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 Andy_R Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:13 pm
Hello everyone

I've been making odd electronic music in my spare time for about 35 years. A couple of weeks ago I finally put an album out and to my surprise and delight, people are now asking me to do gigs. I have no live gear at all, but I want to give my audience more than watching me press play on a laptop. I'm pretty sure that answer is to get an Akai Force, cut my music into stems, move them across to the Force, master the art of arranging live ( a 13 minute glitch/noise IDM track might be fine on as album but I want to be able to keep an eye on the crowd and wrap it up neatly before they start throwing bottles) and then see how much I can move over to playing live with pads / internal synths / etc. so it looks to the crowd like I'm actually doing something useful.

I've watched a lot of YouTube videos and read a lot of forum threads, and I think the Force is the right way to go, but I still have a few obscure questions that will help me understand how difficult things will be and how much other outboard stuff I'll have to budget for. I suspect that some of the things I'm worried about might have been fixed by updates already?

1) Are the CV/Gate outs hardwired as a two pairs of CV and Gate, or can I do things like configure all 4 as gate triggers or 3 as CVs and 1 one as a gate?

2) I understand that adding a class compliant USB mixer disables the built in ins/outs. Does this include the cv/gate outs? How about the midi in/out?

3) I'll want to play bits of music with different BPMs, and I'd like to fill the gaps with some ambient stuff I have as wav files. I can think of 2 possible 'in the box' work rounds, but would they actually work? Firstly, launch the ambient sound with the last row in a project, then load another project while it's playing - would the audio cut out, and would I have any way of fading out the ambient stuff in the new project? Secondly I could put everything in one big project and when the first piece of music is done, launch this the ambient sample, manually adjust the bpm, launch the other piece of music and fade out the ambient stuff. Is this the right way to do things? I know I could fall back to an external sample playback device, but I already plan to have 2 external mono sound sources when gigging, adding something else would push me over into needing to buy, carry around, learn etc. a mixer, which is something I'd like to avoid.

4) Do looped audio stems clips have something like loop points and decay settings so that some of it plays before it loops, and a tail portion will play when the clip stops? I'll try to explain what I mean by that: Imagine a vocal saying "one two three". Can I set things up so that when I launch it, it says "one two", then it loops "two two two two" etc. until I'm ready to stop it, and when I stop it, it says "three"? I want this because a lot of my stems have very complex 'baked in' effect chains with reverb and delay, and I'll want them to end by playing the decay part of the stem, not cutting awkwardly to silence I'm worried that I might have to do a messy work-round by cutting each of these tails into it's own clip and always remembering to launch the right one immediately after this sort of riff, but never launch them unless it's after the right riff, which I'd likely mess up a lot.... or is there a simpler way?

5) Possibly wishful thinking, but are input 1 and 2 just mono? If they were stereo and I could I route them to 4 independent channels then a couple of y-cables going to monosynths would let me do loads of extra cool stuff (well, as much as a middle aged bloke doing undanceable IDM noodling can ever be cool).

Thanks in advance and sorry for being such a newbie!

- Andy
By HouseWithoutMouse Thu Mar 16, 2023 8:08 pm
Everything you ask about is answered by the manual https://cdn.inmusicbrands.com/akai/Forc ... v3.2.1.zip

Using an external USB audio interface doesn't affect the use of the Force's built-in CV/gate and MIDI outputs in any way. Why it affects using the built-in audio is, the software can only utilize one audio device at a time. MIDI and cv/gate are not audio devices. The CV outputs are far from audio.

All 4 CV outputs are the same, voltage outputs. You configure in your CV track's settings, what you send there. Read the manual for details. What the manual doesn't say is, the CV outputs have much worse timing resolution than audio. It is _not_ 44100 samples per second resolution, more like 240 samples per second resolution. As far as I can see, there is no promise about the exact specs, just that they output voltage that can be controlled by MIDI-like stuff. See the gate output timing measurements here viewtopic.php?p=1852207#p1852207 it jitters +- 4 milliseconds at every tick. Maybe that's OK for modular folks, I don't know. But compared to, say, a DC-coupled audio interface outputting stuff from Ableton's CV tools stuff, that's two orders of magnitude worse. (I haven't re-measured the resolution with later firmware versions, maybe it's different now.)

