The machine looks good, it is portable, "Akai MPC" has all this street cred, and you're thinking about how you don't need all the extra stuff in the bigger models. It's pretty expensive for such a tiny thing, powered by AA batteries like a cheap toy... but it's an MPC, "Music Production Center", so it's a lot of power packed into a small punch.
Yes, but that's just the dream. In reality, Akai is an overhyped brand backed by a company that fails at software development, customer support, and product design.
The first thing you'll notice is, the pads are stiff and unresponsive. Press on some synth keys and you get a soft touch that gives a wide expression of velocity sensitivity. Press on the MPC500 pad and you can't hear anything, just a whisper. Hold two fingers together tightly to brace the hard impact and jam them down directly in the center and along with sore hands you get inexpressive triggers where it's either loud or quiet, but not much control in between.
The pads do get a tad softer though, after you've damaged your hands for weeks. Plus you can use a midi keyboard, so you move on to try and like the machine. But your saved project doesn't always load. Sometimes saving the entire memory results in some parts of the sequences causing segmentation faults with icky CPU ADDR error messages and you're screwed out of all the time that went into building that project. It makes you afraid to save and just use the thing.
You email Akai, and they are completely unhelpful. Despite sending them test cases setup nicely with detailed instructions and files to reproduce bugs, they are generally unresponsive. But other people on the web are complaining about the same problems, so you just stash the MPC away and wait a year for Akai to release new firmware. Then you load it up, and feel a renewed hope and excitement for what is like a brand new machine, all the pain of the past washed away.
Some bugs seem fixed, what a great little device. Dive into it, sequence, tweak... hmm weird, pressing that button causes odd behavior. Hmm that setting decided to change all by itself. Pressing that shouldn't do that at all. Ignore, ignore, they are annoyances but not showstoppers. Sequence, play, record, track, track, track, finished track 8 of a full song, depress Overdub so you can listen from start... hmm, it's not working, still in record mode with red light on, try again, nothing.
Unresponsive, dead, cursor still blinking like it's alive and functional. But it's not, and this isn't a freak event. It is the norm with this failure of a device. It is the perfect machine to carry with you on the bus so you can look cool. The blue LED backlight looks sharp against the slim black case. Just push back the headphones and nod away like you're some important producer, just don't actually try to do anything real with it.
If you just want to tap pads and hear drums, or record some loops so you can tell your friends you "produce beats", get something else. There are simpler machines that you'll be much happier with because they are easier to just play and have fun with. If you were hoping to use this as a real workstation, a "Music Production Center", forget it. The thing crashes and has more bugs than a PC.
Of course there are lots of people who will say, "Mine works fine, never had a problem". Some of those just tap out simple loops and rarely explore anything too deep in the controls of the unit. Some have all sorts of things plugged in and are tweaking away, but got lucky because their workflow just so happens to match something that hasn't hit one of the major showstoppers.
But Akai has stated that they have not changed the manufacturing, so they are all flawed, even with the latest firmware. Maybe it's because it's the cheapest model? Maybe you should buy the MPC5000? Take a look in that sub-forum, bugs, bugs, bugs. Akai is a lousy company that seems to be banking on the momentum of the past. The MPC may have once been a great piece of equipment, but there seems to be little evidence to support that today.
There is only one possibility. That is that if the hardware is good and these are all software problems then you should consider the 2500 or 1000 with JJOS instead. But the 1000 originally had a flawed pad design. Are the new pads like the 500, stiff and unresponsive? Make sure you do your homework. The other thing is, those models lack the simplicity and portability of the MPC500. So with that gone, why even get an MPC? Maybe there's a better way.
Overall, the MPCs are way too hyped for what they are. If you gave one of these to a fresh software developer with access to the internals they would never design the interface as it is. The workflow is supposed to be what make MPCs good, but it is a poor implementation and seems to be based on something from the 80s. With the amount of hardware power this thing has it should be operating on paradigms more familiar to people from the PC audio scene.
You can't even change the volume for an entire track at once on this thing. Just forget about it. Let Akai die, they aren't the same and don't deserve so much positive publicity. What we need to do is manufacture some hardware like this and release a public SDK. Right now all the talented people are churning out PC software when they should be working on firmware for dedicated audio devices. We need a hardware audio framework for devices dedicated solely to audio, no extra OS layers.
If we had that, then you'd see how insane paying $600 for a name and pretty blue LED is, like a hammer made with gold and diamond engravings that falls apart when you bang a nail. Any crazy Asian manufacturers reading this email me. We'll put this modern tech to use with new ideas for instruments that actually work with fun intuitive playability, and the pads will be gooey soft with angel hair touch so you can relax and enjoy tapping. Forget about the MPC, Akai is a failure.
