Akai Force Forum: Everything relating to the Akai Force, the new 64 pad, clip-based standalone sampler/groovebox from Akai. While not an MPC, it shares many similar software features to the MPC X/MPC Live including the same underlying code-base.
By HouseWithoutMouse Sat May 21, 2022 4:43 pm
I did this:
- make a new empty project
- go to arrange, you have 1 plugin track and 1 audio track, default 128.00 BPM tempo
- delete the MIDI track
- record two bars of silence on the audio track
- go to Sample Edit
--> the BPM figure shows 127.85, not the expected 128.00

Where does the BPM figure come from?
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By Koekepan Sun May 22, 2022 1:42 am
Probably, and I'm guessing here, the poor algorithm trying its best with noise floor crap, when in fact it's designed with respect to finding BPM on something with a heavy kick.
By HouseWithoutMouse Sun May 22, 2022 11:44 am
I made a mistake in the opening post, the loop was 4 bars, not 2. With a 2-bar loop, the sample editor gives tempo 127.70 BPM, and the same results come regardless of whether the silence was recorded To Clip from e.g. the launch mode, or To Arrangement. Recording a 4-bar loop produces 127.85 BPM in the sample editor.

Where the numbers come from can be calculated. In the beginning of the recorded WAV, there's a 384 sample "pre-roll", which is probably good to have for reducing clicks or something.

Recording a 4-bar loop
Project tempo 128.00 BPM. Results in the sample editor:

START : 384 (samples)
END : 331133 (samples)
Length = end - start = 330749 (samples)
BPM : 127.85

Recording a 2-bar loop
Project tempo 128.00 BPM. Results in the sample editor:

START : 384 (samples)
END : 165758 (samples)
Length = end - start = 165374 (samples)
BPM : 127.70

Where do the BPM figures come from? From this formula:

Tempo = LengthBeats * 60 / (LengthSamples / SamplingRate)

What's happening?
  • First of all, they're CALCULATING the tempo instead of getting it from the project. I am recording things in 128.00 BPM so why not believe that?
  • Second, they're using the END value directly as LengthSamples, instead of END - START.

For the 4-bar example, we get:

LengthBeats = 16
LengthSamples = 331133
SamplingRate = 44100

So they get:
tempo = 16 * 60 * 44100 / 331133 = 127.85195073

when they should be getting
real calculated tempo = 16 * 60 * 44100 / (331133 - 384) = 128.000387


For the 2-bar example, we get:

LengthBeats = 8
LengthSamples = 165758
SamplingRate = 44100

So they get:
tempo = 8 * 60 * 44100 / 165758 = 127.70424354

when they should be getting
real calculated tempo = 8 * 60 * 44100 / (165758 - 384) = 128.000774



I don't like this behavior. Maybe there's someone out there who loves it and finds it useful.
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By Koekepan Sun May 22, 2022 3:47 pm
Genuine question:

why would they assume that something that you recorded off who-knows-what would have a tempo bearing any resemblance to what your project is?

"Gee, Bob he just recorded some stuff off Dancing Queen into this vapour-psy-wave-trance thing he's doing, obviously it must be at the 144BPM he defined for his track!"

(No, Dancing Queen is actually quite a slow track.)

This assumption seems perverse - because then why would you even calculate anything? Just rubberstamp the project BPM on everything and move on.
By HouseWithoutMouse Sun May 22, 2022 4:08 pm
You like questions, I'll give you one. In order to do their calculation and get a BPM value, they had to get the number of beats from somewhere. For the two-bar recording, they got a value 8 beats, which they got from knowing the project tempo and the fact that the length of the recording was two bars. For the four-bar recording, they got a value 16 beats, which they got from knowing the project tempo and the fact that the length of the recording was two bars. The question is: don't you wonder why they got the length in beats from the project, if any recorded audio is just random sound, from which nothing can be assumed? But if they got THAT from the project, why not take into account the pre-roll segment that they added themselves.
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By Lampdog Sun May 22, 2022 5:12 pm
HouseWithoutMouse wrote:The question is: don't you wonder why they got the length in beats from the project, if any recorded audio is just random sound, from which nothing can be assumed?


