Akai Force Forum: Everything relating to the Akai Force, the iconic 64 pad, clip-based standalone sampler/groovebox from Akai.
By Zack Zerox Thu Aug 10, 2023 9:33 pm
I just bought a second (actually third-)hand Force which I'm really happy with, except... the rubber coating is in bad shape, very sticky. (I have a 6 year old Live mk1 which is faring better).

I think my options here are:
1) put up with it as it is
2) buy a skin (these are expensive, and additionally so to the UK. Plus most of them look terrible to me!)
3) clean it to reduce the stickiness
4) strip the coating off altogether

I've been reading various suggestions for (3) and (4), from a water-dampened microfibre cloth, to isopropyl alcohol (=surgical spirit?), to removing the case and stripping/spraying it (I'm not keen on the latter, mainly as I don't want to damage anything).

Will alcohol do the removals job, but without harming the plastic underneath? Guessing I will lose the printing if I do that, but I have a label printer.

Also - off-topic - any top tips/cheat sheets for making the transition from MPC Live to Force? I've found that some old projects load up, and I assume it's 'MPC Sequence = Force Row' on the whole?
By B-Wise Fri Aug 11, 2023 7:10 am
Man you're thread title is kinda click baitish :lol: , but my Force doesn't have that sticky problem maybe try using baby powder, if you don't mind it looking dusty. If it don't Just wipe it off.

"Now with seq data. The Force won't load that from any other unit but another Force. Some just asked about this & this was my reply;
You should be able to load the MPC programs as individual files into the Force, then just record the MPC MIDI sequence data into clips. To speed up this tedious process, first make the MPC the master clock & the Force the slave, then increase the BPM on the MPC so the seq will play & record really fast onto the Force. This is an advantage of dealing with MIDI data vs. audio.

You may want to create a default project template that has tracks on the Force set up with the macro settings you like so all the new MPC tracks will be able to use that from the get.

You can also do this afterward by loading up a track from a Force project that has these macro settings, then just rename the trk & copy the clips to this track. Track Reordering helps a lot with this not being a total pain in the ass. I wish we could copy/paste text for faster file naming."

I hope this helps.
By Zack Zerox Fri Aug 11, 2023 8:38 am
Ah, thanks. I'll probably just see if I can live with it for now.

Re MPC projects - I've loaded a handful in (just popped the SD card from my Live in) and they seem to run OK - you get a popup asking about converting to clip matrix. But then these are very old projects I haven't looked at on the MPC for ages - it might even be from the really early Live days when I was still experimenting with clips.

Anyway, really liking this machine. I should've got one years ago.
By HouseWithoutMouse Fri Aug 11, 2023 9:27 am
Support for loading MPC projects was added in Force firmware 3.2.1

https://cdn.inmusicbrands.com/akai/Forc ... Update.pdf


You can now load MPC projects into Force
o Each sequence is loaded as a new row in the clip matrix.
o Programs are imported as tracks.
o In an MPC2 project where more than one tracks' destination was the same
program, Force imports these as additional MIDI tracks and the Send To field
is used to send the MIDI from them to the first track.
By B-Wise Fri Aug 11, 2023 11:20 am
HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Support for loading MPC projects was added in Force firmware 3.2.1

https://cdn.inmusicbrands.com/akai/Forc ... Update.pdf


You can now load MPC projects into Force
o Each sequence is loaded as a new row in the clip matrix.
o Programs are imported as tracks.
o In an MPC2 project where more than one tracks' destination was the same
program, Force imports these as additional MIDI tracks and the Send To field
is used to send the MIDI from them to the first track.

:worthy:
Yup, you're right I totally forgot about that. I lost interest when it couldn't load seq data from the MPC2500.