akai mpx8 anyone??

[drummerzuki]

Just had this great bit of kit delivered.brilliant and simple.I have been hooked to akai mpc and emu samplers before but found them all a big learning curve. This is a great way to add your own sounds to your kit and loops etc.drag and drop onto sd card and load her up.assign a midi note and your away. I got a snare drum,zildjian a custom crash and nice china part of my kit mixed in with the roland sound. My band now also has loops triggering for when your covering that song with the synth part or weird effect at the end.highly recommend this and for 79 quid is a bargain.

[hairmetal-81]

Yes, it is a interesting product.
I think (because both Akai and Alesis are part of the 'Numark'-company) that the MPX-8 is essentially based on the same technology that is inherited in the Alesis Samplepad. Neither will allow multisamples on the same pad, which, for drumming purposes, would be the deal-breaker for me.

Also, it isn't a sampler per se, more a phrase-sample playback machine. You can't really play back notes beyond the fixed single pitch you define for the sample. (Don't expect to play your samples as an instrument i.e. a piano). This could possibly be fixed via a Firmware-update from Akai.

Loading samples can be a really big pain, as you have to scroll through all of the files' names alphabetically, to load a sample, When you stop scrolling with the wheel, that sample you stopped on begins loading on its own, not via button push for "load now" or anything similar. You can't have any samples organized in folders, either. All samples have to be on the first level of the SD card.

Sample-loading via SD card (...if you go over 3 seconds) is painfully slow.
Small samples load quickly of course, but a 80 seconds sample is said to take ......85 seconds to load (at 44.1kHz, 16bit and Stereo, about 14MB in size), ....Ouch!!!


This won't cut it for me! Floppies were faster!
Is the promised PC sample editing software available on the website, already?



HTH

[Chris K]

Is the promised PC sample editing software available on the website, already?

HTH

Yes, long time ago http://www.akaipro.com/product/mpx8#downloads

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8IIEsjloW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGw1IQoWf4

[hairmetal-81]

Ah, I see! I was not following it any further from last years launch.... Thanks, Chris!

[drummerzuki]

yeah phrase sampler would be more precise., i have loaded over a minutes worth of sample before in less then 20 seconds.I did do firmware update as soon as i bought it. The fact it only takes one sample per pad can be circumvented by layering many samples of say snare drums together then import them as one.Its something I will be toying with.

[Chris K]

yeah phrase sampler would be more precise., i have loaded over a minutes worth of sample before in less then 20 seconds.I did do firmware update as soon as i bought it. The fact it only takes one sample per pad can be circumvented by layering many samples of say snare drums together then import them as one.Its something I will be toying with.

One question, when they said up to 5 minutes in mono, it is for each single kit x99 users kits or 5 min for total of 99 users kits combined?, I am confused since you can have unlimited wav on the SD root cards. From what I understand, you can have up to 5 min in mono at once for each users kits (8 pad)

[drummerzuki]

not sure about the actual length of program.it will take 30mb of data per sample.but yes you can have certainly a few minutes of sample on all eight pads in each of the 99 kits.

[Chris K]

not sure about the actual length of program.it will take 30mb of data per sample.but yes you can have certainly a few minutes of sample on all eight pads in each of the 99 kits.

I just Readed the doc
Up to 512 files can be stored in the root directory of the card.

[hairmetal-81]

So that would be 30 MB for a kit, divided by 8 for the pads, then?

3.75 MB on a per-pad-basis? ...I think I'll lose interest in this product pretty quickly...

[Chris K]

So that would be 30 MB for a kit, divided by 8 for the pads, then?

3.75 MB on a per-pad-basis? ...I think I'll lose interest in this product pretty quickly...

I don't know it's not clear, I am still confused, if 30 mb for each users kit or the total of the units globally.


More confusing, why the TM2 can have 90,300 user waves files for 4 sound at once for each kits, use SD cards up to 32 gig as well and no mention of limitation on time., and the Akai only can have 512 files on the SD root and 30mb limitation...

[drummerzuki]

ill have to find some big samples and test out whether its 30mb per sample pad or kit.I have a feeling its more to do with what can be playing all at once.ive used this to get only short drum hits loaded up and one long loop for an intro as the band gets on stage.

[drummerzuki]

The said band intro is 1:03 long and im playig over the top of this using 3 other pads triggering tom,cymbal and snare.No issues whatsoever. I spent an intensive night with it sorting out a kit and it does the job very nicely.Sure layered velocity samples would be nice,but for the weekend warrior looking to enhance an older module for 79 quid with the ability to use it easily,small enough to fit anywhere and trigger just about whatever you want its a good bit of kit. My band covers the Hives hate to say I told you so. Do I need a backing track for it??? no! Just hit the pad for the outro and we have the big synth effect running for the final few bars.I have found no latency and the velocity works really well. My audiophile bass player was impressed by the way it can take my roland snare,mix in any sample of a snare you like and you have a dual layered snare. Im liking this kit more and more i use it.

[hairmetal-81]

It claims '8-voice polyphony', so no problems in that department. The other question would be, if the polyphony halves, if used with stereo-samples...


Couple of things I've picked-up from the user-manual:

• "The pads' pressure sensitivity does not affect sample playback. "Pressure information" is only sent out the MIDI Out as polyphonic aftertouch messages when MPX8 is used as a MIDI controller. "
• "MPX8 will save the Kit to the next available User Kit number (e.g., if you have 12 User Kits already saved on the SD card, the next User Kit will be e13)." - No way to rearrange kit-order? Editor-facility?
• The MPX8 has a whole lot of displayable error-messages: Card Error, Int Mem Error, Invalid Format, Kit File Full, No Kit File, No Sounds Found, Sound File Error
• "The samples files must be 16-bit, mono WAVs." - No 24-bit, here
• "MPX8 recognizes MIDI Note On messages over Channel 10 only. "
• "Sound Too Large: Either the sample is larger than 30 MB or adding the sample would exceed the 30 MB limit of MPX8's memory."

After reading through all of it, I'm still unclear what the maximum size is 'per pad' and 'per kit' is...

The sheer notion that the internal memory appears to be limited to 30 MB (despite a 32 GB card), is almost shocking me.








HTH

[Chris K]

The said band intro is 1:03 long and im playig over the top of this using 3 other pads triggering tom,cymbal and snare.No issues whatsoever. I spent an intensive night with it sorting out a kit and it does the job very nicely.Sure layered velocity samples would be nice,but for the weekend warrior looking to enhance an older module for 79 quid with the ability to use it easily,small enough to fit anywhere and trigger just about whatever you want its a good bit of kit. My band covers the Hives hate to say I told you so. Do I need a backing track for it??? no! Just hit the pad for the outro and we have the big synth effect running for the final few bars.I have found no latency and the velocity works really well. My audiophile bass player was impressed by the way it can take my roland snare,mix in any sample of a snare you like and you have a dual layered snare. Im liking this kit more and more i use it.

easy, put the intro 4 times that are 1.03 long on 4 pad and on 2 kits, just rename the wave to 1, 2, 3, 4, and see if it will ran out of memory with over 8min on 2 kits, I want to know if it can handle more then 5 min for each kits, or it is 5 min globally..

[hairmetal-81]

THat's a good plan!