No, I don’t wonder at all.

I just make whatever sounds good to me and if my friends enjoy it too then woohoo.

Woo tha flowers hoo indeed!
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By Koekepan Sun May 22, 2022 6:45 pm
OK, so you have your project going. The gear is hot, the turntable is spinning, you drop the needle and you're drawing audio into your sample bank. You have a project with a defined BPM of 128 (for example), and you're sampling off vinyl (because it's cool), and you tell it to sample for 2 bars.

Do you want your sampler to assume:

1) It's all groovy, in time and everything is 128BPM!

2) Well, this is a new chunk of audio that might have to be timewarped, because this is a sampler and people sample all kinds of crazy stuff.

I would go for number 2. OK, so given that fact, would you want the sampler to just say:

1) I ...uh, dude, like, umm, I totally, y'know? ... like ...it's something?

2) Here's my best guess, but you set it to whatever.

I would go, again, for the second option. You're not shackled by bonds of steel to whatever BPM makes you cry. You can reset that field to something else. If there aren't any audio markers in your Samples of Silence, then whatever length it sees is not the worst foundation for a guess in the world. And if you don't like it, you can tell it that it has 128BPM silence because you're John Cage.

If the fact that they shouldn't include the pre-roll, when it's just part of the audio from which they're trying to find markers that you declined to give any markers because it's all silence, I would like to suggest that you apply to Akai Professional for a job as a QA tester.

Or timewarp the silence. I'm sure there's a listening public out there that will appreciate the authentic crunch of Akai's timewarp algorithm on its silence.
By HouseWithoutMouse Sun May 22, 2022 7:56 pm
You're talking about sampling from vinyl or something, I'm talking about performances recorded into the project, while the project is playing, performed by a musician, vocalist or something. It's a fair assumption that when someone records a clip into the project timeline of a musical multitracker, they're performing it in that context. The vinyl player (Youtube video for a lot of people nowadays) doesn't sync to your project, and you probably wouldn't do the sampling by recording into a launch clip or into the arrange window. Or if you did record it To Arrangement, you might understand why the software assumes it's in the musical time context of the project. When taking a live-recorded/performed clip to Sample Edit, all the musical information has already been collected, but Akai throws it away. Not ALL of it though - they do try to tell at least something about it to the sample editor, namely the number of beats that the recording represents.

Short answer to my initial question: in the Sample Edit mode, the timeline of the sample, i.e. where is musical "1.1.1" position, ALWAYS starts from 0 i.e. the beginning of the whole sample file, even if it's a clip recorded in the Force itself, while the project is playing or even if it was recorded To Arrangement. The source Clip's start value is specified, but the Sample Edit thingy does not have the capability to utilize this information beyond putting it in the start position field.

Long answer. That's kind of dumb, isn't it? We're talking about recording audio into a musical multi-track recorder. Backing tracks are playing in some tempo and beats/measures musical time, you listen to the music and sync your performance with the backing track. And you press record... OF COURSE the software rubber-stamps the recorded audio with the musical time information of the backing tracks you performed over. That is not a perverse assumption, it's the only possible way to do musical time based multitrack recording at all. Akai knows where that sample was in the musical context where it was performed, otherwise they wouldn't be able to play it in sync with the backing track. But the time-stamping information isn't carried from the already-musically-positioned clip over to the sample editor, because the sample editor doesn't understand anything where bar 1 doesn't start from sample 0.

To get the tempo right for the slicing stuff that's done in the sample editor, you need to PROCESS / Discard to throw away the pre-roll and place the musical 1.1.1 time position where it has to be for the sample editor to understand the sample. Then manually enter the project's tempo, e.g. 128.00. But then again, what could you do with it anyway - audio-quantize it to the project's swing pattern? Nah, no can do, you have to go via the slice-and-MIDI route. Quite a lot of screen-taps and button-presses needed before that's done, probably not something you'd try doing live.

