Akai Force plugin or sound device in standalone mode

Hallo, I'm new here and so please forgive me if this has already been requested. I think we all need the Force to be recognized as a sound device in standalone mode or at least a plugin like Elektron's Overbridge to get the Force's sound in our daws without the need of an extra sound card. This is my most important feature request.
Thank you!

I must admit that this request confuses me. If you wanted a USB sound module, there's any number of devices available already that will do the job for you. What you're suggesting would be quite a radical inversion of what the Force is about.

What's wrong with having an audio interface? You can get some quite affordable ones with enough inputs to take in what the Force will produce. If you choose well, you can even connect the audio interface to the Force to expand its functions.

Sorry for the confusion. The thing is that the Force can only connect as an audio interface to my computer via USB when it's in computer mode. But in computer mode I cannot record anything into the Force.
In standalone mode on the other hand I can record into the Force, but only with the two audio inputs which is few and I would actually prefer to record digitally which is not possible.
The other thing is the playback. Playing back from the Force and recording into my daw for example only works with the 4 outputs and so the quality of the recording vastly depends on the quality of my audio interface.
There's always a quality loss. Which would not be there if I could record or capture the sound digitally.
And this would only be possible if I could connect the Force as a sound card to my computer in standalone mode OR if there was a plugin like the Overbridge from Elektron so I could record/capture the sound directly from the plugin. I mean we are in 2021 and the Force is a very modern approach. Why does it still rely on analog audio without an additional sound card when it's only a software thing to implement this digital audio I'm asking for? Well I am thank ful though that it is at least possible to connect an external sound card to the Force. I wouldn't have bought it if this was not possible tbh.
Maybe you can understand me better now.

Cheers!

OK, that makes more sense, now.

My solution to this problem is to use an external interface (Behringer's UMC1820), because what I'm mostly doing is ingesting audio from synths (such as the Waldorf Streichfett, and Arturia Minibrute 2S), and then producing audio to my recording solution (I use an MTR instead of a computer) and I will say that I have not had any audio quality issues because the DA/AD converters in the MTR and the interface are very clean and clear.

Is it the technically ideal, digitally perfect result? No, but if you want to do that, then the SDcard and rendering are still there. I often do this; construct a track on the Force, render to SDcard, and then transport it wherever I want.

Thank you for the workaround. Actually I think it would be best if Akai could update the firmware so that the device can be used as a sound card in standalone mode.

MC242 wrote:Thank you for the workaround. Actually I think it would be best if Akai could update the firmware so that the device can be used as a sound card in standalone mode.

You'll need to reach out Akai then

So in Standalone mode you can control Ableton Live BUT the Force isn't usable as an audio interface. In Computer Mode you can use it as an audio interface BUT you can't control Live. Stupid, isn't it ?

So what I always wanted (and still wish) is that the Akai Forces capabilities of 32 Inputs and Outputs works via the USB B Port directly with a DAW.
So you could stream the sound of 16 Stereo Channels from your Force into your DAW to be able to mix your song there. I know Akai did a lot to provide a lot of Audio-Plugins in the Force, but on PC you have just more options to audio-mix your song. And I have my workflow and favourite Tools I use to make good Audio-mixes pretty fast. For example the Plugin Ozone etc.

Yes you could export stems and do the mixing later on in the DAW, but if you want to change something in the arrangement or instrument-MIDI you always need to re-export the stems.

And with the streaming in DAW option you could build your beat/song while being able to mix it at the same time and listen to how it will sound at the end.
I probably would still export the stems on Force after the beat making and mixing process, import into my DAW and route the coresponding mixing-chains to the stems for better audio quality.
But the process of beatmaking and silmutaniously DAW-mixing is something that would be pretty enjoyable to me.

Not really enough bandwidth in the box to handle streaming simultaneously. I've done it via "jack". about 8 tracks and it starts to over run the cpu... end up with crackling and popping and stuff. unstable use of the box its just a bit too much.