What New Synth Or Synth Ideas Should Akai Add Next?

1000% agree Ultros. I want a classic 1980s ElectroFunk vocoder plugin/effect. That lets you sound like Afrika Bambaataa in Planet Rock or Freestyle in any of his Electro Freestyle songs (Don’t Stop The Rock, The Party Has Begun, It’s Automatic). That is the only thing I would want added. And I’d pay a fair price for it if it’s good sounding.

Ultros wrote:I wish they would give us a vocoder now, auto-tune is pretty awesome but nothing like getting down like a funky robot.. I purposely make cheesy "punk-funk" a 1980s genre of funk music (like the BGM in sonic the hedge hog) the vocoder is an iconic staple of said genre which inherently influenced on 1990s rap. (example biggie - back to cali). MPC does that sound very very well but i still require a microkorg for the voice.

Someone mentioned a vocoder on the last page. Cool idea BTW.

jpeg wrote:

hyena wrote:i don't fully understand why romplers instead of making the multisampling\full fledged sampler features better, so either you create your own sample instruments or buy good third party ones. this might also benefit small indie developers and not only the big players.
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3rd party instruments is the same as buying a rompler; so why would u be against romplers?

most people dont want to spend time loading up multi-samples; they just want song creation tools ready to go; same reason why people buy a roland fantom or any other keyboard workstation they want useful sounds at their finger tips so when inspiration strikes they can get ideas down.

not everyone is a sound designer

Well with rompers your still gonna have to tweak stuff each the most preset will match what you want. There's like 2 main types of sound design:
1=making patches thats deep & evolving like it's is a arrangement all in one key press. The fancy shit you see on YouTube where someone is making patches to impress other sound designers with their "long-lush-evolving pads". Another of these patches do mix well other patches & mostly only sound "good"at slower tempos like Ambient music.

2=making patches to go with the current project. These may be based on presets to get started & tweaked or they are original but made to go well with other tracks in that project. This is what I most do.

The MPC/Force are great synths too & I'm not talking about the plugins. Just using all the tool available is kinda powerful. You can view each pad in a drum track a Independent oscillator with 4 layers that unfortunately share the same LFO. Still the basics for sound design is there in the drum programa & all the ways to layer FXs ( also, don't forget about the Drum FXs) & the convenience of Flatten pads or resampling is great too & kinda make the machine a romplers box that's want for you to feed it samples to be use as custom waveforms.

Romplers are cool if there's PC#'s for each patch, which is currently not the case with anything on the MPC. I think they main want to make our own stuff using what's there which includes synths that could resample & converted to a drum program or keygroup.

Type 2 sound design isn't that difficult if you know the basics & are motivated by the joy & benefits of having original sounds.

This was kinda deep on what could be done on the Force/MPC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2OZ8TD ... yQlh25ib2P

B-Wise wrote:Well with rompers your still gonna have to tweak stuff each the most preset will match what you want. There's like 2 main types of sound design:
1=making patches thats deep & evolving like it's is a arrangement all in one key press. The fancy shit you see on YouTube where someone is making patches to impress other sound designers with their "long-lush-evolving pads". Another of these patches do mix well other patches & mostly only sound "good"at slower tempos like Ambient music.

2=making patches to go with the current project. These may be based on presets to get started & tweaked or they are original but made to go well with other tracks in that project. This is what I most do.

Type 2 sound design isn't that difficult if you know the basics & are motivated by the joy & benefits of having original sounds.

the so called orginal sounds are usually not as original as claimed; its probably a similar sound to something heard before; so Id rather just have some good presets that are useful, then can tweak according to taste to fit whats needed.

jpeg wrote:the so called orginal sounds are usually not as original as claimed; its probably a similar sound to something heard before; so Id rather just have some good presets that are useful, then can tweak according to taste to fit whats needed.

We been over this like over a year ago when I think Jura or Mini D came out. End result was no matter what you're gonna have to learn a little more advanced sound design skills. No rompler will have great presets for most people for most beats without it sounding same-ish. It be nice to have some "good" presets but that's the thing who decides what's a "good" preset?

Saying the so called original sounds aren't usually as original as claimed isn't the original sounds that I was referring to. Even in the cases that your referring to, most of those songs I bet had strong melodic elements that would require great skills in other areas like knowing how to play instruments, composition, mixing...etc, that most couldn't match alone.

Like I asked you before & this was where you stop responding to me. Do you have those skills to produce "great" original music with basic presets?

Komatos Records wrote:1000% agree Ultros. I want a classic 1980s ElectroFunk vocoder plugin/effect. That lets you sound like Afrika Bambaataa in Planet Rock or Freestyle in any of his Electro Freestyle songs (Don’t Stop The Rock, The Party Has Begun, It’s Automatic). That is the only thing I would want added. And I’d pay a fair price for it if it’s good sounding.

Yes, that would be nice. Even though I am already set up with an Electro Harmonix V256 and a Behringer VC340 - both really satisfy my vocoder need.

Are there any original (new) sounds now, in 2024? Can't remember the last time I heard some music and thought 'Whoa, I've not heard that before', probably not since dubstep morphed into what dubstep became. When I first heard dubstep in a club in London, before all the crazy bass sound (which I'm not dissing) it was the vibe of the groove that made it sound different, like half-time tech step.

