the mpc you’ll get the clicking, but then turn the mpc off and on again and the clicking and popping goes bye bye and everything is crystal clear… go figure?
This is what I love about it. I can pick it up anywhere and carry on where I left off.
And it’s not limited “I just use it for ‘insert task’ on the sofa” - I can work on mixing, arranging, jamming, sound design, finger drumming, or let the kids join in (they each have their own project). Or all of those because the battery lasts well.
I’ve gone from being a doubter (oh it’s not portable enough) to a complete convert!
Plus the rugby was great last weekend
Really, this ^ ,assignable macros and some bug fixin is all that the MPC needs right now…All other features are just some welcomed additions…
Clearly everyone has variations on their wish list.
The only thing I think the Live range needs is the ability to record directly into clips, ala Ableton Live. I know of the work arounds with the looper and such but directly recording into the clip using the clip interface would wrap up the Live into a perfect Bow (for me of course).
Another massive wish:
A better way to edit note length in the step sequencer, like if you hold down the step then the q-links control note pitch and length.
Is it just me or does the MPC Live 2 (and presumably other modern “MPC OS” machines) have weird / broken / oddly inexpressive amp envelopes?
I like to make really simple “cut up a loop from a record” tracks (like this [0]) and I’m used to the 2000XL where the envelopes really affect the feel of your chops. For example, I used to go through my chopped kits and decide whether the attack for each chop should be 0, 1, or 2 (and rarely something larger as well) because each of those values imparted a different quality to the attack (0 was absolutely chopped, 1 would feel pretty well de-clicked but still sharp, 2 would be ever so slightly softer, etc.).
On the Live 2, basically everything from 1 to… like 20 or so, maybe higher, sounds basically the same to me.
And I could say the same for the decay phase of the envelope. On the 2KXL it was always a great way to get chopped loops to feel “whole” again, by finessing the decay time of various slices. It would also be possible to give loops a different, staccato feel by deliberately creating space between chops with higher decay values.
On the Live 2, almost everything up until 40 or 50 (?) sounds basically the same to me, and anything less than that seems oddly ineffective at removing clicks or unwanted noise from the end of chops. And then right around 55 or 58, suddenly everything gets WAY more decayed, but still in a way that ends up not being very musical or useful.
In addition — and this is really paranoid rambling at this point — I feel like these envelopes don’t actually serve the purpose of de-clicking chops like on most other samplers, including the older MPCs. I feel like I end up with beats where the whole program is set to something like attack: 8, and decay: 28, and there are still strange little clicks at the edges of the notes.
I feel like this is somewhat related to the very strange UI around setting the shape of the attack and decay phases of the envelope, which seem to default to non-linear values, and can ONLY be adjusted with the touchscreen (?), not q-links or anything else (as far as I can tell). And these controls, which I am terrified to touch because there is no way to adjust them precisely or snap them to anything, seem to radically affect the sound of the envelope.
What’s up with that?
Unlike pure synthesis, wherein the start of a wave cycle is a minuscule and finite point, and the tiniest attack on the amp envelope will remove any unwanted clicks due to wave reset; in a sampler, it’s more on the structure of the sample itself, the start of which is likely not so accurate.
To which end, I might suggest that you first scrutinize the start and end points of your samples, removing any unwanted space or noise, then use the fade-in and fade-out sample edit functions to further clean up any clicks and pops.
Cheers!
Yup, I hear you. I’m cutting at zero crossings already. Understand for sure that things won’t be guaranteed under all circumstances, but I still think something funny is going on (for example, I don’t see how there should be any clicks at the end of samples if a decay envelope is applied).
But totally, there are nuances. At the very least, I find these envelopes to be a disappointment compared to previous MPCs.
If you don’t already know, you can change the curvature of the envelope attack from logarithmic to exponential. That may or may not help with your objective.
Cheers!
Cutting at zero crossing might not always work for stereo samples as the channels might have different zero cross points.
I had not thought of this, doh!
I found this particularly tricky when looking for loop points for samples instruments.
I just can’t stop sampling at the moment. I haven’t had a device that samples properly for ages. Maschine, Octatrack, Digitakt were all so frustrating and each seemed to have their own unique barriers.
I’ve been recording anywhere between 4-8 hours of different radio stations that have curated shows, and then just sitting and trawling through it all and sampling, sampling, sampling
I can also feel my beatmaker mojo returning with each day I turn up and turn it on. It’s been missing a for… jeeez… Actually a year or so.
MPC < every other sampler