By Spoff77
Tue Oct 08, 2013 9:36 pm
Hi.
After following this board for a long while, and coming from a MPC2000XL, I got the Ren a few days ago. Had planned it around this time due to a vacation, which was nice as it coincided with the price drop.
Bottom line is I already love this thing. It is so quick to work on compared to the 2000XL. The Ren sounds great, and is very flexible in building and editing kits. The Q-Links are awesome to work with. It seems like they have gotten a lot of user requests in since the original OS (one of my most important was back in 1.2 I think - correctly importing 2000XL things). The hardware is built like a tank. And I love the look, as I always wanted an MPC3000. The Ren seems pretty vast too - it seems like with up to 512 sounds in a program and 128 tracks there could be some 65,000 sounds loaded at once? Going through all softs of things like your computer's UAD card. It is quite powerful. Not that I am going to fill up a project with 65,000 sounds, but I certainly intend to fill up some programs with 512 sounds for some very dynamic sounds. (Hey Akai - how about velocity cross fading on the edges of the zones you have now?) Latency has not been an issue as it is working with the 64 sample buffer. I am not installing any of the included soft synths. And the tight timing is great, just like I hoped.
Strangely enough I found myself really liking the minimal implementation of pad lights as they were a bit more distracting than I thought they would be (I see they can be shut off). But that is interesting because now I don't know if I would have liked the flash of something like Maschine with completely lit pads, although I always intended to go Akai again anyway. I also have no regrets about not waiting for the Maschine Studio, as I love the Akai workflow and sound engine - specifically the sound coming out of the analog outs. I would not get a beat box without those.
I look forward to hopefully seeing some more of the feature requests addressed in future upgrades, such as the global mixer, bank copy, workflow enhancements, things that keep you on the hardware, and some other things. But the Ren is a long way from what I was reading about a year ago and Pete is doing a great job.
Love it!
Spoff
After following this board for a long while, and coming from a MPC2000XL, I got the Ren a few days ago. Had planned it around this time due to a vacation, which was nice as it coincided with the price drop.
Bottom line is I already love this thing. It is so quick to work on compared to the 2000XL. The Ren sounds great, and is very flexible in building and editing kits. The Q-Links are awesome to work with. It seems like they have gotten a lot of user requests in since the original OS (one of my most important was back in 1.2 I think - correctly importing 2000XL things). The hardware is built like a tank. And I love the look, as I always wanted an MPC3000. The Ren seems pretty vast too - it seems like with up to 512 sounds in a program and 128 tracks there could be some 65,000 sounds loaded at once? Going through all softs of things like your computer's UAD card. It is quite powerful. Not that I am going to fill up a project with 65,000 sounds, but I certainly intend to fill up some programs with 512 sounds for some very dynamic sounds. (Hey Akai - how about velocity cross fading on the edges of the zones you have now?) Latency has not been an issue as it is working with the 64 sample buffer. I am not installing any of the included soft synths. And the tight timing is great, just like I hoped.
Strangely enough I found myself really liking the minimal implementation of pad lights as they were a bit more distracting than I thought they would be (I see they can be shut off). But that is interesting because now I don't know if I would have liked the flash of something like Maschine with completely lit pads, although I always intended to go Akai again anyway. I also have no regrets about not waiting for the Maschine Studio, as I love the Akai workflow and sound engine - specifically the sound coming out of the analog outs. I would not get a beat box without those.
I look forward to hopefully seeing some more of the feature requests addressed in future upgrades, such as the global mixer, bank copy, workflow enhancements, things that keep you on the hardware, and some other things. But the Ren is a long way from what I was reading about a year ago and Pete is doing a great job.
Love it!
Spoff
