What is the future for the MPC Renaissance?

labcoats wrote:If you were head coder marketing person at Akai no one would blame you for thinking game over.

I mean, obviously Akai are going to have to do a fancy colour display, perhaps even design a new Ren just to play (perceived) catch up with NI. And whilst all thats going on they will now have a marketing dept pushing for nonsense features that can dazzle spotty teenagers. But In the real world those easy to market features will make zero difference to the majority of users. Its a potential disaster in the making.

BUT:
One of the cheapest and potentially most successful thing Akai could do for its virtual MPC range is go all out and give the sequencer some serious bells and whistles. One that rivals any Daw midi sequencer out there.

If I were head bloke I would be telling my team to give that thing the best sequencer ever seen on an MPC or any other hardware sequencer for that matter, and make sure it rivals any Daw midi sequencer. yes, I know its not hardware - but its close.

WHY:
Theres many reasons from a user point of view which are to many to go in to here just now, but from a sales point of viewthere are thousands of trapped Daw users out there who would love to use a hardware style sequencer, get the feel of a real tactile surface and move away from their Daws screens. They have tried various hardware midi sequencers, even buying MPCs but they are just so used to recording and editing in a Daw they almost always go back to it.

A Daw type midi sequencer in the Ren really would give Akai something to shout about (for years). And it would be great for the users.

I realise that many have numerous features on their wish list (mine is the Universal mixer), and those features can and should be added over time. But Im just talking about a core direction, a large part of the essence of the machine. A roadmap for Akai.


"Take care of the sequencer and it will never let you down"

The features NI added to 2.0 are logical steps forward. I don't see anything that was a surprise. The only surprise is a new, larger controller with colored LCDs.

The Ren and the MPC Software have a very bright future IF these are the types of products musicians want. I don't believe NI can do anything to negatively impact the future of these MPCs. NI actually borrowed Akai's implementation of 'unlink slices' and calls it 'overlapping' slices. They even copied the GUI of the Ren to pull this feature off.

who borrowed what goes to back to car industry when they all decided to use engines and oval wheels to move vehicles

at the end it's all about ride comfort and functionality

who copied who is irrelevant, whos iteration of the function works better is the motif

who borrowed what goes to back to car industry when they all decided to use engines and oval wheels to move vehicles

at the end it's all about ride comfort and functionality

who copied who is irrelevant, whos iteration of the function works better is the motif

Tru

Jay-Z - take over "you made it a hot line I made it a hot song"

M-Chop wrote:

who borrowed what goes to back to car industry when they all decided to use engines and oval wheels to move vehicles

at the end it's all about ride comfort and functionality

who copied who is irrelevant, whos iteration of the function works better is the motif

Tru

Jay-Z - take over "you made it a hot line I made it a hot song"

So after dealing with maschine 2.0 I have a ton of complaints, my user path are not automatically transferred to the 2.0 from 1.8 that's I have to go back and import tag every single folder that I have ton in the past and that took almost a month to do for me within 1.8 that's my biggest issue

1.8.2 sounds way better than 2.0 to me
The mixer pretty much overrated its same as before, hold a pad turn the volume knob and there you have They just made that same function into a mixer visual the work is not that great especially in scene mode to me, still no tempo automation, no program change features either, so far I'm not impressed the drum synth pointless if already you have a great drum library
Oh yeah it does a full scan every single time on startup so if your like me with a tons of plugins u will be waiting for damn near 5 minutes just for to maschine load up

Clippyclipp wrote:So after dealing with maschine 2.0 I have a ton of complaints

What does any of this shit have to do with the future of the Ren?

M-Chop wrote:

who borrowed what goes to back to car industry when they all decided to use engines and oval wheels to move vehicles

at the end it's all about ride comfort and functionality

who copied who is irrelevant, whos iteration of the function works better is the motif

Tru

Jay-Z - take over "you made it a hot line I made it a hot song"

When it comes to technology it's best to roll with the leader..the company with the vision instead of the follower..IMO

MPCWeapon1 wrote:

M-Chop wrote:

who borrowed what goes to back to car industry when they all decided to use engines and oval wheels to move vehicles

at the end it's all about ride comfort and functionality

who copied who is irrelevant, whos iteration of the function works better is the motif

Tru

Jay-Z - take over "you made it a hot line I made it a hot song"

When it comes to technology it's best to roll with the leader..the company with the vision instead of the follower..IMO

When it comes to creativity it's best to roll with what puts you in the mood of creating, does not matter technology.IMO

Coz wrote:What does any of this **** have to do with the future of the Ren?

Then Ren has a future? .....i kid.



What happens to the Ren is largely based on whether they can knock people over with what they have on the market right now vs the NI product. When I think of Numark's current situation in this arena it reminds me of what Blackberry is going through.

ok who's the 3-post troll here

Clippyclipp wrote:When maschine gets a better sequencer they will never kill the mpc, it prefer the sound of the mpc software way more than maschine I own both

So software has a sound - alrighty then.

Not sure of what the future for the Ren is from Akai's perspective. My here's my future.

I've always been an akai fan and user. Been using since 1992 (MPC 60MKII). I purchased the REN in Sept 2012 when it was first released. At first (like everyone else) I was impressed until I encountered some of the bugs. I put if back on the bench and went back to using what worked for me.

It's been over a year and despite all the hard work Akai (Pete Goodlife) to deliver the updates, the MPC-REN/STUDIO software, etc is not in my opinion ready for prime.

The only thing to me, and again it's my opinion that is good about it, is the hardware design. The Ren feels like a 'True' MPC, it just does not function as one.

Akai you really disappointed me as a user and customer of your product and you are so far behind the competition that I really don't thing it's possible to recover (at least for me).

-Regards.

TT_Lab wrote:When it comes to creativity it's best to roll with what puts you in the mood of creating, does not matter technology.IMO

Wisdom my brother.

SimonInAustralia wrote:The very simple Direct Recording/Place Event feature, as found in more recent hardware MPCs, would achieve similar functionality, by letting you create record in new samples in time with existing sequences, and without having to wait for much more complex audio tracks to be implemented.

I think that being able to create new samples, in time/sync with existing sequences, is a better fit to the MPC workflow than audio tracks, and theoretically, they should be able to program that in, with much less effort and wait, than audio tracks.

That sounds great. In fact I would prefer it to straight audio tracks. By dealing with it as a real time sample I could patch phrase, use filters... Yeah man... That's it right there. That's what I want..

Well I'm for one am going to get a Maschine Studio and midi it up to the Ren and use the missing features of each controller in the other controller. Quick fix if you ask me.

I would be nice if the Maschine could be brought up as a RTAS plug in PT.

MPC REN, Transfuser, and Maschine Studio together would make nuclear beats for sure.