What the...Akai discontinuing hardware MPCs???

Nail...meet Tutor's hammer...SMACK

Absolutely dead on man. A rational and realistic take on the whole thing. I agree that people's excitement over the Ren shows a want being addressed and a lot of people were primed to go virtual. But maybe it wasn't needed to be death/rebirth so to speak.

Honestly I think there's only one person here who takes as it if god snapped his finger and it was instantly, "you're a luddite fool if you want hardware MPC's or a combo box." And clearly simply because Akai said so, good enough for him. But his chameleon nature is well established and he causes at least as much harm as help at times. So pack your salt as far as him. I really agree on the LCD, seems so silly to be that slavish to old design at the expense of modern tech. (I know you have your computer LCD but it's not either or to me as your whole post was themed with both being a fine option)


But really plus a million on your post Tutor, really succinctly covers all the pertinent aspects. And yeah we probably need to hope Roger Linn at some point gets enthralled with finishing a design for a modern MPC like hardware sampler.

But sadly I think we'll see Roland re-make 808's before we see Akai release hardware ever again. And I would think the staff that could do those projects if they were willing is not there in the least at this juncture.

(BTW I do kind of think Roland is going to release something soon to get in on the analog party Korg is carving out mainstream wise)

Radical Edwards wrote: Playing MPC on the L train on lap , easy, balancing laptop and controller on lap on L train, long to say the least especially if I start gettin on. If the 500 wasnt portable I wouldnt have bought it, portability was a deal sealer/breaker.
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Yes, the MPC500 is really one of a kind--sort of like the microkorg (which still being produced after all these years and was even upgraded recently). In fact the MPC500 and microkorg make a seriously nice pair.

Not sure about the Fly/iMPC. I think I'd rather just use the touchscreen to do everything instead of lugging around the Fly part of it.

manufacturers don't care about black people (bewildered kanye west Katrina voice) :lol:

no seriously tho. its cheaper to manufacture controllers and it has larger prophet margin. dont sweat it. someone made a good point. people still buying, trading , selling old as mpcs i just bought a mpc 60 II. love it. cats still find, buy, trade and sell old ass rhodes pianos. as the world turns you will still find more and more hardware. just will be religated to niche market manufacturers. so dont sweat it. get going on making clones (hmmmmm)

psr wrote:get going on making clones (hmmmmm)

There's a perfect 1:1 clone of the TB 303 about to drop at somewhere near 7-800Euros, providing Roland doesn't sue. Yeah it's that close, beyond a x0x box kit or pre-fabbed one. So yeah companies should try to be in both camps like Korg has been doing.

You owe us a meme with that Kanye riff you dropped.

the thing that gets to me is, just as moores law makes chips smaller by half every 18 months (which makes computing cheaper) the same is true for mpcs and all other electronics, so why they gettin gay for?

I love small machines and to me the 500 was a good direction for Akai. Technology always makes things smaller and I was hoping for a 2500XS (extra small) which is a 500 with 16 pads with the 2500 flip screen.

I originally bought the 500 to make the owners of 5000s and 2500s feel inferior. A while back, the 500 used to get shitted on by the other members here because they flaunted their customized MPCs and now all of a sudden they can make dope beats. Actually their beats were generic and perhaps the same peeps that say the Ren is God's MPC. I could've gotten a 2500 but it takes one mouse to clear a field of elephants, so I repped the 500 and made it a contender against other MPCs. Peeps were like "yo thats dope, what you used?" and I'll say "MPC 500" and they'll be like "that shitty machine can do that? I need to get one" But little did those bitches understand, that it was my skills and ingenuity that make things dope, not the machine.

Next year I`m buying a brand new 500 in the box and keeping it.I have a strong feeling after all the criticism and praise,the 500 WILL BE a cult machine.

I can`t possibly see what`s next in the hardware arena at the same price point.

S.I.C.K THE DRUMGOD wrote:Next year I`m buying a brand new 500 in the box and keeping it.I have a strong feeling after all the criticism and praise,the 500 WILL BE a cult machine.

I can`t possibly see what`s next in the hardware arena at the same price point.

Yeah probably nothing will really give a control surface and sampler/sequencer in a form factor the size of a book anytime soon.