There are only two mono built-in input channels, whatever you do.

As soon as you start loading a new project, audio output stops completely. You'll have to either combine your whole set in one big project, or use external gear for filling the gaps while the Force is loading a project.

I'm not sure about your audio clip loop thing, but audio clips have separate clip start and loop start/end points, if that's what you mean. If you want a single clip to jump somewhere else when it _stops_, you'll need something more than a single clip. There's no separate "release loop". But you could have multiple audio clips set in Legato mode and use another clip to stop the first one by playing something else. Or you could stop the clip by going to clip edit and disabling the loop, so that it continues past the end of the loop point.
By Andy_R Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:24 pm
Thanks for taking the time to reply in depth, I think you've wrapped everything up for me nicely. I did search Akai's site for the manual with no luck, I have to admit I've never heard of inmusicbrands.com until just now, so having that link is really useful - I promise to go read it before asking any other newbie questions.

The cv resolution thing is a bit of a surprise, as it seems to rule out triggering drums accurately, unless the 240 samples per second are reliably evenly spaced. For things like filter sweeps it should be fine though, so for me it's a 'think about workflow and work round it' thing rather than a dealbreaker.

Two mono inputs is what I guessed, knowing I'll need to budget for adding a Behringer UMC1820 sooner rather than later is really helpful.

Sorry for not explaining the audio loop thing clearly. From what you're saying I can have the clip play from the start and then loop in the middle, so the issue is half solved by that, but if I set a loop end point, the audio after that point will never play unless I turn looping off? This one must be in the manual, but I need to get up to speed with Akai terminology first.
By HouseWithoutMouse Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:56 pm
Yes, audio after loop end point will never play, unless you switch the loop off. However, there may be other means. How about, use a keygroup track/program and put the ending of the audio in a note-off-triggered sample? Or use a mute group, where the ending sample chokes the looping part? Or multiple audio clips on the same track. If you copy the same sample to two clips, one with the loop and the other without loop, and set them to Legato mode, I think it should switch to the ending seamlessly when you launch the second clip. I have to test this, it's an interesting idea.

It's a very versatile device. If I understood the idea of your live show correctly, the Force won't be a limiting factor. Only for the fillers between tunes, you'll need a second music machine. Looper, delay effect, mp3 player or something.

There are lots of possibilities you couldn't even think of, because you haven't used it yet. For example macros and envelope followers.
User avatar
By Koekepan Fri Mar 17, 2023 2:01 pm
I'm going to go out on an unpopular limb here, and say that the Force is better in the studio than at the gig. It launches clips nicely, but if you want to do DJ stuff with beat-matching and continuity and so on, I'd look elsewhere. If it crashes for any reason (including dodgy power at the venue) it'll take about a minute to load back up.

Don't get me wrong, I love it and use it on a near-daily basis, but to gigs I take other gear. I would almost rather use a couple of Electribes, between which I could swap, or an MC101 or similar on which I could load pre-rendered elements that I could launch, with battery power to keep things stable, and with an ability to smoothly run the BPM around.

In my work, I usually take a sound source such as my Krome workstation, and a performance sequencer such as my Social Entropy Engin, and put both on a small UPS that I can pack along.
User avatar
By MPC-Tutor Fri Mar 17, 2023 2:59 pm
Andy_R wrote: but if I set a loop end point, the audio after that point will never play unless I turn looping off? This one must be in the manual, but I need to get up to speed with Akai terminology first.


The sampler in MPC/Force is a bit limited in this respect. For a sustain looped sample you only have three edit points; sample start, loop start and sample end (there's no separate 'loop end', which is what you'd need to achieve what you need).

