By Mastakilla
Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:15 am
Akai's biggest mistake with the 500 and things like the mpk 49 is going from 16 pads to 12 pads. since 99.99999% of producers using a drum machine are composing in 4/4 time, samples and beats divide quite nicely into 16 pads. as doing a 16 zone split on 2 bars, will give you 8th notes, or on 4 bars, you will get 1/4 notes. either way, your sample is chopped up evenly and u have the bars spread across the pads in an even division. where as using a 12 pad set up, you would only have access to a bar and a half, or 3 bars as opposed to 4. You could work around this problem using more banks but now you are really compromising.
The difference in the 4 pads doesn't render these product useless, but it's a real compromise. Especially if you got in the game on a 2000xl or even a 1000, losing the 4 pads is gonna be hard to deal with.
as for portability, maybe the mpc fly will pan out, idk. Personally i don't have a need for portability nor could i work the way i'm accustom to away from my home studio.
The difference in the 4 pads doesn't render these product useless, but it's a real compromise. Especially if you got in the game on a 2000xl or even a 1000, losing the 4 pads is gonna be hard to deal with.
as for portability, maybe the mpc fly will pan out, idk. Personally i don't have a need for portability nor could i work the way i'm accustom to away from my home studio.