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My first Hardware Groovebox Woes!
Learnt a lesson today do your homework before buying second hand out of date Groovebox. In my case a Akai MPC Touch. I wasn’t aware of the incompatibility between it and Mac OS Catalina.
First hurdle the serial number wasn’t recognised so had to ring up support in UK to get them to reset that. Only 4 installations allowed obviously the last owner never deleted them from their computer.
Second on downloading the MPC software don’t use Chrome the installer doesn’t like it. Had to use Safari. Went to download the the activation code and again hit a brick wall. Codes all used it. Had to ring support again to re-issue one😡. By this time I’m starting to wish I never bothered buying the unit.
Downloaded and installed the MPC software. Next part is the midi and audio drivers tried to install them got the message that the OS is incompatible with the drivers. 🤬
I’ve come to a grinding halt now and even if I get these drivers installed somehow. I still got to put on the touch and display drivers which I heard you may have to get hold of the legacy ones. I’ve tried disabling SIP via the terminal shell but to no avail.
The next big step is to revert back to OS Mojave using time capsule which is a big job and not something I really want to do but to get this beast working I may not have a choice as the drivers should go on then.
I assume a Windows machine would be no problem to get this installed and working ?
Can’t believe Akai are so far behind the curve with Mac OS compatibility.
Anyone else had this problem and how did you work round it.
Do people have the same problems with the Live and One ? Or even Maschine/ Mashine +.
Some days Apple can be a pain in the butt!
What grooveboxes would people recommend that you can use standalone apart from I assume firmware updates. With SD card support etc. Ones I don’t have to have a computer to use and work out the box literally?
I may just go back to Novation Circuit or on of the new ones coming out as found Novation integrate well with Components software.
Comments
Yeah. I don't understand why big manufacturers don't support Mac OS updates. As a Mac owner it puts my right off investing in their hardware.
You definitely have do some homework with Akai, they are never in a hurry to keep up with Mac OS as far as drivers go, sometimes they don’t t bother at all. I bought a MacBook Pro last year that came with Catalina and my MPC Studio Black was pretty much a paper weight unless I used it with my old Mac. I ended up buying an MPC Live 2 and I cant update to Big Sur because Akai says not to. I’ve been an MPC user since the 2000 came out but the Live 2 will probably be the last one for me, I love the Live 2 but I bought an Ableton Push 2 about a month ago and I’m loving it.
I totally understand how you feel. I've been there multiple times, and kinda am there now.
I recently got a regular beatstep to add pots to my iPad patch creation. Found it for a great price, love things with a black metal chassis, 16 banks of 16 pots I was sold.
Should've done some googling. Extremely jumpy encoders with wonky acceleration even when acceleration is disabled, no quick octave shift for the pads, make it annoying for patch design at best, and limited to two octaves at a time.
Looks like it's a very common problem with the encoders. The firmware update may have improved it a little but it's still bad. The pro might have fixed it, but at this point, I'm over it. Should've dug a little deeper instead of just thinking "it's arturia, and a basic midi controller, how could they f that up?"
At least I have a midi to cv converter if I ever but the lottery and go modular...
That's why I like my grooveboxes as they where made in 96/97
no computers needed.
Just kidding... I get what you mean. Just today I noticed some caveats on some multitrack recorders specs, after almost buying one.
I don't have any new groovebox to recommend. My oldest is an MC-303 and the newest an Electribe EMX-1 (the SD one).
But I heard good things on the Circuit, the MC-101, and Elektron's Digitakt/Digitone.
And maybe not considered a groovebox, but an all-in-one is the OP-1.
I'll give a big +1 for the mc101. That thing has beyond impressed me. Just go in thinking it's a rompler groovebox, and you'll be pleasantly surprised. It doesnt have all the parameters exposed, but it does have hundreds of sounds all with filter, adsr, and some lfo access, but the real magic is in the effects and sequencer. What it lacks in p-locks, it makes up for in extremely high resolution note recording, and polyphony.
But real talk, if grooverider was made into a hardware synth, which is absolutely conceivable if it got the funding, it would absolutely be the greatest groovebox of all time.
Are the drivers 32 bit? You can install Mojave on the same hard drive as Catalina if you just need it for a few things like editors. Also, assuming your Mac didn’t originally come with Catalina or later you can do Mojave. If you have a newer model Mac you won’t be doing this. Also, if you have almost no free space on the Mac you won’t be doing this.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208891
Thanks @DMan for the suggestion my MBP is late 2013 so could do that would have to make the space first though and to be honest not sure if I want to have 2 different partitions or volumes running on my system our have a think about it.