At a higher price point and without pads you have Teenage Engineering's OP-1 but you're right there's really not much in the way of a portable and powerful solution that take batteries outside of Roland SP's and the 500.

Well I'd rather be right by my self than wrong with everybody else, the average ferrari driver cant drive as well as the average hot rod driver and guess what? you can make a hot rod out of anything, In fact thats the whole point.

S.I.C.K THE DRUMGOD wrote:Next year I`m buying a brand new 500 in the box and keeping it.I have a strong feeling after all the criticism and praise,the 500 WILL BE a cult machine.

I can`t possibly see what`s next in the hardware arena at the same price point.

If you want a brand new 500 in the box, you'd better not wait until next year. They are getting very scarce already. Adorama and Sam Ash seem to have some inventory, and Thomann shows they are getting a shipment in by the end of the month (though I'm not sure from where).

Tax bread is spent.So it`ll have to wait till next year.They STILL got brand new 1000s at Guitar Center selling for $999 so I think I may get lucky with a new 500 next year.

these Akai people are going to shoot there own toes off i keep seeing mpc renaissances on ebay people selling them the idea of the MPC is it was always ment to be a stand alone sampling beat machine i hate this renaissance and studio way back when i had my first MPC 2000 i dumped my Atari st with cubase in the bin way back in 1997 , i got my humble 500 now and i never will go back to computers to try to make tunes i love the stand alone MPC unit ohh and i got my humble korg micro sampler its very good for doing bass lines and drums

Metatron72 wrote:

psr wrote:get going on making clones (hmmmmm)

There's a perfect 1:1 clone of the TB 303 about to drop at somewhere near 7-800Euros, providing Roland doesn't sue. Yeah it's that close, beyond a x0x box kit or pre-fabbed one. So yeah companies should try to be in both camps like Korg has been doing.

You owe us a meme with that Kanye riff you dropped.

some body gave me a roland 303 in 1995 to go with my 909 drum machine i had a 707 606 and 808 but the price went up too high and i sold the lot so i got some Akai rack samplers and a ASQ10 and mad beats like that then in 1997 the mpc2000 came out so i got one i had an Atari st also with cubase but i hated it

One out of every ten schemes the new Numark comes out with does actually produce some cool gear.

(I think thats just the law of averages at work.)

A couple of their DJ CD decks were pretty good,
back when people used CD's.

And wasn't it nukai who started putting CF cards into MPC's?

But in general their corporate angle these days seems to be mostly hipster/trend chasing instead of enthusiast concerned.

Thats why they started mutilating all their DJ gear with ipod docks (and now all the akai gear too),
and why they'll spend more money on celebrity endorsements and imitating the maschine then on innovation or quality gear that would interest a dedicated musician.

But the good part of that is that their garbage is generally functional and cheap.

At least by the time it hits the after market.

There was no way to get any kind of MPC back in the high quality days for less then 2-3 thousand.

The 500 is a perfect example of when that cheapo disposable hipster aesthetic kinda works.

If someone would go through the trouble of cracking and fixing up the OS it could easily become a second wind sought after collectable.

MPC-Tutor wrote:Akai on the other hand have a hardware heritage. Their approach should have been to take a standalone hardware unit and see how they could better integrate it with computers. The aim should have been to enhance the hardware, not abandon it.

I agree.

The renaissance might have actually been kind of awesome if it was a full drum machine first with the controller capability as icing on the cake.

Like that big ugly roland.

That would have actually one upped the maschine in a big way!

But I wouldn't pay more then $350 for the maschine-I mean renaissance they came out with.

We'll see if there are enough hipsters for them to fleece to make a profit on that one.

Metatron72 wrote:Akai stopped manufacturing hardware MPC's well before the Ren was even announced. the last 1000 made was almost 2 years ago. all the hardware between then and the announced discontinuations have been already manufactured dead stock.

Do people think that Akai will ever do a new hardware MPC then?

Personally Id like to see something with the coloured lighting up pads like the xr20, more effects and the ability to do looper pedal style "live looping". What do others think?

Right now I use an mpc500 and xr20 together, I'm desperately trying to get to grips with playing one with each hand live. Not easy