Akai Vintage Effects; what do they do (really)?

MPC-Tutor wrote:Yes, I think that's pretty clear that he's saying Vintage Mode is nothing but a software emulation. I also think the fact that they don't mention words like physical modelling etc makes it clear that there's nothing going on other than some standard FX tweaking.

It's interesting that in both videos they claim to have big plans for the emulations, but since that video we only got the SP1200 ring (the not very well hidden decimator preset). That said, I'm sure we could come up with an 'ASR' preset using the lofi plugin or similar.

Regardless, the 3000 circuitry is a really cool feature, they spent all that time developing it so why is it not there on MPCs like the X or Live II?

They changed direction when they went toward the touch screen experiences. I thought they would upgrade the MPC Renaissance to controller and standalone because that's what many people wanted.

My guess is that it's all about margins. Why add even a one or two dollar chip to the hardware when you can emulate it with an existing chip that is an integral part of the system. It doesn't help with all these people running around screaming about "must have LoFi" and not caring what that actually means or entails. This is especially evident when you see people post about how to get "that sound" from everything and the kitchen sink. For example, people claiming they can get an SP-1200 sound out of a Casio SK-1 have no idea what they are talking about or any of the technology involved... which makes for an interesting argument on Akai's part, why bother trying to approach the real thing if most people are happy to put "MPC 3000" effects on their track even if it literally does *nothing*.

You're 100% right! This is what pissed me off About Akai and some saying 2.8 being great yada yada. Akai is buggin the hell out That's why l sold mines. Im not going to continue down the road with Akai, my MPC relationship is done!

No communication, no bug fixes etc is aggravating. On my end there are no worries.

MPC-Tutor wrote:

Danoc wrote::WTF: And someone said 2.8 was flawless and the best update.

I believe the reality is that every update has its bugs and it's often pot luck whether they directly impact the kind of workflows you tend to regularly use. But I do struggle to understand how we get the stage where we have an existing core feature completely stop working. How are they testing things these days? If they'd released this to the public beta forum I would have reported every single one of these issues within the first day or so.

Are they trying to fix these issues? Who knows, there's no communication at all.

CharlesRandolph asked what's the need for, the X, force live 1 and 2.

I asked that months ago. People got angry with me

I don't really waste my time with those models anymore not since the Wavetracing SP9050 and BeatSkillz Sample X dropped..

I always drop some MPC60 emulation on the mix.Subtle but effective.

Well, this thread has been a bummer - it seems like Akai isn't on top of things; buggy code, lying about features, no to little communication with their user base.. I fully understand and support people wanting out.

biomaskin wrote:Well, this thread has been a bummer - it seems like Akai isn't on top of things; buggy code, lying about features, no to little communication with their user base.. I fully understand and support people wanting out.

Do remember that the whole vintage FX 'thing' was 8 years ago, and over the past few years they have stepped up in many areas. Lots of features and updates, large range of standalone MPCs etc. It's really just this most recent update that has seen them slip on the quality control front imo. I suspect much of that was due to the introduction of the multi midi features.

They really need to step back a bit and spend some time fixing all the outstanding issues, and it would be good for them to be more transparent with regard to the bug issues they may or may not be working on. People really respond well when you are receptive and responsive!

@biomaskin - I'm not sure I'd go so far as saying lying in most cases, this is pretty standard marketing practice. The trick, just like with everything else in life, be it dating, buying, eating... or whatever... is to have a decent eye to see what you do like, what you can live with, and what is unacceptable. For me, despite some of the bugs that have cropped up with 2.8.x, I am still quite happy with the current MPC line, it does most of what I want it to do, and gives me most of the flexibility I need for what I've been making for tracks.

The lack of transparency from Akai certainly is a bummer, but I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it myself. I knew what I was getting into buying into the ecosystem, and for me, I see a lot of the updates since 2.4 as interesting, even if a fair number of them are not something I'm going to use day to day. On the other hand though, I'm neither holding Akai up as a pillar of how to do things, nor going to say how great they are compared to other companies. Can you find places Akai does things better or worse compared to competitors? Sure... but for me it is a pretty unique blend of features that I still haven't seen a competitor nail.

I've said it before, but even if something came out that superseded the MPC X/Live, I can certainly see myself happily making the music I want to with the current MPC line for many years to come.

True true! I'm still glad I got the MPC One; will be interesting to see how it plays with my Moog Grandmother over CV, and with Studio One by MIDI. Still, screw AKAI

So in summary....The Vintage FX are almost certainly just generic EQ/compression presets that set out to try to mimic the sound of classic samplers. It's nothing you couldn't do yourself by loading a couple of stock plugins and messing around for an afternoon (IMO), there's unlikely to be any 'secret sauce' such as physical modelling otherwise you can bet that Akai would be trumpeting it from the highest tower.

Use them if you think they do good stuff to your beats

Beyond that, the history surrounding these FX is certainly interesting. Back in the day they were presented as some kind of second coming, with apparently plenty more emulations to come in the future. 8 years later they don't even get a mention in the marketing blurb, which makes sense as they really are just some of the stock software FX.

But I think Charles touched on this earlier, the marketing has changed from all that 'iconic' vintage MPC stuff they had going on with the Ren.