Akai MPC 3000, Operator'S Manual, Page: 33 / 276

Chapter 2: The Basics
Page 20
Sound
Each individual sampled recording in the MPC3000 is called a
sound. A sound could be a recording of a single strike of a snare
drum or cymbal, a sound effect, or a 30 second stereo recording of
backing vocals. Sounds are sampled in 16-bit linear format at a
sampling rate of 44.1kHz in either mono or stereo and can be any
length up to the limit of sound memory. A maximum of 128 sounds
can reside in sound memory.
Pad
When sounds are loaded into the MPC3000, each pad plays a
particular sound. Though there are only 16 pads, the MPC3000 can
hold many more than 16 sounds, To access more than 16 sounds
from the pads, the MPC3000 provides four banks of pad assign-
ments permitting up to 64 sounds to be played from the 16 pads.
Only one bank can be active at a time. The four banks are named A,
B, C, and D, and the pads are numbered 1 through 16. The 64 bank/
pad combinations are named by combining the bank letter (A-D)
with the pad number:
Pads in bank A: A01 through A16
Pads in bank B: B01 through B16
Pads in bank C: C01 through C16
Pads in bank D: D01 through D16
Each of these 64 bank/pad combinations (A01-D16) is referred to as
a pad.
Notice that sounds are not assigned directly to pads, but rather to
MIDI Note Numbers. In order for a pad to play a sound, it is first
assigned to a MIDI note number, then that note number is assigned
to a sound. This is described further in the “MIDI Functions” and
“Creating and Editing Programs” chapters of this manual.
Note Number
In MIDI terminology, note number refers to the element in a MIDI
Note On event that supplies the pitch of the note. The note number
range is from 0 to 127. For example, if Middle C is played on a MIDI
keyboard, a Note On event is sent out over MIDI containing note
number 60; the receiving sound generator interprets this as Middle
C and plays the appropriate pitch. If the sound generator is playing
drum sounds, the note number is not used for pitch, but rather to