Akai Old School Samplers

Yep multy sampling and velocity switching is a biggie on the advanced samplers like the S series, ASR and so on which the MPC's cant do bar the 4000 which can do 99.99999% what a Z8 does. Imagine these S series and so on like Yamaha Motif's and Korg Tritons/M1's but instead of the preset waves on the oscilators you can use what ever you want....set up key maps, velocity switch points, layer programs etc..

I can multisample and velocity switch w/my XL.

Hey I remember Akai made a mini beat maker back in 1998? It was 1mb of memory, does anyone know?

Ill-Green wrote:Hey I remember Akai made a mini beat maker back in 1998? It was 1mb of memory, does anyone know?

Akai S-20?

Any famous producers or songs I can reference to hear what the old school samplers sound like?

Anything between 88 and 95

Serious man, when do you think they used these samplers?

jonestown massacre wrote:I can multisample and velocity switch w/my XL.

Not really or not very effective. In case of most rack samplers and Keyboard samplers, multisampling means that you cn use some samples and spread each of them over a keyrange. In Akai samplers this ranges are called keygroups. Every keygroup is independent from the others. You can adjust filter, volume, ADSR tuning etc.
In the MPC you just got pads and each of the pad can be modified individually but for example if you want to layer a sound (play two or three pads by only hitting one pad) you are not be able to change the Attack/Decay Parameters individually.
Also there are no keyranges. Every pad play only one key. Yes there is the 16 Level function but thats something different cause the sample is still on one MIDI note. 16 Level is more like a "special Akai internal tuning" and you cant play the 16 tunings with a keyboard hooked up to the MPC.

Sure you can put one sample on all 16 Pads, change the tuning and be happy but with a "real" sampler you just need to use ONE keygroup and set Root, Highest and lowest key.

The MPC is a drummachine/phrase sampler. Thats why there are tons of Akai S1000 CDs with every instrument you can think of but Ive never heard of such CDs for the MPC. MPC CDs got Drums and Sounds but no instruments on it.

peace

Yep and you cant do velocity switching in the MPC...by that I dont mean velocity sensetive but lets say you multy sample a fender rhodes...now the probelem is no matter how hard or soft you hit that keyboard the sound will only get louder/quieter but we all know the rhodes just like any acoustic instrument sounds different when you play it soft or hard and makes up for most of it's character esp when you start waking the keys hard. Now on these fancy samplers you would sample it played soft, hard and so on (you can have up to 4 parts) then you set how the velocity switches between the parts/x-fades etc so now your sampler will sound more like the real thing.
And what I mean by multy sampling is i.e. sampling these notes from the piano > C2 ,C3, C4 and mapping them like that on the sanpler..aka you spread the samples across each octive in the program so it sounds more natural...
Also the MPC has very basic envelopes and the filter can't be swetp while the sample is playing

As stated the MPC is a drummachine/phrase sampler

Rack samplers were designed to emulate music instruments.
The early mpc's were designed to emulate drums and percussion with the magical option to sequence ur own drumpatterns as well. They never thought of the fact that someone would use samplers/mpc's to sample and create complete tracks. The newgen mpc's are built and designed to create beats. Working with a rack makes u aproach things from a different angle.

BTW: I got an upgrade kit for an AKAI S900 (2 Chips and 2 Floppys with OS 4) so that it has the same features of the S950 - can't remember which exactly these were, but I could check it out again. I read something about data compression. Bought it on ebay once, but I never used it because I never got me a S900. So, if anybody is interested in this, send me a PM.

PEACE

More info here (not my blog, btw): http://akai-s900.blogspot.com/2008/02/h ... -s900.html