Force is a new machine Again!!!

I originally purchased the force 2 years ago because of how it was advertised. I was excited about it being a standalone version of Ableton basically. Well after a week with the machine I returned it to the guitar center. The first out the box was awful and I lost fate in Akai. I predicted at that time it would take 2 years to get the machine to the point of all the advertisements and claims. Well... ok I was right and I ended up buying the thing again because now it actually does what they said it was going to be able to do. This is the first time I have ever seen a machine released in 50% state. I really would like to know the real story of why this machine was done this way. Now it works great! I am able to launch clips and have a legit song mode. Alot of this machine is Ableton workflow and me being an Ableton user I'm ok with it. I watched the progress of this machine because I thought it would be a great center piece for my modular setup and allow me to transfer all the jams over to Ableton for more work. I wasn't able to do that in the beginning it lack all the means to be able to do it. Now however I love what they have done!!! I'm still in the learning phases with it and adding my modular gear along with it in a cohesive way. I now wonder what's next with this machine. It still has some bugs here and there. I hope that they focus on them and get them resolved quickly.

dnkygirl wrote:I originally purchased the force 2 years ago because of how it was advertised. I was excited about it being a standalone version of Ableton basically. Well after a week with the machine I returned it to the guitar center. The first out the box was awful and I lost fate in Akai. I predicted at that time it would take 2 years to get the machine to the point of all the advertisements and claims. Well... ok I was right and I ended up buying the thing again because now it actually does what they said it was going to be able to do. This is the first time I have ever seen a machine released in 50% state. I really would like to know the real story of why this machine was done this way. Now it works great! I am able to launch clips and have a legit song mode. Alot of this machine is Ableton workflow and me being an Ableton user I'm ok with it. I watched the progress of this machine because I thought it would be a great center piece for my modular setup and allow me to transfer all the jams over to Ableton for more work. I wasn't able to do that in the beginning it lack all the means to be able to do it. Now however I love what they have done!!! I'm still in the learning phases with it and adding my modular gear along with it in a cohesive way. I now wonder what's next with this machine. It still has some bugs here and there. I hope that they focus on them and get them resolved quickly.

It's cus like Roger Lynn will tell you, "Jack's an unscrupulous bastard". Akai was bought out by inMusic and since then they've been virtualising the idea of the MPC ever since. It seems that they've done a pretty good job but if you give it some thought they pulled a bit of a fast one on MPC users.

People buy hardware to escape using a daw so what does Akai do? They virtualise their design in software DAW form (the very thing we are running from), bake it into a linux rom put it on an embedded computer, attach a sound card and midi controller and called it a day and not only that, they make the stand alone models so underpowered in terms of embedded hardware that it doesnt even have a comparable build to that of the pc. It's basically an over priced, midi controller and an underpowered 32 bit pos arm SoC you could buy for $40.

We all got hosed!

and when you think about it... humans are just 0.01% of the life on earth yet we actively destroy the other 99.99% of it.

Ultros wrote:It's cus like Roger Lynn will tell you, "Jack's an unscrupulous bastard". Akai was bought out by inMusic and since then they've been virtualising the idea of the MPC ever since. It seems that they've done a pretty good job but if you give it some thought they pulled a bit of a fast one on MPC users.

People buy hardware to escape using a daw so what does Akai do? They virtualise their design in software DAW form (the very thing we are running from), bake it into a linux rom put it on an embedded computer, attach a sound card and midi controller and called it a day and not only that, they make the stand alone models so underpowered in terms of embedded hardware that it doesnt even have a comparable build to that of the pc. It's basically an over priced, midi controller and an underpowered 32 bit pos arm SoC you could buy for $40.

We all got hosed!

I think they had a concept and released a beta machine. This is the first time I have ever seen a hardware manufacturer do this type of thing before. I agree that it needs more refinement, however now after 2 years of work they achieved their original goal. I just wish that we didn't have to live through all of that... I returned mine once I discovered all the missing software items, however those that went through 4-5 firmware revisions... they should have gotten paid for all the work they did reporting bugs and feature mishaps. $1,500 was a harsh price to pay to be a beta tester. I have read about the hardware pitfalls which now limit the machine's further development... probably why they opted to not do the disk streaming that everyone is screaming about. I am hoping for more bug fixes with the recording features like the ability to adjust the count in, and find out what is retro mode? I am also hoping they fix the 2tb controller limitation for the internal drive. I think they were trying to satisfy both worlds people who use software and hardware. I like the fact that you can export to Ableton and yes being free from the computer has given me new perspective.

Normally the focus on the internals is to make sure it can handle any major planned changes for the firmware. I don't understand how they could have planned this out when they released it in an unfinished state. It needed 2 years of software development before even thinking about releasing it. I think it should have had a faster processor and more ram... this means that all of their code has to be lean and resource efficient.