Anyone who knows why i get this issue with the MPC Autosampler?

Let’s take the Korg Collection M1, the Organ2 preset. If you attempt to autosample it in the MPC Software (Windows10) the percussive beginning of the notes is missing, most noticeable after C3.

I cant figure out what may be causing this.

 

Last edited: Oct 23, 2023

This is the best reason of all to use Sample Robot. Logic Autosampler does the same BS thing. Sample Robot will begin sampling a tiny little bit in advance before it sends the Midi to the source you are sampling. It is also a parameter in Sample Robot you can manually adjust. At least with hardware. Then it automatically trims the small silence in front to the perfect X-axis Zero Crossing. Also, on Windows I think you can use Waveknife to bulk trim them. But it has been years since I used a pc for anything, so this is just from memory. All of these tiny little details is why I said Sample Robot is the hands-down winner for this stuff, and how they get away with charging $200+ for it.

What is causing it is the MPC, starting to sample and the midi note-on being sent at the same time.
(and latency caused by the usual culprits) Maybe there is an option within MPC to address this. The midi trigger needs to have a small delay. You may end up with space in front to fix, but that is better than losing your transients. This is where External Hardware round-trip latency compensation becomes more important. In your DAW, it would be calculated using a round-trip ping to determine how much compensation is required.

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2023

Thanks @clone, the waves at least look like complete, you can see what looks like a full beginning. Here its zoomed in a lot so that attack looks a bit flat but it looks normal and more accentuated when zoomed out.



I was thinking maybe some envelope thing was doing this so i changed the filter and managed to get back a little of the click but still not enough. Many sounds you dont notice it that much, but in particular the Organ2 is a perfect example.

I will check if the MPC does this when trying to do it in standalone too. If it is so then its a f*** catastrophe for Akai to not fix a FUNDAMENTAL thing.

This should work perfectly, its a sampler...

 

Last edited: Oct 23, 2023

yeah that image is not displaying the problem I was expecting or explaining. You have some sort of ramp/fade-in going on there. Any fade-in parameter you have need to be checked. It should be about 5milliseconds or less just to avoid a click. That is a smooth curve and not a big vertical looking transient. Organ sounds are sometimes almost percussive at the key strike.. Is your midi note being sent to the synth/vst originating in the MPC or at the PC DAW? Keep in mind it can be two-way latency. The delay is the time from the midi messages being sent, to the computer processing them, and then the audio out to the sampler. Doing this stuff is a game of milliseconds, and it can only be calculated correctly if the entire midi-to-audio process is handled by the same device, otherwise it cannot be measured and corrected accurately. If you are doing it manually, it isn't an issue. But that becomes a ton! of work. Trimming and renaming each key's sample is an administrative nightmare. I wouldn't even try doing it this way with my E-Mu. Instead, I would make a daw project with Midi notes you want triggered one after another, record it all in as a single waveform, chop it up with Recycle and send it key mapped to the sampler via SCSI or whatever transfer method you have available to you.

The problem I was describing happens when the audio is being recorded by the same device that is sending the midi data out to the awaiting synth to play the note. That's how it can do every key, every x# of keys, round robin and multiple velocity layers.

If you are just triggering notes on the computer or playing a keyboard, the MPC should just be armed/ready so that as soon as incoming audio is detected at the sampler it begins recording the sample. Many samplers allow you to set a threshold you want the sampler to recognize as "detected incoming audio". The MPC is more than capable of doing that, it is the round trip handling accuracy that i am unsure of. It's only an issue when you want multiple notes to be all sampled automatically with all the options you pick, and then pressing one button to start and complete the entire process. With Sample Robot you can hit start button and just walk away.

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2023

Well, tested now and it works fine in standalone, that's a relief.
So this is a problem only when using the MPC Software.

Same settings used nothing changed and it does what its supposed to. Now it captures the percussive attack, or doesn't muffled it, whatever the case may be.

 

What's the difference in how you have it setup? The MPC should have no problem at all capturing incoming audio correctly. MPC-60 can even do that perfect and they are like 30+ years old. Maybe you have to do a little adjustment with the SampleStart to get rid of a tiny little bit of silence, but other than that, it's always perfect really.

I have never used an Autosampler to sample my computer out into hardware. I once used the Logic Autosampler to record all the drum hits from the Roland Cloud drum machines and it chopped the transients incorrectly like you mentioned in your first post. I have always sampled hardware into the computer, and to record with external effects I have always done a print loop out and immediately back. Otherwise I do some kind of convert and then transfer/export. Either SCSI transfer or some kind of disk. I think the MPC XL models were the only ones with SCSI expansion right out of the box, or they were a couple hundred bucks to add. (The S-series Samplers were called "Studio" for stock SCSI port) Now we have a bunch of options like replacing floppy disk drive with a SD card reader and probably some others. If I was going to take on the project that you are working on, the card reader would be my pick. You can dump gigs of wave file samples onto a little card and import them directly into the sampler. So much less work involved. But it bypasses the DA convertors and some people are even picky about that, they want the noise/clipping of the sampler.

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2023

Nothing different. The problem ocurres in the software version. In standalone it worked.

It must be a bug of some sort, since the firmware/internal software should be identical to the PC version. The sample waves files don’t look truncated or cut short, but who knows. It’s a pita really.

Anyone who has the MPC software installed is very welcomed to test the example a named earlier. Would be great to hear if it’s just me having this particular problem

 

Last edited: Oct 23, 2023