Air fx 2.4 review

DeaDeus wrote:Ever tried the oldest way of making a mono signal become a stereo?? Frequency Shifter - a highly underestimated effect and mostly used by professionals. Invented sometime in the 60th of last century....

I've use Frequency Shifter on vocals and guitars but never in the way you're talking about. I have used the Haas effect. Do you have an example of that Frequency Shifter process?

Joswun wrote:I'm still learning everything there is to know about the MPC, but I didn't have many complaints with the standard effects it came with. I'm pretty obsessive compulsive about everything so I tweak, tweak, and tweak until I hear what I want to hear. Not sure if that makes a difference or not, as I'm still learning but I try to get as much out of any tool I can use, no presets. Thanks for the review!

Yes very good attitude.
After some days I am using them, I can say I am working a lot with Channel strip, it's very good on cleaning the sounds, it's very surgical.
But still sometimes I keep the Akai compressors I put before, it has a dirty sound which is opposite to Air one.
I replaced all flangers, phasers, chorus with Air ones and finally I can hear modulations moving, the Akai ones were a pain.
I kept almost all Akai delays, I still prefer them, much more character then Air ones but the new Stereo Reverb already replaced my external hardware one. I put something after that, to modulate the reverb very subtle, and it makes wonders.
Air filter gate now is almost in any project, it's just fantastic.
I notice my overall mix sound has increased a lot, its cleaner, more detailed.

CharlesRandolph wrote:

DeaDeus wrote:Ever tried the oldest way of making a mono signal become a stereo?? Frequency Shifter - a highly underestimated effect and mostly used by professionals. Invented sometime in the 60th of last century....

I've use Frequency Shifter on vocals and guitars but never in the way you're talking about. I have used the Haas effect. Do you have an example of that Frequency Shifter process?

If you apply a "soft and gentle" preset of the MPC effect (no experience with this Air effect) you will get the result. I use it e.g. on kick drums to spread it gently or on rides if a phaser is too heavy... but of course vocals are a good option (I use a hardware vocalizer for that as I can trigger&tune it via MIDI) guitars become slightly washy to my taste - but it is always an option depending on what is required.

DeaDeus wrote:If you apply a "soft and gentle" preset of the MPC effect (no experience with this Air effect) you will get the result. I use it e.g. on kick drums to spread it gently or on rides if a phaser is too heavy... but of course vocals are a good option (I use a hardware vocalizer for that as I can trigger&tune it via MIDI) guitars become slightly washy to my taste - but it is always an option depending on what is required.

Yeah, I've done this,never on kick drums but on overheads and on brass sections. Use it on rock records, rock guitarist love it, if done right. I'll try it on a kick drum to see how it sounds. Thanks for the tip.

This might be common knowledge but I thought I’d share this (this was always available but wasn’t as usable until recently due to these better fx) -

Create a drum program or clip program (depending on which you prefer for this)

Load an audio file of your choice to ALL pads

Go into pad mixer - select pad A1 - select a freq shifter (for the purposes of this example but can be any plugin). Select first preset

Go into pad mixer - select pad A2 - select freq shifter. Select second preset.

Keep continuing like this up to A16 or for as long as you want.

Now you have 16 + fx variantions.

Go back to the main clip/drum program page -

Select All pads

Remove the sample from all the pads

Save the drum/clip program as “freq shifter”

You can now load this fx program whenever you want and process any audio file you desire with it.

This will be even better when (if) the Live gets the Force’s time stretch algorithms too.

Mukiw wrote:This might be common knowledge but I thought I’d share this (this was always available but wasn’t as usable until recently due to these better fx) -

Create a drum program or clip program (depending on which you prefer for this)

Load an audio file of your choice to ALL pads

Go into pad mixer - select pad A1 - select a freq shifter (for the purposes of this example but can be any plugin). Select first preset

Go into pad mixer - select pad A2 - select freq shifter. Select second preset.

Keep continuing like this up to A16 or for as long as you want.

Now you have 16 + fx variantions.

Go back to the main clip/drum program page -

Select All pads

Remove the sample from all the pads

Save the drum/clip program as “freq shifter”

You can now load this fx program whenever you want and process any audio file you desire with it.

This will be even better when (if) the Live gets the Force’s time stretch algorithms too.

