Akai MPC DRUMSYNTH Review, Pros and Cons // 2.9 update explored (Force got this Drum Synth too)

hi akai just announced a new drum synth plugin for their entire mpc enforce product line which is great news for people who don't like to go through endless sample folders to get the sound thereafter the question as always is how good they are and what the integration and overall experience is like including pros and cons let's find out let's start with an overview the mpc series including live 1 live 2 and force can play either samples or sounds that are generated by plugins drumsynth is a new plugin in the series of plugins that are in these boxes drumsynth has eight main categories of plugins a kick snare clap hi-hat ride crash tom and percussion engine and within those engines there are sub-categories so 80 is of course an 808 there's 90 909 and then a few other models within each drum category you can choose to load these either as individual plug-ins in which case they take up the entire track or as multis where you get eight different drum synths together in a group as you may know the npcs can only support eight separate plugins per project if you use the multi plugin then you still have seven plugins left so this only counts as one plugin but you can't have two instances of a multi together in one project and in parallel to the multi you can also load up a individual drum synth let's say for example the kick and you'd want to do that if you wanted to play it chromatically or to process it separately you can't combine drum synths together with samples in the same track so if i go back into the multi then you use these eight pads and it's only update and then these pads are just empty the beauty of drum synths as opposed to samples like i mentioned earlier is that you can shape your sound there and then whether it's just tuning which obviously synths tune much better than samples and then a bunch of other sound design parameters as you can hear here each of the different engines has different parameters here sometimes the individual models have different parameters as well and then aside from the eight parameters you often have additional parameters here for example you can map velocity to any parameter you want let's say let's go into here maybe and map velocity to the tuning of this snare so that's parameter number one so now the harder i press the higher the tuning and you'll hear this better if i hold note repeat and sometimes you've got additional parameters if you use the the synths individually so for example for the kick you don't have control over the glide parameter when it's within a multi but if we go to a track where i have it as a standalone synth let's track two here you can see there's a glide time parameter here and if i increase hold and decay then you can make these nice kick pitch bends obviously this is nicer with a little distortion which brings me nicely to effects each drum synth has four separate effects which you can activate turn on or off and then edit their parameters and then if we go to a multi to a drum synth kit then you also have additional send effects over here and an overall mixer so let's talk about the insert effects first let's turn them all on and take a listen to them you've got a transient shaper [Music] we won't go into that in depth but yeah you can shape the attack as you can hear here overall shape and then sustain then distortion you've got mix control for that so it's sort of like a parallel send effect and then on the second page you've got an eq and a compressor with nice frequency cue and gain controls so those are the insert effects which can change the sound dramatically and then if we go back into the kit let's take a listen to the send effects to get to these you need to tab all the way here which is a bit cumbersome here we go send effects and mixer so the send effects are delay diffuser and reverb we won't hear them unless we activate the sends in the mixer so let's say go for this hi-hat and go full tilt then going back into the send effects we can edit the effect parameters so this is what you'd expect feedback and delay time and then there's a diffuser and a reverb with a few reverb types and tongues so those are the effects if you're in multi-mode and then multi-mode also has a mixer alongside the effects sends this is a nicely laid out horizontal mixer with pan and level controls there are no level meters though which is something they'll hopefully add in a firmware update and you can only access it by scrolling left and right with these tabs again currently in this firmware update if you hit shift and pad mix that's just not available in multi-mode same goes by the way for pad mutes again currently there is no pad mute functionality which is a shame and would obviously be nice if they added in the future currently if you want to mute individual drum synths you'll need to spread them out across tracks and that will cost you so to speak plug-in slots so that's the environment within which the drum synths live you've got presets for kits so there are quite a few of those and these are in uh in multiple categories so these are the categories and uh yeah i mean we obviously won't go through these but there's [Music] a lot to explore here and these kits are obviously just starting points so those are kit presets if you load drum synth into an individual track you'll also get specific drum synth presets which is also nice to have again as starting points and these two live in several categories as you can see here unfortunately i haven't seen a way to get drum presets into the kits meaning individual drum presets loaded into the multis uh maybe i missed it but yeah as far as i saw you could only load kit presets into the drum multis in terms of automation i think everything here is automatable if i go to shift grid and then bring this up and double tap here you can see all the parameters that i can add to to the automation and there are plenty of those to go around for each of the synths each of the drum synths in a multi of course yeah so we can just maybe add one just to show uh yeah how about another one here let's say the tuning so we can now go ahead and yeah automate this just like any other parameter here so with so many sounds what do they actually sound like you know you've been hearing them throughout this video i think they sound pretty good if you want to try these out on your own obviously there's so many parameters here it doesn't make sense to go through all of them you can download a free trial of the mpc software and try that out on your computer unfortunately they haven't included the drum synths in the free npc beats software at least not as of now let's just briefly taste some of these so that was the kick you can by the way choose any drum synth for any of the slots in a multi so for example i put a snare here this pad doesn't have to be a kick and we can put kicks all over the place if we want anyway so that's the snare and let's just take a listen to a few of those and move on to the claps let's listen to a few of those models and move on to hi-hats again multiple models here move on to rides again it's up to a matter of you know taste but uh i think these sound pretty good and pretty varied as well you know all this obviously without any effects or shaping then there's a crash so again nice variance here and toms let's listen to some of these [Music] yeah excellent models i think percussion cowbell of course claves congos [Music] tambourines shaker yeah timpani's i mean that's uh i think really um comprehensive drum synth engine tablets fm synth also always nice relatively limited controls compared to other fm synths we've been seeing recently still nice to have a bit of that high frequency metallic grit okay so that's npc's drum synth in a nutshell let's talk about pros and cons on the pros side i think the drum synth implementation here is fantastic there are plenty of shaping parameters multiple models easily accessible and meaningful effects so above everything else in mpc this update has now turned it into an industry-leading drum synth which is pretty nice for a free update so i couldn't think of any cons to having this as opposed to not but having said that i can complain a little bit right so as a drum synth it's great but holistically since this update is part of a platform overall this is where the integration i think can be improved my main gripe is that you can't include the drum synth as part of an overall sample based kit so i don't mind the fact that you only have eight at a time but these empty slots are just begging to have at the very least samples in them and then the second thing is despite the fact that the automation is integrated well and the sequencing is integrated well you still don't have a few basic features like i mentioned earlier whether it's the pad mixer the pad mutes there are no chokes no choke groups at least as of now and a little thing that that i found a bit annoying is that copy doesn't work here as well so you can't just copy pads you literally need to to copy the parameters manually from one pad to the other and then as long as i'm complaining i have a few smaller complaints so as you press the different drum synths in a multi that doesn't change on screen here so say if this is pad number one if i want to change this back into a kick i need to go into drum synth one and then you know edit it like that i would expect that to change immediately just like it does on the sample-based instruments you know so you always see and can edit whatever it is that you press so that's my little wish list for drum synths uh 2.9.5 i guess having said all that i think the drum synth fulfills the goal that it sets out to make which is to help avoid endless scrolling through samples and to help you get the exact sound you want faster overall it's a great addition to the mpc and force product lines and it's a free update so that's always a great thing hopefully over time akai will tighten up the integration and make it more seamless like everything else that's it for now if you're interested in further exploring sound design and other aspects of electronic music making please check out my ever expanding book available to the good people who support this channel on patreon hit like if this was useful ring the bell after subscribing if you don't want to miss the next one thanks for watching

