Bad Gear - Akai MPX-8 - Most Epic Fail???

welcome to bed gear the show about the world's most hated audio tools there are three kinds of bad gear one gear with limitations maybe caused by the underlying concept of the instrument or product abandonment two gear that is considered a crime against good taste and three gear that is just bad with hardly any redeeming qualities today we are going to talk about a piece of gear that i would put in the latter category the akai mpx8 this 2013 sample player was released in a time when the legendary manufacturer was walking through a long whale of tears changes in ownership the alleged death of the hardware sampler and what appears to be the demise of the mpc lets the company's focus shift to various forms of quick and sturdy shareholder value maximization and the worst was yet to come funny and tragic at the same time there was and still is a great demand for straightforward compact and easy to use sample players like the mpx-8 akai you had one job and one job only at the first glance the akai mpx8 is ticking quite a few boxes multi-color backlit drum pads sd card slot usb headphones and quarter inch check outputs the metric system is the tool of the device while the monochrome display seems to be adequate the mini jacks for midi are not even worth my wrath the ui is self-explanatory no menus just select a parameter and turn the jog dial ease of use is highly appreciated but it won't take long until the numerous limitations become obvious maximum transposition range of the samples is restricted to four semitones up and down the reverb is really really bad and there are no choke groups very inconvenient for all the finger drummers out there akai implemented stereo sample playback in the first and as far as i know only firmware upgrade three classic trigger modes can be assigned to the samples one shots for drums for loops and hold for everything in between you can choose the midi notes sent and received by the pad slots but the midi channel is fixed at 10. there is no sample editing or envelopes everything's fun and games as long as you use the 21 internal samples the real trouble starts as soon as you want to add your own sd cards need to be formatted in fat 16 or 32 maximum card size is 32 gigs you have to stick to those naming conventions and the unit is very picky about the files akai provides a file conversion tool but it even made things worse in some cases sample ram is a whopping 30 max and file size is rounded up so a 2.1 mag file will use up three mags sd cards can be managed with a dedicated editor which didn't help me much and all samples need to be stored in the root folder of the card you have meticulously prepared your audio files stored them on the sd card and wanna start jamming please be patient while the samples are loaded into the ram in what seems to be real time samples and kits are loaded by locating them with a jog dial and doing nothing there is no sample playback while loading which given the ludicrous speed of the error prone loading process can be quite a bus kill moreover a disturbing proportion of the file transfers led to seriously messed up samples with unsettling noises at loop points and strange delays between left and right channel as the most common issues i tried many different sd cards including both antiques and fancy 4k video ready new ones but it didn't make much difference on a positive note there have been a lot of complaints about loops not running in sync i made a test with two drum loops triggered by usb midi and they stayed in time for hours however it took me a while to start them simultaneously as the mpx-8 doesn't like too much midi business going on at the same time and is prone to node stealing very annoying when triggered by an external sequencer apart from these minor inconveniences the mpx-8 is a fine machine build quality is rugged and prices range from very affordable for a new one to dirt cheap on the used market no one expected this little sample player to replace a real mpc but i'm still asking myself did akai hit rock bottom when they released the unfinished abomination that is the mpx-8 you have already heard the mpx-8 as the playback device of today's intro tune only one out of three edits was completely mutilated not bad i think i found the ideal sparring partner for the mpx note to self never even think of using the rhythm wolves synth voice ever again in defense of these two instruments i really like the idea of a sample wolf and the combination of analog sub bass and the sample from the mpx really improved the whole kick situation i tried different edits of the pad sound but the mpx-8 kept producing weird noises at the loop point as a big fan of the digitakt i have to concede that the mpx has two features my beloved electron instrument is missing stereo sample playback and velocity sensitive pads let's find out how well these two very different players go [Music] together [Music] given the very limited midi implementation of the mpx8 it wasn't easy to make the two instruments work together i had to use the retro kits rk2 to translate midi channel and note data one question remains is there a way to demonstrate the true nature of this little sample player in a classic bad gear finale fortunately i found the original mpx8 sound library on akai's homepage and it's not so bad let's get it over with and hit play on this akaiko mashup in celebration of foxy nadu how low can you go micro house [Music] verdict the akai mpx8 is the buggiest most unfinished and least fun piece of gear i've ever had the displeasure to use which is a shame it would be great to have an affordable little instrument that keeps all the promises the mpx has broken i don't want to rub it in so let's try to focus on the positive akai went through a difficult phase but it seems like things have changed for the better not only did akai release instruments that are able to uphold the legacy they even made some customer friendly business decisions i was able to use for some next level roland bashing thanks for that maybe just maybe other brands will follow suit thanks for watching and see you next time hey guys i hope you enjoyed the episode feel free to like subscribe become a patron and leave a comment what other kind of gear you would like to see and hear on the show

Channel: AudioPilz

Views: 50,443

Keywords: audiopilz, bad gear, akai mpx8, most epic fail, epic fails, akai, akai mpc one, sample player hardware, sample player, fake edm genres, fake genres, music production, akai professional, rhythm wolf, akai rhythm wolf drum machine, akai rhythm wolf, drum pads, midi controller, faxi nadu, microhouse music, dawless jammin, dawless jam

Id: gLbzqEOo79I

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021