More speculation, trying to understand the differences between Force, MPC and other DAWs I know. In some other DAWs (and the Force is a standalone DAW), the software automatically places and allows the user to place and edit musical timestamps i.e. bar/beat information over WAV recordings, and this is very useful when making remixes and when working with multitrack recordings. A facility like that is essential to Ableton Live and Cubase's "audio warp" features. Akai's lack of musical timestamping (and warp markers) of audio recordings, and being restricted to only slicing samples and essentially MIDI-triggering slices hinders the software's possibilities. If you haven't used such audio warp facilities, you don't know what you're missing. I cannot see any fundamental reason in Force and MPC, why this couldn't be added, it's "just" development work to be done. ("Just" with a sarcastic tone - balancing development work is not actually done "just" like that.) The current user base seems happy with the MPC slicing+triggering workflow, so maybe that's the "fundamental" reason why this feature hasn't been added. The machines apparently sell well enough, and users are familiar with the current mindset, some users even for decades.
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By Koekepan Sun May 22, 2022 10:39 pm
I'm talking about sampling from freaking anything, really - vinyl is just an example. It could be someone dropping a few lines, it could be a two-year-old beating on a pot. The Force will absolutely warp samples, and will try to measure BPM as well - and you can override those values as you choose.

I'm really concluding that the Force is completely wrong for you. You shouldn't use it, it will only make you sad. It evidently doesn't behave the way that you expect, and you think that this is stupid because you think that the Force should be an MTR when in actual fact it's not. In UI design terms, this is a mismatch between the internal model and your mental model. If you want an MTR, you should look elsewhere. The Force is not what you are looking for, because it's not trying to do the thing that you think that it should be doing using your incorrect mental model that is a mismatch with what the Force's programmers are attempting to achieve. The Force will actually do audio warping natively - just not in the way that you expect.

Go get yourself a $500 laptop and download Audacity. It will do basically everything that you want to do, including timestretching, crossfading, and messing around with clips on a timeline. I'm serious; this will bring you happiness that the Force will not because you are expecting things that the Force's programmers didn't put there, and show no intention of putting there.

But I'm kind of wondering whether hammering square pegs into round holes is your hobby.
By HouseWithoutMouse Mon May 23, 2022 9:08 am
Koekepan: Why do you say such things? You can't realistically know pretty much anything about me or the types of music I make.

Anyway, I found this on page 159 of the Force User Guide v. 3.1, it's in chapter about the Clip Event Editor.

Note: When you record an audio file, the current project tempo will be embedded with it. This information is stored within the sample file when you save the project. When you warp an audio clip region, the warping algorithm uses this project tempo and the current value in the BPM field to generate the “stretch factor.”


So the sample editor just doesn't use the embedded information.

When reading about and trying to work with Clip Regions i.e. clip events, I found that it's almost there already, like Ableton and Cubase's audio warping. Audio clip regions can be groove-quantized to project swing with the TC feature. What's missing is, how to generate the clip regions so they can be time-corrected. The only way I found is to manually generate the regions by splitting and moving start/end points, to match notes in the audio, which takes a long time. And if I do actually do all that and then time-correct, there's a problem with clicks/snaps and silent gaps between moved regions. Clicks and gaps are caused because there's neither cross-fading with overlapping, or a "link regions" feature that would tie together the end of one region and the start of another. But having Ableton-like audio warping is not far away. Take the slicing functionality from the Sample Editor and do a "create regions like slices", with "link regions" and auto-apply this to a whole clip. With a few options like "no warp, but allow overlapping", this would correspond to Ableton's Beats warping, and with "warp and link regions" it would be like Ableton's Complex or Complex Pro.
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By Koekepan Mon May 23, 2022 2:45 pm
If you think that you found a bug, or an error in the manual, please contact Akai Professional. We can't help you - this isn't an official Akai Professional forum.

