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.
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By SnowMetal Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:54 pm
Koekepan wrote:I notice a pattern here:

team software: Features! All of them! Now! I want it to massage the audio, AI the whatsit, rectify the whatchamacallit, and make me some goddamn coffee!

team hardware: You can get there from here, the tool isn't meant to be all things to all people, but we actually make music with it.


Oh, wow.. Here, let me fix this for you..

Team [everybody]: "Features! All that was advertised! Now! I want it to do what it was designed and promoted to do, reliably, without crashes. I want my $1400 piece of hardware to be faithful enough to use on stage without a contingency plan!"

Team [fanboi]: "Your expectations are unrealistic! It's not Papa Akai that was wrong, but the workstation-buying public! The tool isn't meant to be all things to all people, nor was it designed to be a professional-grade product! It was made for lo-fi hip-hop noodling, and making funny noises!"


Koekepan wrote:Crazy talk on a forum about hardware, I know ...



I have a few things laying around. Is my assessment valid, or am I just a hardware newb?

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153059376293641&type=3
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By NearTao Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:45 am
I know it's fun to play the "either or game"... but two things can be true at the same time even if we don't like it. This is not me saying you don't know what you are talking about or that you have no experience with music or whatever. I don't know you, I have seen a couple of your vids, and you seem like a thoughtful and knowledgeable person. And sure, I get your complaints, interest in features, and all that, but other than trying to offer up our own experience, none of us can help enact change at Akai/InMusic/...

As far as I know you're a cool guy, and probably just frustrated with what the Force could be or what you'd like it to be. Maybe you've been a long time lurker here, or maybe you've just found this forum, I'm not sure. Some of us who have been on this forum for a while try and do our best to help give people answers, but we are often slammed with both a lot of the same questions and the same complaints. Nobody here is paid for this, and this forum is not affiliated with or supported by Akai, even though plenty of people come here and treat it that way.

If you want to characterize us as fanboys here who knows, you might be right. I've had, and still have a lot of Akai gear, but I'm not out there trumpeting how amazing Akai is or trying to convince people to convert to Akai either. Personally, I don't see that just because we're saying that the Force "is what it is" that we're being unreasonable either. Maybe it sounds like somebody is telling you to "live with it", but at least for me I put it more in the space of "yeah, I've heard most of this before" and there isn't much I can do about it.

Anyways... I hope you stick around even if us old timers sound cranky and curmudgeony. Most of us don't mean any harm, and the ones that do are more likely to gum you than have any real teeth.
By HouseWithoutMouse Wed Aug 03, 2022 1:08 pm
People get the idea that this is some sort of an Akai support site, because it looks like one, at least to someone. To me it does not look like an Akai support site, but I can understand how someone might see it that way. And people see the Force as a standalone Ableton Live, because that's what it looks like and I claim that that's what Akai specifically wants it to look like.

I think it's good that missing things, bugs and programming brain farts are clearly and openly explicated and listed on the Internet so that the information can be found by prospective buyers. Akai certainly won't advertise that there are no time signatures, that you can't record in slave mode, that the looper is pretty much useless, you can't overdub audio, or that class-compliant audio interfaces don't work. But it appears that some users around here wouldn't like things like that to be mentioned openly. "It's a hardware forum", what the actual F.

To imply that it's not realistic or reasonable to expect Akai to fix and improve things, doesn't make the world better. On a discussion forum, users express their ideas and feelings about how they see things and what they expect to find. Haters will hate, fanboys will fanboyize, it's business as usual.
By dryad-66 Thu Aug 04, 2022 8:29 am
Altho the Force might be a bit clunky and basic compared to Ableton and Push for instance i like the way it all glues together and has a solid presence.Its a lovely well made piece of gear.Def has its own charactor and strength,Updates truly welcome.
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By 64hz Fri Aug 05, 2022 8:04 am
I see I stirred some pots in here. Are there things that are missing for me? After we got the arranger not that much tbh. As far as I can see it operates like advertised to me. Would I like more features? Yes of course. Do I toss my force to the side because I’m having a tantrum due to Akai not listening and acting fast enough? No. I just use my toy for what it can do right now and that’s quite a lot. I don’t need it to make blinking lights on another toy so I might just miss that point lol.
By mario-g Sat Aug 27, 2022 10:46 pm
I'm still waiting to be able to reorder tracks and insert effects...
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By 64hz Sun Aug 28, 2022 1:58 pm
I use warp without a problem btw but I don’t try to warp one hour music pieces.

There are rumours of an upcoming update from betatesters on GS.
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By 64hz Sun Aug 28, 2022 1:59 pm
mario-g wrote:I'm still waiting to be able to reorder tracks and insert effects...


Resample?
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By SnowMetal Sun Aug 28, 2022 10:13 pm
64hz wrote:I use warp without a problem btw but I don’t try to warp one hour music pieces.

There are rumours of an upcoming update from betatesters on GS.


I don't have any clips larger than 8 bars, no matter how long the set. Most clips are 4 bars. The Force can't smoothly warp drum loops of even one bar. It may sound workable for higher synth material, but not really.

I can confirm the latest beta OS has the ability to move arrangements around.


64hz wrote:Resample?


As far as I can tell, there is no easy way to resample on the Force, particularly without stopping the sequencer. And one of the main reasons it fails as a DAW replacement is the lack of a freeze/flatten function for MIDI/plugin tracks.