AKAI Roger Linn ADR 15?

@mike_mcroberts

Thanks for posting those cool pictures!

This thread makes you want to break out your vintage gear and bang some beats out especially if you hadnt used them in a while.

You mentioned that it was used on some of the end of the inocents album. If you listen to boys of summer, I deffinately hear the 16 levels on that sucker. Shows that the Mpc is also great at what it was originally intended to do.

wudsiba wrote:You mentioned that it was used on some of the end of the inocents album. If you listen to boys of summer, I deffinately hear the 16 levels on that sucker. Shows that the Mpc is also great at what it was originally intended to do.

Boys of Summer predates the MPC. I think that was done with an original LinnDrum, or Linn 9000.

Got me right in the gonads...

Went and saw Roger Linn speak yesterday, I went with damien907 who made a point of asking about this specific prototype which yeilded some cool info. I'll give him a chance to post the little bits roger threw out, it was his question.

But there was a point when he talked about why the lin9000 is a 3 x 6 pad matrix and the mpc60 is the 4 x 4 we all know and love. He said he wanted to have it be 3 x 6 like the linn9000 was, but at the time those velocity sensitive pads were extremely expensive and a new company offered cheaper pad arrays if they were built in a square. Crazy that such a small thing tottally shaped controllers and samplers for decades.

He brought up that weird Linn studio thing, and a few other projects that never fully got actualized. I saw someone filming it officially, so there should be a full video to post after decible posts all their write ups etc..

It was a dope lecture from him & Carl Craig despite the room being filled to the brim with hipster douches.

That's awesome man. Looking forward to seeing the footage.

APH wrote:That's awesome man. Looking forward to seeing the footage.

I'll keep an eye out, and post it up as soon as I see it.

Seeing as there is a lot of Akai info here I'll post my conversation with another Akai fella by the name of Stephen Howell who was involved with them since around the S-900 developing sound libraries and also designing the UI for the S2000, S3000XL, S5/6000 and ak.Sys amongst other bits for Akai and other manufacturers.

The two guys mentioned bellow are David Cockerell (EMS, Electro Harmonix, Akai and others) and Chris Huggett (EDP, Akai, Novation)

"
Chris, as you say, did the software/OS.

Chris went to Novation about halfway through the S5/6000 dev but there was a bit of an overlap just out of common decency.

David did a lot of Akai's hardware from samplers to disk recorders. He also did that odd little phrase trainer thing ... almost literally on a napkin in a restaurant meeting with the chaps from Japan R+D!! So while the others were chomping down on their dim sum and crispy duck, he designed a real time timestretcher! Clever, clever bloke!

And yes, the S612 was originally six ElectroHarmonix 'Memory Man' delay/loopers strapped together to create a simple 6-voice sampler. It was hawked around various big Japanese MI manufacturers at the time and, not naming names, was turned down because (and I kind of quote) "We see no future for sampling"!!

But a Mr Tamaki, head of R+D with this new little company in dingy little offices just outside Kawasaki saw the potential and took it on. David then did the legendary S900. The rest, as they say, is history.

The S612 is still a great piece of kit for dead noddy, simple sampling - just banging a sound in there and playing it instantly without all the complexities of multi-sampling, velocity zones, etc.. And front panel knobbage for editing. Sounded damned good too. I know quite a few pros who still have them in their racks and use them regularly.

Akai were damned innovative in their time and Mr Tamaki and David had a great relationship. Mr Tamaki would spot some new technology or a new chipset or something and would ask David if it had potential - next thing you knew, David had designed a new product! And when I say "next thing you knew" I mean a day or two later!!

One of this industry's great unsung heroes. People talk of Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim, Dave Smith, etc., but David should be up there in pantheon of great innovators - the man was dabbling with digital synthesis and sampling on a PDP8 mainframe back in 1967 FFS! And designed possibly the quirkiest (and best looking) synths of all time..."

Read up on David Cockerell after I got my small stone phasers.. agree that he deserves alot more recognition.
Thanks for sharing your info, very interesting.

this thread has some great digital audio history...


keep it coming yall...


yo mike... you got any of those akai tapes for the mg1212 laying around?

m56p87 wrote:Went and saw Roger Linn speak yesterday, I went with damien907 who made a point of asking about this specific prototype which yeilded some cool info. I'll give him a chance to post the little bits roger threw out, it was his question.

But there was a point when he talked about why the lin9000 is a 3 x 6 pad matrix and the mpc60 is the 4 x 4 we all know and love. He said he wanted to have it be 3 x 6 like the linn9000 was, but at the time those velocity sensitive pads were extremely expensive and a new company offered cheaper pad arrays if they were built in a square. Crazy that such a small thing tottally shaped controllers and samplers for decades.

He brought up that weird Linn studio thing, and a few other projects that never fully got actualized. I saw someone filming it officially, so there should be a full video to post after decible posts all their write ups etc..

It was a dope lecture from him & Carl Craig despite the room being filled to the brim with hipster douches.

sounds cool but did he say anything about the LinnDrum II?

daftmunk wrote:sounds cool but did he say anything about the LinnDrum II?

He didn't, I don't think that things gonna happen. He was just on about the tempest (of course) and possibly making the linnstrument once he got a new supplier for the parts. I think it's just another concept be had for something someday...

Granted he didn't mention it, but he did mention litterally everything under the sun hes working on. So the fact that he didn't mention this at all, says to me he there's nothing to mention.

extremely surprised nobody brought it up?! it's like his most anticipated project..ever.. it's still up on his page although it hasn't been updated in a while:

http://www.rogerlinndesign.com/preview-linndrum-ii.html

He actually apologized for putting a few things up that probably will never get made, like the linnstrument. I just imagine this is another one, especially since he talked about all his side projects and left this out.

I'm with you though, would love to see this actualized. Especially since the tempest kind of blows in my opinion, unless your an electronic live preformer...

Edit:reading on the net and on his site it seems like he took his ideas from this and put them into the tempest and that's the end of it.

vinyl_junkie_1620 wrote:So while the others were chomping down on their dim sum and crispy duck

Were they eating at a Chinese restaurant in Japan?

Had to pull you up on that one mate!