That's Very interesting.
I will give it a try for sure.
Thanks bro

The Air channel strip on all 128 pads of a drum program using 4% cpu is pretty impressive.

Creating an empty program and copy pads to create you starter channel strips is a nice way to get started.

Mukiw wrote:This might be common knowledge but I thought I’d share this (this was always available but wasn’t as usable until recently due to these better fx) -

Create a drum program or clip program (depending on which you prefer for this)

Load an audio file of your choice to ALL pads

Go into pad mixer - select pad A1 - select a freq shifter (for the purposes of this example but can be any plugin). Select first preset

Go into pad mixer - select pad A2 - select freq shifter. Select second preset.

Keep continuing like this up to A16 or for as long as you want.

Now you have 16 + fx variantions.

Go back to the main clip/drum program page -

Select All pads

Remove the sample from all the pads

Save the drum/clip program as “freq shifter”

You can now load this fx program whenever you want and process any audio file you desire with it.

This will be even better when (if) the Live gets the Force’s time stretch algorithms too.

Lol... why would you waste your time loading in a sample to each pad , and then deleting them all?

This board sometimes !!!!

I was thinking of something similar to this using key groups for drums, and loading a sample per pad for fast Arpeggiator sequences etc....


I have a feeling this would be adventageous but haven’t fully thought about why ....

You realize you can put the same sample/delete the sample on 128 pads in about 2 seconds, right?

I’m talking about using the pad mixer to make programs filled with different fx on each pad in order to sound mangle the audio file of your choice. Then you save that audio file as a new sample.

Loading the audio file is just so you can hear what processing sounds like on each individual pad. Then you delete all audio from the program so you can load it up and use it on whichever sounds you like.

I’ve already found an even quicker way to do it than I mentioned in the first example.


Another idea (in Order to save memory on projects) -

Create an empty Program named “Main”. Go to pad mixer, pad A1 and stick a Air Channel strip on the first insert. Go back to the main window, press copy, copy A1 to all 127 other pads.

Now when you load other programs - lets say you have a program full of kick drums but there’s only 1 or 2 kicks you really want to use out of the whole kick program - go to the sample you want, sample edit, assign, assign slice to pad, pad A1, program “Main”. This way you can just work within side one program, delete the kick program, purge your unused samples and have eq/compression ready loaded in every pad of your program. You could take this idea as far as you wanted with the other 3 insert slots too.

Holy Sh** yo the effects sound freakin dope in 2.4 air joints. OMG!
Yo l can now use the reverbs quickly when l do my drums. Dammmm

It even looks better thay the air effects used in Protools. Dammmmm

Oh snap l think l just had an MPC live orgasm!

I love how the QLinks work with Air Effects, these are the best Effects by Akai! I can now just take a snare or a clap add the Reverb or Width on it etc and then export it. Hell I can do a lil sound design with kicks and snares and claps, perc. I can stake sounds and get busy WITHOUT CUTTING ON MY COMPUTER! This just put me to a new level of fun and confidence in effects. I wish the 2000xl had this I was up all last night messing with this thing. lol

Danoc I feel the same way . Now
There Re enough sound design tools that you can even make bad sounds sound good

Danoc wrote:I love how the QLinks work with Air Effects, these are the best Effects by Akai! I can now just take a snare or a clap add the Reverb or Width on it etc and then export it. Hell I can do a lil sound design with kicks and snares and claps, perc. I can stake sounds and get busy WITHOUT CUTTING ON MY COMPUTER! This just put me to a new level of fun and confidence in effects. I wish the 2000xl had this I was up all last night messing with this thing. lol

Those new qlink follow actions on the those plugins need to be retroactively put on the sample edit screen.

I submitted that as a request. So if we click the start box on sample edit , the qlink column auto switches to starts. Press end and the volume switched to end etc.....

The new qlink follow functions are on the instrument plugins also.

Cclong wrote:Danoc I feel the same way . Now
There Re enough sound design tools that you can even make bad sounds sound good

Ssssshhhh be quiet Yeah lm on that l got some sterile sounds. Ima fixem up cause l can do it without the computer. Put thus bad boy to work

Danoc wrote:
Oh snap l think l just had an MPC live orgasm!

Lol Danoc. Only you could come up with this shit.