What exactly do Akai think they're doing ?
Out of boredom on Saturday I bought an Akai Mpc Sample and an MPC KEY 37. I hit a few pads and keys at the store and thought hey this could be fun.
Oh man, this is no fun at all.
First of all, the MPC Sample is just hiss and buzz when connected to anything via USB. So I had to a pull out a good old Line Transformer Isolator to cut the ground loop. Once I did that, when receiving clock from Ableton, it started to sound really garbled due to Flex Beat somehow causing havoc to the samples, I have no idea what the fuck is going on but putting Flex Beat mix to 0% seemed to fix it. Bear in mind this is within minutes of plugin the machine and before I could even figure out what "Flex Beat" was. Also, not possible to send samples direct to the machine ? is this that good old FAT drives can't share connections with two machines ? I'm going to have to wip out an SD card ? Or even worse, use the MPC Sample as an audio device so I can sample in real time from the USB and so fucking up my whole audio routing ? I have an RME system with 48 I/O I can't exactly just run my whole shit to a battery powered toy, as it seems that is what Akai is selling.
Then there's the MPC Key 37. Oh man, what a train wreck that is. The whole InMusic activation bullshit is already infuriating. Also same thing, the drives can't be share with the computer to transfer files and samples, I have to save, flip it to Controller Mode, add the files to the drive, turn off Controller Mode, lol this is just hilarious. I don't even know exactly what else to say about it anything I tried to do was just a god awful nightmare. I bought this because I love to load a one shot in a sampler and play it like a synth, but have you tried to load a one shot sample into this thing ? You will have to walk around the block 4 times before it actually works. Load Into Pool, created a keygroup, select the file from the pool to put it in the keygroup lol like what ? I know this is the old Akai system but if you want to make this work like an old Akai machine at least allow me to be able to load my S1000, S2000 and S3000 presets and patches ? Oh and I won't even mention the fact that when you use this with the plugin, the keyboard just turns into a dumb midi controller and you have to re-install all the plugins as VST3 and AU plugins to be able to use them in the MPC3 app, which just goes to show, it just turns into a shitty DAW.
Last but not least. And the worst part of it all, this thing sounds great. But as a working musician, who is not a beatmaker who makes 8 bars loops (this is not a critique, just saying that's not what I do) it is a headache I didn't need.
Now I made the mistake to purchase this in a shop. I go there often as it's one of the only music shops here and now I know I am going to have to go through hell to bring this thing back, because for the life of me, I can't keep this. I'm going to punch a hole through it. This is about 25% of what I have to say about it btw, happy to discuss this in comments if you have stuff to add.
Fun fact : Akai blocked me on Instagram.