hey, this shit happens all the time

i worked as technical support for hercules, now for a hifi stuff producer, really big one, name does not matter...
what i want to say is that this shit happens all the time everywhere, the guys i worked (or work) for all produce more or less expensive equipment (the RMX dj console from hercules is way more expensive than my second-hand mpc 500 was...) and such things happen from time to time... after all they`re all produced in china (i presume that the mpcs are also made in china?)
when this happens the product is usually exchanged or repaired for free (at least at hercules there were a lot of cases...)
all i can advise you is to be nice to the people at akai, they take a lot of shit from a lot of people anyway

and if you`re nice to the tech support they will be nice to you, with a little bit of luck you may have your problem solved