Yes, but that's just the dream. In reality, Akai is an overhyped brand backed by a company that fails at software development, customer support, and product design.
The first thing you'll notice is, the pads are stiff and unresponsive. Press on some synth keys and you get a soft touch that gives a wide expression of velocity sensitivity. Press on the MPC500 pad and you can't hear anything, just a whisper. Hold two fingers together tightly to brace the hard impact and jam them down directly in the center and along with sore hands you get inexpressive triggers where it's either loud or quiet, but not much control in between.
The pads do get a tad softer though, after you've damaged your hands for weeks. Plus you can use a midi keyboard, so you move on to try and like the machine. But your saved project doesn't always load. Sometimes saving the entire memory results in some parts of the sequences causing segmentation faults with icky CPU ADDR error messages and you're screwed out of all the time that went into building that project. It makes you afraid to save and just use the thing.
You email Akai, and they are completely unhelpful. Despite sending them test cases setup nicely with detailed instructions and files to reproduce bugs, they are generally unresponsive. But other people on the web are complaining about the same problems, so you just stash the MPC away and wait a year for Akai to release new firmware. Then you load it up, and feel a renewed hope and excitement for what is like a brand new machine, all the pain of the past washed away.
Some bugs seem fixed, what a great little device. Dive into it, sequence, tweak... hmm weird, pressing that button causes odd behavior. Hmm that setting decided to change all by itself. Pressing that shouldn't do that at all. Ignore, ignore, they are annoyances but not showstoppers. Sequence, play, record, track, track, track, finished track 8 of a full song, depress Overdub so you can listen from start... hmm, it's not working, still in record mode with red light on, try again, nothing.
Unresponsive, dead, cursor still blinking like it's alive and functional. But it's not, and this isn't a freak event. It is the norm with this failure of a device. It is the perfect machine to carry with you on the bus so you can look cool. The blue LED backlight looks sharp against the slim black case. Just push back the headphones and nod away like you're some important producer, just don't actually try to do anything real with it.
If you just want to tap pads and hear drums, or record some loops so you can tell your friends you "produce beats", get something else. There are simpler machines that you'll be much happier with because they are easier to just play and have fun with. If you were hoping to use this as a real workstation, a "Music Production Center", forget it. The thing crashes and has more bugs than a PC.
Of course there are lots of people who will say, "Mine works fine, never had a problem". Some of those just tap out simple loops and rarely explore anything too deep in the controls of the unit. Some have all sorts of things plugged in and are tweaking away, but got lucky because their workflow just so happens to match something that hasn't hit one of the major showstoppers.
But Akai has stated that they have not changed the manufacturing, so they are all flawed, even with the latest firmware. Maybe it's because it's the cheapest model? Maybe you should buy the MPC5000? Take a look in that sub-forum, bugs, bugs, bugs. Akai is a lousy company that seems to be banking on the momentum of the past. The MPC may have once been a great piece of equipment, but there seems to be little evidence to support that today.
There is only one possibility. That is that if the hardware is good and these are all software problems then you should consider the 2500 or 1000 with JJOS instead. But the 1000 originally had a flawed pad design. Are the new pads like the 500, stiff and unresponsive? Make sure you do your homework. The other thing is, those models lack the simplicity and portability of the MPC500. So with that gone, why even get an MPC? Maybe there's a better way.
Overall, the MPCs are way too hyped for what they are. If you gave one of these to a fresh software developer with access to the internals they would never design the interface as it is. The workflow is supposed to be what make MPCs good, but it is a poor implementation and seems to be based on something from the 80s. With the amount of hardware power this thing has it should be operating on paradigms more familiar to people from the PC audio scene.
You can't even change the volume for an entire track at once on this thing. Just forget about it. Let Akai die, they aren't the same and don't deserve so much positive publicity. What we need to do is manufacture some hardware like this and release a public SDK. Right now all the talented people are churning out PC software when they should be working on firmware for dedicated audio devices. We need a hardware audio framework for devices dedicated solely to audio, no extra OS layers.
If we had that, then you'd see how insane paying $600 for a name and pretty blue LED is, like a hammer made with gold and diamond engravings that falls apart when you bang a nail. Any crazy Asian manufacturers reading this email me. We'll put this modern tech to use with new ideas for instruments that actually work with fun intuitive playability, and the pads will be gooey soft with angel hair touch so you can relax and enjoy tapping. Forget about the MPC, Akai is a failure.