Channel: loopop

Views: 45,916

Rating: 4.9222975 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: xGtynYJFVNw

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/McCoyPauleyBP]

This is great -- I hadn't realized it was out already.

Is there any detailed write-up from Akai or anyone else about what else is in 2.9? Looking through their website, I see the file both in my account and on the MPC Live page, but I'm not seeing like a Patch Notes document or something similar anywhere.

[u/bl4ckn4pkins]

Damn 6 more months for the arranger then?

[u/AlPow420]

I hope my drifting clock will be over with this. This shit drives me insane.

[u/caidicus]

Loopop, the absolute best source for not only learning about new synth stuff, but learning how to use new synth stuff.

[u/Rozzwellian]

I'm really looking forward to checking this out.

As an aside, I'm glad it's coming to the MPC One. Part of me was worried that it wouldn't.

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Edit: I'm installing it now. Didn't realize they had changed the layout for the account page. It's much neater now.

[u/Riccc2020]

This is dope. I’ll be downloading it today. Kinda making some of my 2000+ drum samples obsolete. I’d be MUCH happier if they expand on the TubeSynth and add more presets though bc the ones they included sound phenomenal.

[u/ostiDeCalisse]

First track with this today, it is awesome!!!!

[u/[deleted]]

This is great. I'll wait to see how buggy this update is though, before jumping in. I'm still on 2.7, because it's stable, and that what's most important to me. A drum synth is very exciting, though.

[u/Carbon250111]

I can’t find download link for Windows. When I click it’s the Mac version/ wrong link