So it will play from the very start of the sample ('start point') then will continue to the end point, then jump back to the loop start point and continue looping between these two until you release (and the release fades down to 0). The sample data beyond the sample end point is always ignored.

As someone mentioned before, if the loop is assigned to a drum pad or keygroup you can configure a 'note off' trigger when you release the pad/note. For example, pad A01 contains your loop, pad A02 contains the 'end' sound; when you release pad A01, pad A02 is triggered. I've used it for emulating electric piano release sounds, or you can even use it for open hats or any interesting effect. I made a tutorial about it (for the MPC, but similar for the Force): https://www.mpc-tutor.com/mpc-program-t ... -note-off/
By HouseWithoutMouse Fri Mar 17, 2023 7:00 pm
I tried my multiple-different-loops idea, and I was able to make it work like this:

1. Add an audio track
2. Load a loop WAV to the first clip of the audio track
3. Edit the clip, press the CLIP button
3. Set LAUNCH QUANTIZE to Off
4. Activate LEGATO mode
5. Copy the clip to other clips on the same track (press COPY, etc.), as many copies as you want different loops
6. Set a different loop start/end to each copy of the clip, but preferably so that they follow a logical order, earliest loop in the first clip etc.
7. If you like, the last clip's loop can be full-length, so it loops back to the very beginning

8. Play the first clip... let it loop for as long as you want
9. When you want to progress to the next loop point, launch the second clip. Because of LEGATO mode, the second clip's playhead starts from the time position the previous one was at, and not from the clip's start position.
10. Etc.

I don't know when such a thing might make sense, but it was an interesting weird little exercise. The playhead position transferred completely seamlessly from one clip to another in my test, no audible clicks or anything.

One use-case for this could be to have an entire song as a clip, and each part of the song as a loop. You first start the song by launching the first clip, and it will keep repeating the intro loop, until you launch the next one which progresses to the first verse. And it repeats the verse until you launch the chorus. Etc. Just as if all of the parts were separate clips the usual way, but so that you don't have to cut the clips to specific lengths, and you don't have to care about bars and launch quantize, and triggering the next part at a precise time. You can trigger the verse at any point during the intro. Kind of like "let the current clip finish whatever it's doing and however long it takes, and THEN move to the next clip". And the lengths don't have to follow any specific bar/beat grid or tempo. The downside is, other tracks won't be synced to this. :)

After writing this, I started to think that this is an actual feature that's explained somewhere in the manual.
By Andy_R Fri Mar 17, 2023 11:00 pm
That's really interesting, HouseWithoutMouse, thanks for trying it out and sharing the results.

I think it's going to be perfect for some of my stems which have and underlying verse / chorus / verse / chorus / breakdown / chorus structure (even though they are instrumental). With the ability to let the current clip finish whatever it's doing and however long it takes, and THEN move to the next clip" I can have my 'echo tails' then just loop round some silence on that track before the riff comes back in the next scene.... or find some other work-round. As you say, "There are lots of possibilities you couldn't even think of, because you haven't used it yet. For example macros and envelope followers.", so I'm going to find a way, as MPC-Tutor suggests.

Thanks for the input, Koekepan. I'm glad this is a forum where people are allowed to get real about the shortcomings of these machines. I do have a backup plan, which is the laptop that I'll be doing video projection from, this will have pre-recorded audio that I can swap over to in the event of a crash or other disaster. I'm going to be doing small gigs rather than big serious venues, and not really needing to do DJ-things like beat matching, and I think it's going to get more studio use than gigging anyway. I've already been planning a setlist and if I simply bump one track from 108 to 110 bpm and another from 122 to 120 in my DAW before splitting it to stems, I'll only have to change tempo twice.

I'm itching to get my hands on a Force now, but I also have a nagging feeling that waiting for NAMM in a month's time might be wise, even if there's no new comparable launch from Akai, secondhand prices which seem a bit high near me at the moment might take a dip as people rush for whatever new gear appears.