A letter of improvements to Akai

So I'm talking to Akai, and they seem to value my input; I've been sending a ton of suggestions, and they seem grateful about it.

They're now asking for a document where I'd list the most important stuff.
So they're listening.

I'll add a few of mine here.
You do so, too, and I'll add yours and send the doc soon.
Please make your points / questions very clear and explain every suggestion.

---

1) Please add warping of samples in drum programs to standalone. This cannot be done from standalone currently. This was marketed a lot, and would be a shame if we'd have to go to software for it.


2) Please implement a way of copying specific midi notes instead of all. Say, just copy hihats of track 1 to track 2, instead of copying all events.


3) Will realtime swing preview come to standalone? I.e., hearing how it'd swing with specific TC before committing to quantization.


4) I'd love to see automation lanes (e.g., filter cutoff automation) make their way into standalone, too.
We have a beautiful touchscreen, but currently editing automation is very immature on standalone…you can record it, but as far as editing goes…you can only delete it, and even that means deleting all of it…you can't even select what to delete…it'll delete all automation on the track.
Not handy for those swearing by standalone operation. I'd love to see automation.

5) Rearranging track order on standalone would be super handy. Sometimes people add percussive elements later on, but want to have relevant tracks next to each other.

0) @Fanu: I believe that your second point should include copy, paste and delete when using the selection tool in the grid edit mode.

1) Automation on the submixes and master bus.

2) Project overview like track view on the computer (where we can see and rearange the midi clips and audio tracks) we need this on the hardware. the screens are big enough.

3) Sidechaining (doesn't need much explaining).

4) The possibility to rename the submix and masterbus labels.

5) To Akai: Good job so far and keep up the good work..!!

Thanks Fanu! Appreciate your effort

Two things i would really wish to have back coming from the 4000/2500

1. LIST Edit View in Standalone (Currently only in the software available)

2. Crossfade Looping

So far:

1. Access to internal drive in standalone for backing up and file copying/moving
2. Proper user defined 'library' in the 'media browser' with custom metadata tagging (not file name based tagging, I don't want to have to rename all my files for them to get tagged). Basically copy Maschine browser.
3. Expansion browser in hardware UI - be able to install XPN expansions alongside the Akai Expansions to benefit from file grouping, tagging, program previews, pack images etc.
4. List editor in hardware
5. Automation edit in hardware
6. Tempo change events

This is great. Appreciate the effort Fanu. All of these are great IMO. Especially desirable is the LIST Edit View in standalone.

sinik wrote:Thanks Fanu! Appreciate your effort

Two things i would really wish to have back coming from the 4000/2500

1. LIST Edit View in Standalone (Currently only in the software available)

2. Crossfade Looping

hm, afaik crossfade looping is there.. i saw a video from hellfire where he show the feature on the live!!!

i also wanna thank u fanu!

on my list:
portamento / glitch feature like in the MPC 4000
real time time stretching to the tempo of the sequence while sampling from external sources.

matt underwood wrote:

sinik wrote:Thanks Fanu! Appreciate your effort

Two things i would really wish to have back coming from the 4000/2500

1. LIST Edit View in Standalone (Currently only in the software available)

2. Crossfade Looping

hm, afaik crossfade looping is there.. i saw a video from hellfire where he show the feature on the live!!!

my bad! glad that it's there

matt underwood wrote:

sinik wrote:Thanks Fanu! Appreciate your effort

Two things i would really wish to have back coming from the 4000/2500

1. LIST Edit View in Standalone (Currently only in the software available)

2. Crossfade Looping

hm, afaik crossfade looping is there.. i saw a video from hellfire where he show the feature on the live!!!

it's in program edit mode, i would attach a picture if i could.. but i have the pic only on my harddrive and cant find it on the web. don't know how to attach a pic from my harddrive here???

I'd like to see an option allowing for sidechain compression.

N00b-Question first:
So there is a Lot of FX. Every Pad can have four inserts, four on the outs (and, don't know, four per track?). For Every usage there must be an instance of the corresponding effect in the os?
How much can the System handle?

If that's an issue:
Is it possible to deactivate a track or at least save it seperately from the current session as a workaround?
Would that be nice?

matt underwood wrote:hm, afaik crossfade looping is there.. i saw a video from hellfire where he show the feature on the live!!!

What do you define as a 'crossfade loop' - my understanding of a crossfade loop is where the sample audio itself is altered to produce a smooth transition between the loop point and the end point, i.e. if the loop start point is a bit louder compared to the end point, crossfade looping reduces the amplitude at the loop start point to match that of the end point.

I don't see this anywhere in program edit. I see 'pad loop' options, but that is similar to pad start/end and just allows a unique (standard, not crossfade) loop point to be set on a per-layer basis, rather than setting it on the master file in sample edit > trim.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

matt underwood wrote:hm, afaik crossfade looping is there.. i saw a video from hellfire where he show the feature on the live!!!

What do you define as a 'crossfade loop' - my understanding of a crossfade loop is where the sample audio itself is altered to produce a smooth transition between the loop point and the end point, i.e. if the loop start point is a bit louder compared to the end point, crossfade looping reduces the amplitude at the loop start point to match that of the end point.

I don't see this anywhere in program edit. I see 'pad loop' options, but that is similar to pad start/end and just allows a unique (standard, not crossfade) loop point to be set on a per-layer basis, rather than setting it on the master file in sample edit > trim.

here's a video where u see what I mean with crossfade loop:

and this is also that what I saw in an video from hellfire which he made with the live.

watch at: 7:23

1: PDC
2: Automation lanes
3: ability to map external midicontroller cc's to parameters and/or qlinks, preferably with visual feedback of the names (also for usb knobbycontrollers connected through usb
4: create a hardware little oledbox with qlinks for setting up next to the live
5: more internal plugins (specially distortion. delays and filters) (the sourcecode of the crayonfilter is available, that one sounds amazing is light on CPU and would make sounddesign 10 times better in the standalonebox)
6 and most important: STREAMING from internal optional satadisc so we can have many more audiotracks and the ability of making a liveset more then 9 minutes long when using all 8 audiotracks and wanting to use them all. It will free ram and make the standalone more stabile this way aswell
7 extra lfo and more destinations
8 support for 3rd party vstplugins in standalone mode (or at least the start of a akaiformatplugin developers can use to port their plugins too

Thanks for reporting this Fanu

here's the video from hellfire.. sry, this whole video was made on an mpc touch in the 1.9.2 mpc software. I was pretty shure it was on an mpc live first, but as it look like i was wrong.. sry bout that!!!

he call's it alternate loop.. go to 5:20 and check if u can find it on the live. would be great to see it there!!