AKAI MIDI MONITOR SOFTWARE

The keybed feels pretty nice and of course the pads are great. The Akai gets a lot of stuff right: it excels when it comes to sampling and sequencing which is probably not a surprise to anyone given its lineage. However, we have to remember that a Kronos costs about $4K new (in Canadian dollars) which is double the cost of the Akai.

It has nine different synth engines and you are limited only by the processing power available. The Kronos has 3GB of ram, allows for disk streaming of sample libraries, and can have up to 16 multitimbral parts in a Combi or sequence along with a ton of FX which themselves are highly configurable. If we compare the MPC Keys 61 to a workstation product like the Kronos, the latter – while it takes a while to fire up – doesn’t feel underpowered to me. I own a pair of Lives and a Force so I’m pretty familiar with this family of products. I say this without having seen Benn’s video yet. How they remain as popular as they are remains a mystery to me. I now regret having ever bought the piece of s***. Then, one by one, the inconsistencies, bugs, and omissions began to take their toll. This wouldn’t be as big annoyance as it was if I hadn’t migrated all of my VST2 plugins to VST3. The first thing that quickly got my attention was the fact that none of the “current” Akais can deal with VST3.

AKAI MIDI MONITOR SOFTWARE

Also, for that matter, even the MPC Software remains horribly unfinished.

Given that it is so new, it isn’t surprising to find that the MPC 61 isn’t finished, given that the MPC Live 2 isn’t finished (or anywhere near finished), as well. For whatever reason, about a month ago I got the idea that an MPC Live 2 would be a great addition to my studio, so I bought one. Except for an MPK-49 keyboard of some sort, I haven’t had a current Akai music product in my studio since the late 80s when I had an S1000 sampler. He may not have intended to make a funny video but I found myself LMAO through most of it. All of this is not surprising when it comes to Akai, they’ve had a few decent instruments over the years used by many on alot of stuff but really have always been bugged & plagued by certain issues of some sort that has gradually forced them to cut, back & down their own product lines emmensely where they’re a mere shell of what was and still are considered the red-headed stepchild of the Japanese makers despite all this they continue to go ahead with the ‘let’s throw something together cheaply in a last ditch effort to stay somewhat viable in the market’ attitude that looks like it might work based on how this thing is selling but it may not (probably won’t) last kids, but again this has been their m/o for yrs now….Not having anything to do with said topic here but the Best controller’s on the planet still remain to be & for along time have been Kurzweil’s K2k & PC3 there’s really nothing out there that are as purposeful as pure cntrllrs with the midi features & flexible versatility of’em then & now thanx folks

Akai midi monitor