By
richard
Sat Dec 06, 2003 10:18 am
I know u wanna know, so first reports:
looks - well okay, a bit cheap knobs and all - a bit toyish, but hey its the baby of the gang. Akai are not strong on design, the blue is okay, yeah its okay, but I got a biege 2000xl and a white/blue MPC4000 too and I kinda love the look of those, like 1950s sciencelab things
feels - solid, good hard metal, u can really hit it, shake it, drop it a few times, with no fear. impressively gigworthy. NOT a toy, less rattly than my 2000xl when u hit it
size -small but not tiny
pads - like the MPC4000 they on the wrong side!!! will take me a little while to get into that and out of some 2000xl habits but in the end it probably makes more sense for us righthanders - and yeah they're fast alright, and big enuff.
most important, ahem, it sounds... pretty slick actually, a more fluid smooth sound than the 2000xl, quite different, more modern I guess but not at all bland, and the fx are reallly fukking great actually. I could actually use the verbs in productions, chorus too - I mean who wants a lexicon on a snare drum anyway? - much better than I would have expected, pisses on the 2000xl fx qualitywise... but soundwise their may be a reason to keep a 2000 or MPC60 around for studio drum machine use - maybe this won't krunch in the same way - but too early to be sure
Its easy to get around for an MPC head, same as the 2000, and all the obvious stuff seems to work out of the box - much faster screens etc than the 2000.
Still many things to figure out but I think we're gonna be good buddies.
didn't load the new OS upgrade yet
more tea now
Richard