Trap beats always confused me, because it's built old sounds very familiar drum machine sounds, I never got the hype. Especially when there are so many cool drum machines that could be doing the same but adding something new.

Glitch has some cool sounds, but even that's all been done.

Hyper-pop is extreme production.

Low3001 wrote:

Komatos Records wrote:1000% agree Ultros. I want a classic 1980s ElectroFunk vocoder plugin/effect. That lets you sound like Afrika Bambaataa in Planet Rock or Freestyle in any of his Electro Freestyle songs (Don’t Stop The Rock, The Party Has Begun, It’s Automatic). That is the only thing I would want added. And I’d pay a fair price for it if it’s good sounding.

Yes, that would be nice. Even though I am already set up with an Electro Harmonix V256 and a Behringer VC340 - both really satisfy my vocoder need.

I like beats through vocoders too. I have vocodex, and the Microfreak (although I have'n't tried the microfreaks yet as I need to make a cable) . I would have thought a vocoder would be too demanding on the CPU, but since they got the Microfreak to do it, they may be able to streamline something

I also have a Talkbox, the one where you put the tube in your mouth, but that's just collecting dust for the next year since I'm getting my teeth fixed and have a mouth full of metal.

B-Wise wrote:

jpeg wrote:
Saying the so called original sounds aren't usually as original as claimed isn't the original sounds that I was referring to. Even in the cases that your referring to, most of those songs I bet had strong melodic elements that would require great skills in other areas like knowing how to play instruments, composition, mixing...etc, that most couldn't match alone.

Crappy Rompler sounds used to make classic tracks through playing, composition, mixing (and a little PR)




My old Rompler, from back in the day

B-Wise wrote:We been over this like over a year ago when I think Jura or Mini D came out. End result was no matter what you're gonna have to learn a little more advanced sound design skills. No rompler will have great presets for most people for most beats without it sounding same-ish. It be nice to have some "good" presets but that's the thing who decides what's a "good" preset?

Saying the so called original sounds aren't usually as original as claimed isn't the original sounds that I was referring to. Even in the cases that your referring to, most of those songs I bet had strong melodic elements that would require great skills in other areas like knowing how to play instruments, composition, mixing...etc, that most couldn't match alone.

Like I asked you before & this was where you stop responding to me. Do you have those skills to produce "great" original music with basic presets?

obviously good presets is subjective and dependant on which genere of music being made and waht inpsires you; hence people hunt around to find module, software or presets that resonate with them. The whole point of having good presets is to negate the need for indepth sound design and get instant song writing inspiration.

trying not to sound the same is not the goal for patches; the goal is to have patches that are ready to use in the songs being made; composition and mixing is a different discussion.

great is subjective; but i have made beats that i am relatively happy with using presets alone; where i did not need to tweak the presets

jpeg wrote:trying not to sound the same is not the goal for patches; the goal is to have patches that are ready to use in the songs

This always reminds me of my elder daughter, a very competent pianist to whom I offer to try all sorts of synth patches... And she doesn't care one bit for any of that: she loves her piano and uses it to play beautiful songs in different genres. Sounding unique is none of her concerns !

Sound design is just one part of production, and not even a critical one - though I do enjoy very much having the luxury of a patch library and the freedom of adjusting them to my taste.

Surge XT is great and open source, so Akai could perhaps take it and make a somewhat reduced version of it, and sell patch banks for it. But GPL3, so maybe they'd be forced to open-source their internal plugin interface.

I'd like to see something along the lines of a Virus emulation. Something more modern. We've got retro well covered at this point.

Neodymium wrote:

B-Wise wrote:
Saying the so called original sounds aren't usually as original as claimed isn't the original sounds that I was referring to. Even in the cases that your referring to, most of those songs I bet had strong melodic elements that would require great skills in other areas like knowing how to play instruments, composition, mixing...etc, that most couldn't match alone.

Crappy Rompler sounds used to make classic tracks through playing, composition, mixing (and a little PR)

My old Rompler, from back in the day

You got Jpeg saying my words that I quoted above in your post. So I don't know if your agreeing or disagreeing with me with your video, but just to be clear I never said people can't use basic presets to make bangers. It just takes other strong musical elements to make up for it.

B-Wise wrote:... most of those songs I bet had strong melodic elements that would require great skills in other areas like knowing how to play instruments, composition, mixing...etc, that most couldn't match alone.

Yeah, sorry, I messed the quoting up, and now I can't edit. I meant to quote you, and I'm agreeing wit you I think. Even when crappy Triton sounds were used, it was all the other skills that made them into good tunes. They aren't the best rompler sounds, in an age Kontact where a good performance can make it sound like a recording to but the best ears. These sounds weren;t that great. But it was what they did with them.

I don't get the idea of putting a rompler in, when mulitisamples set up are just the same thing. I'd much rather see calling for the sampler to be improved.

I'm not even sure what sounds people would want from a rompler, traditional instruments, or genre specific. Kind of why I like soft synths so much, they can pack them for of user friendly banks, with I hate wading through, editing and trying to bend to my needs, but make many other happy. But I still get a new voice and an init patch that I can work with, so I'm happy. On top of that, I'm not using up chunks of memory.


I'd like to see the sampler improved, and wavetables added to the sampler, so 3rd parties can create banks and content for these.