By HUBA
Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:54 pm
Straker wrote:Yeah I totally agree.
I like my Mpc too, it makes what I need and makes it fast and reliable.
I didn't consider keygroups as a base for a workstation but you and Enochlight are right, there is more potential on them then in new Air synths with current cpu, especially with a disk streaming.
I actually use many sounds I autosampled from external synths but then there is a limit of tweakability which is a bit of a shame.
The strong point of Fantom, beside the very high quality of the presets and the deep editing of them, is the tweakability, morphing between oscillators, macros and so on, all at hands with knobs.
Anyway, let's see what the next update will bring, it's quite sure this Mpc key version will come up with an update.
Yeah what I would like to see added to the sampling engine besides extended modulation possibilities is more experimental oriented features, things that would introduce morphing behavior or other ways of thickening sounds to get a more «synthy» texture and evolving behavior out of static samples. Like syncing and crossmodulating samples with each other, being able to modulate sample loop position(the MPC 4000 could do this ..well sort of), unison etc. That would be neat. I'm not exactly holding my breath about any of that but I actually think such approach, if doable, would be a better and easier way for Akai to claim their place among the big boys than competing with Fantom or Kronos on onboard synths.
And who knows what's possible. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. They have certainly managed to develop the engine a lot from what it was like in the beginning, that's for sure. And I was pretty stoked already about my MPC Live back in 2017
Besides that I don't really see any real problem for Akai with competing on other things like sample packs and sampled stage piano stuff, especially if/when disk steaming is introduced. Except maybe for the multi velocity layer aspect of it, dunno. Well and polyphony, as you pointed out. But, although I haven't tried them myself, it would surprise me if both the Fantom and the Kronos didn't have some limitations or annoyances of their own. Convoluted workflow for instance. Just a hunch