By MeSoHordey
Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:04 pm
Bought one of these on a whim yesterday. Pissed all the guys off at the Guitar Center who kept telling me "Dude those things are so cool man!"...My response: It's Akai garbage. 
Anyways, it's big and plastic feeling with a super low resolution looking display. It almost feels like a toy. Screen is bright at least and has good contrast. It takes an 1/8th headphone jack which is a little too noisy for my taste, but at least it is on the front of the device. Full standard midi connections are delivered by these little 1/8th connector dongles with female midi ports on the end. I can see these getting lost, but as you'll read later, these are the secret weapon in this device's limited arsenal.
A usb power adapter is included, thankfully, but why the **** isn't this thing battery powered? This alone will prevent most people from ever connecting to their ipad via a camera connection kit. What a lost opportunity.
Pads are velocity sensitive. They light up, which seems lame but is actually useful to see whether a sample is loaded on a pad or not. The color also indicates the trigger mode. I like the pads. The remind me of the Akai XR20 pads which I always loved. It is pretty easy to finger drum with these.
Functions on the device itself allow for editing kits, but strangely enough, only if you have a "kit file" already created on the card. The only way to create a kit file is to use the downloadable PC software to write a new kit to your memory card. This is one of those areas where I wonder if Akai employees ever use their own software. This is not explained in the manual and is only discovered after trial and error. So anyone attempting to create kits from the device is going to be completely confused and probably think the device only supports editing of the 8 kits that are shipped on the device. You can create 80 kits on the card through the PC software.
It is important to note that nothing actually worked from the PC-editing side until I stopped using long file names. The manual states that the reason to use e PC-editing tool is because it works with long file names. But it doesn't. Or the device doesn't. But something doesn't actually work until you bit the bullet and shorten those names down.
According to th manual the device only works with16-bit. I don't know if this means it doesnt work with 8-bit or not. I plan to try that later on. However, the device works great with 16-bit wav files.
So what does this thing actually do? On the surface, not much. It plays samples, sending the sound out through two quarter inch audio cables. For most people that's anout all they will do.
Where the device begins to shine is when you connect the MPX8 through an audio/midi interface to an application like Tabletop on the ipad. It took me about 5 min to initially set up. Then I was off and running, sequencing the MPX8's pads from a Tabletop device and running the audio from the MPX8 back into Tabletop's recording tools. There you can add effects, mangle the audio using beatslicer or perform a number of other functions.
On its own, this thing is about as interesting as a tin can. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with even a rudimentary interest in beatmaking since you can effectively get an actual mpc for only an extra bill these days. However, if you've already got an ipad, this thing acts like a secret weapon when combined with a full featured daw-like environment such as Tabletop.
Anyways, it's big and plastic feeling with a super low resolution looking display. It almost feels like a toy. Screen is bright at least and has good contrast. It takes an 1/8th headphone jack which is a little too noisy for my taste, but at least it is on the front of the device. Full standard midi connections are delivered by these little 1/8th connector dongles with female midi ports on the end. I can see these getting lost, but as you'll read later, these are the secret weapon in this device's limited arsenal.
A usb power adapter is included, thankfully, but why the **** isn't this thing battery powered? This alone will prevent most people from ever connecting to their ipad via a camera connection kit. What a lost opportunity.
Pads are velocity sensitive. They light up, which seems lame but is actually useful to see whether a sample is loaded on a pad or not. The color also indicates the trigger mode. I like the pads. The remind me of the Akai XR20 pads which I always loved. It is pretty easy to finger drum with these.
Functions on the device itself allow for editing kits, but strangely enough, only if you have a "kit file" already created on the card. The only way to create a kit file is to use the downloadable PC software to write a new kit to your memory card. This is one of those areas where I wonder if Akai employees ever use their own software. This is not explained in the manual and is only discovered after trial and error. So anyone attempting to create kits from the device is going to be completely confused and probably think the device only supports editing of the 8 kits that are shipped on the device. You can create 80 kits on the card through the PC software.
It is important to note that nothing actually worked from the PC-editing side until I stopped using long file names. The manual states that the reason to use e PC-editing tool is because it works with long file names. But it doesn't. Or the device doesn't. But something doesn't actually work until you bit the bullet and shorten those names down.
According to th manual the device only works with16-bit. I don't know if this means it doesnt work with 8-bit or not. I plan to try that later on. However, the device works great with 16-bit wav files.
So what does this thing actually do? On the surface, not much. It plays samples, sending the sound out through two quarter inch audio cables. For most people that's anout all they will do.
Where the device begins to shine is when you connect the MPX8 through an audio/midi interface to an application like Tabletop on the ipad. It took me about 5 min to initially set up. Then I was off and running, sequencing the MPX8's pads from a Tabletop device and running the audio from the MPX8 back into Tabletop's recording tools. There you can add effects, mangle the audio using beatslicer or perform a number of other functions.
On its own, this thing is about as interesting as a tin can. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with even a rudimentary interest in beatmaking since you can effectively get an actual mpc for only an extra bill these days. However, if you've already got an ipad, this thing acts like a secret weapon when combined with a full featured daw-like environment such as Tabletop.
Sometimes I still laugh out loud about the beat kangz and that time some English dude hacked the Akai marketing website and stole a bunch of pictures of the Ren before it was released.