As for your method of working - well, I'm just reading it from what you said here on this thread. You're looking for MTR comping features in a device that isn't an MTR and doesn't offer those features.
By HouseWithoutMouse Mon May 23, 2022 3:31 pm
Koekepan: I'm a new Force user and this thread is about finding out how the Force works, what is what underneath, and how all that can be understood in relation to things I know from other DAWs. If you're not interested in technical details like that - and that's what it seems like - I don't understand why you keep adding zero-value posts. You are wasting time and effort, and adding nothing valuable. What is your problem or interest in this? I don't get it. Anyway, that was a rhetorical question. Put me on your foe list, that'll save you from spending any more of your time reading and posting to threads about uninteresting technical babble you're not interested in and cannot add value to. I did the same to you. Great feature, that.
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By Koekepan Mon May 23, 2022 4:26 pm
Technical details? Sign me up.

But the impression I'm getting here looks like this. Let's try a car analogy!

New dude signs onto a Ford forum.

New dude: Hey, carbros! I got a sweet '48 classic Ford. I plan to take my girl to church with it. Just one question: the seat's kind of old and worn, are there any instructions for re-upholstery?

Forum members: Awesome! Stylin'! My man! Doin' it right! Just so we're clear, which seat? Back or front? And what model are we talking about here?

ND: What do you mean, back or front, there's only one seat.

FM: Oh, ok, a two-seater, gotcha. Niiiice.

ND: There is no two seat, there's only one seat. What are you people even talking about?

FM: One ... wait, what model was that exactly?

ND: The dealer said it was a premium vehicle, most popular at the time.

FM: OK, well, that covers some ground, there. Is this a '41 Ford?

ND: It's not a '41, it's a '48, what is wrong with you people? All I want is to fix the seat!

FM: Cool your jets, what exact model did the dealer say it was?

ND: He says it's a Model 8N.

FM: .... 8N is a tractor, my dude. It only has one seat, so you won't be taking your girl anywhere much on that thing. Is it even road-legal?

ND: It's a vehicle! I can take my girl places! Why do people call it a vehicle if I can't take my girl places in it? I could do it in my '89 Camaro until the engine blew up!

FM: Yeah, uhmmm ... if you want to till the back forty, this baby has your back, but look, if you're fixed on this plan, you want to make sure it's registered, at least as a tractor, and I guess you could pull a trailer with it and put a seat in there for her, and ... but why? It's not a car. It never was a car. It's not like a car.

ND: I just want to do vehicle things with my new vehicle!

FM: It's. Not. A. Car. Deal with it.

ND: Screw you people, you can't handle the mechanical intricacies.

FM: .... riiight. You sure told us.

The sooner you come to terms with the fact that this tool is a sample playback device and studio master, the sooner you will realise how to get the most out of it. We've actually been trying to advise you on its strengths and limitations, but you've basically ignored us. Trying to slam a Force into an Ableton-shaped pigeonhole is not going to work because the model is different. Yes, it has clip launching, but that doesn't make it Ableton, nor like Ableton, nor usable in the same way. You'd actually be better off with a Portastudio, or a groovebox, or almost anything that is either more, or less, like Ableton so that you get less confused.
By m1ckDELTA Tue Dec 12, 2023 9:39 pm
HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Koekepan: I'm a new Force user and this thread is about finding out how the Force works, what is what underneath, and how all that can be understood in relation to things I know from other DAWs. If you're not interested in technical details like that - and that's what it seems like - I don't understand why you keep adding zero-value posts. You are wasting time and effort, and adding nothing valuable. What is your problem or interest in this? I don't get it. Anyway, that was a rhetorical question. Put me on your foe list, that'll save you from spending any more of your time reading and posting to threads about uninteresting technical babble you're not interested in and cannot add value to. I did the same to you. Great feature, that.


I know this is quite old but I'm wondering if you found a solution. I'm in a similar situation trying to sample spoken word. I'm sampling snippets of interviews with John Cage but after saving to my "Sample Library" folder, the audio plays back at the wrong speed. I've never had this issue with another hardware sampler. It should play back at the speed of the original recording.