Apple’s motto should be ‘if it ain’t broke, we can break it’, the amount of times you see developers post, a fix is in the works for MacOS is crazy.
Ouch, expensive lesson. Hope you can get some other use out of it or resell it without losing tooo much.
You can boot from an external SSD/HD. It’s not too hard to make a bootable volume. You just need to download the OS, which is a google (or DuckDuckGo!) away. You only need a small-ish SSD for This to work and you can still access all the data on your main drive too.
Will get out you of the woods and works well. It’s also worth having a spare bootable volume for diagnostics/disaster recovery.
Just hold down option whilst you boot to choose which volume you boot from.
I got an MPC X last year and this is what I have discovered. When I installed the software and drivers on Windows 10 it works. Everything works including the Ableton controller mode. It works as an audio/midi interface also.
On my M1Mac mini with Big Sur installed it's not supported. On my i7 MacBook Pro with Catalina installed it works.
Akai knows what it has to do to make Mac users happy.
@senhorlampada Got the EMX-1 too. Still one of the most fun and easy to use grooveboxes 😃
If it makes you feel better, I could not successfully get the MPC Touch working on my Surface Pro 3 running Windows 8 and 10. Support said convertible laptops/tablets weren’t supported, which is ridiculous. The display drivers for the Touch were cursed from the beginning, and Akai put that machine behind them as soon as they could.
Somehow Akai MPC's does not like working with computers. When purchasing MPC One Akai's DAW ist included but I was unable to make it work with MPC One in win 7 PC. All drivers installed, hardware put into the right mode but Akai software did not recognize it as a controller.
Cheers guys for all your comments so far. Haven’t had a change to work the problems today to busy with day job. Would definitely not buy Akai again after reading the comments.
Well to be fair, the Touch isn't really a stand alone Groovebox, Id say its a midi controller/audio interface. If buying you're an MPC for its integration with its desktop software, I wouldn't say its a great investment longterm at all just because Akai , lets be honest...pretty much sucks at keeping their drivers current. But as far as using a stand alone MPC for just that, I wouldn't say never buy one. The Live 2 is great as a stand alone, its battery powered and has a built in speaker so id say its the most stand alone MPC right now, and it has Ableton Link, so if Im in Ableton sometimes I just program drum on the MPC while linked to Ableton then export the stems to an ssd drive, pop it into my Mac and import them into Ableton.
But for computer integration , I completely understand, I even bought an Akai Advance keyboard controller, LAST YEAR....and they don't even have drivers for Catalina for that....so its been collecting dust since I bought it. It still works as a general midi controller but I can't use it for the features I bought it for, Im using an Arturia Keylab instead and it works perfectly , no drivers needed. So my take away is I'm done buying any gear that need drivers that need to be updated for it to work
Do the keylab encoders jump values erratically or feature unpredictable parameter acceleration? Or are they reliable and work as expected?
It’s awesome, but where it shines is when using it with Arturia software, I use it with the V Collection, Pigments and Analog Lab and it feels like I’m using hardware synths because the presets show up on the led and all the encoders and faders are already mapped to the different parameters etc. it’s also a Daw controller with the HUI protocol already built in so I can control the transport and others things with ease, no crazy setup, just select it as a HUI controller.
I’ve had a lot of midi controllers that had transport control buttons etc but they all took a lot of mapping and just wasn’t as seamless. That’s what helped sell me on buying it.
But I’ve been using Ableton a lot and bought an Ableton Push 2 about a month ago so that’s taken over a lot of duties from the Keylab with Ableton but it’s still great and I still use it with Logic Pro. The only issue is with faders, which is pretty much any keyboard controller with faders, they aren’t motorized lol. that would be crazy if they were
Maybe I just had bad luck with the beatstep I ended up getting... Or I need to clean the contacts or something. I find the more I turn the pots, they start to loosen up a little, making them glide a little better and feel a bit smoother. Maybe I just need to break them in a little more 🤷♂️
I keep hearing great things about arturia controllers (except on the arturia forum 😂) so I was suprised when I got the beatstep and it was
so messy with the encoders.
My understanding is the keylab ones are very similar if not the same exact ones.