1.9

If I was a gambling man I would put money on audio tracks being in the 2.0 upgrade. They are gonna hold on that and use that feature as a lore to pay for the 2.0 upgrade.

Sike Low wrote:If I was a gambling man I would put money on audio tracks being in the 2.0 upgrade. They are gonna hold on that and use that feature as a lore to pay for the 2.0 upgrade.

If Akai were to ever do that, I gotta admit, I probably wouldn't be interested in buying another Akai product again unless it's a legacy board on Ebay or something. Alot of us devoted Akai heads have waited far to long for Akai to play catch up with these competitors.

Quite a few no brainer features literally took years to implement into the Ren and a lot of us waited patiently. For us to wait so long to have to these no brainer basic features such as audio tracks and then have to pay for it?!? That would be a complete let down.

I believe the board on still has potential but the route it seems to be going I've seen A LOT of people jump ship over the years because of the instability and features that were supposed to be in the Ren from it's release that ended up being added/improved over time. Adding audio tracks to 2.0 and have use pay for that?

It wouldn't be wise for Akai to do that. New features we've have yet to hear of, yes, but features we've literally begged for FOR YEARS that other boards and DAWs have on the fly would be a deal breaker for me, honestly.

TBH I don't think Akai will charge for audio tracks. I mean that'd be low. That's not exactly a ground-breaking feature.

I thought we would at least know what would be in 1.9 by now.

^^ I would have been surprised if they revealed it by now tbh. Announcing the Touch shows where their focus is right now. Bottom line, the Ren and Studio aren't going to be competitive with Push 2, Maschine, and whatever other competitor surfaces. I'm sure Akai has an idea about what's in the competition's pipeline, and vice-versa. If they are going to stay relevant, they need to keep their attention on the Touch. No matter what they say, existing Ren users and 1.9 can't be their priority - if they're smart. I'm not saying that 1.9 for the Ren won't come out - would be crazy if not. TBH I'd be surprised if audio tracks made it to the Ren at all at this point. I'm betting it will be added to the Touch software though.

Let's go with 1.9 already!!!!! Or at least release notes.

I really enjoy my Ren with the 1.8 update. Unfortunately, Akai brought a lot of this waiting on updates to improve the Ren on themselves by coming out the gate with the Ren missing common MPC features. I hope 1.9 or 2.0 is packed with features because I would pay for it.

IMO their first mistake was releasing the Ren and Studio with the throwback dot-matrix blue screens that were already 5 years out of date, and releasing a crippled feature-set to match. They relied too much on the "iconic" MPC allure, instead of forward-thinking from the beginning. They set themselves behind the curve intentionally.

vwkountz wrote: I really enjoy my Ren with the 1.8 update. Unfortunately, Akai brought a lot of this waiting on updates to improve the Ren on themselves by coming out the gate with the Ren missing common MPC features. I hope 1.9 or 2.0 is packed with features because I would pay for it.

This.


I'd end up paying aswell. I'd want an actual functioning MPC with the "common MPC features" it was suppost to have upon release over "WOW!! I've never heard of that NEW feature before!!!" features.

lol, to late to edit now.

TBH Akai never should've released the Ren as early as they did. They should've actually listened to the users and got the much-needed features there in the get-go.
I'm not saying Ren isn't "quite OK" now, but people are still waiting on some fairly basic stuff (audio tracks, individual FX bypass etc) which should've been there ages ago to stand up to the competition, while their competitors are coming up with some new amazing features.

hope real time stretching comes in 1.9, audio tracks would be cool too

I don't understand the BIG need for audio tracks. I've been using mpc's ever since the original 60 and I've never wanted audio tracks. to me the mpc is just for making the song then I would track out to a real DAW to record the vocals. idk, i guess I get the desire that one would have for audio tracks but I don't understand the NEED for it. I barely ever used the effects in any of the mpc's. Hell i wasted money getting the FX module that you connected to the back of the 2000 and never really used it. what I wouldn't mind in 1.9 is to bring back the ability to export from song mode. although i don't really need that either cause i can convert back into a sequence and then export that way.

sparq wrote:what I wouldn't mind in 1.9 is to bring back the ability to export from song mode. although i don't really need that either cause i can convert back into a sequence and then export that way.

Converting to a sequence is a clunky workaround and also removes any tempo changes, so yes, sorting out song mode export would seem to be a priority IMO, pretty daft that they got rid of it in the first place.

New and shiny is okay, but fix the existing bugs and poorly implemented features before adding more bells and whistles. And until then I think Akai should forget about charging for any future upgrades. Only big dogs like Adobe can get away with charging for updates that address existing issues.

sparq wrote:I don't understand the BIG need for audio tracks. I've been using mpc's ever since the original 60 and I've never wanted audio tracks.

As many styles as people do with MPCs today, one is, of course, hip hop, and if someone sends you a vocal track that's 3 minutes long, the need for an audio track is evident. This happened to me recently and there's no way you can do that with the Ren.
Also, for example, I've always loved to use samples of rain in my music, often way over 1 minutes long, and that's annoying to do with the way it is now.