Akai releases MPC Renaissance

[komrad2]

I don't know about y'all, but I'm excited for the Renaissance and Studio. From what it seems the Studio is the direct competitor for the Maschine while the Ren is higher-end. Has anyone who preordered received a release date yet?

[loverocket]

AKAI is not what it used to be.

I always wanted an MPC. I finally saved some money up and bought an MPC 1000 back in 2007 for $950.

I purchased the model with the Chinese pads:
http://www.petitiononline.com/mpc1000/petition.html

AKAI admitted the pads were inferior and went back to the Japanese supplier, but would not pay for a recall claiming "the pads are not faulty."

Screw AKAI. That's a bad company.

>

[mostapha]

I still kind of want to try one. My opinion changed greatly from my last post in this thread…mostly because Maschine is starting to piss me off in a few specific ways that I know the MPC software will address.

But it still seems a bit like vaporware and my qualms with Maschine are solvable.

[diezdiazgiant]

With the amount they're asking for the renaissance I'd rather just buy an octatrack or a real 2500..

[mostapha]

The only reason not to is that the Octatrack only has 4 mono outs. The MPC2500 (I think) has 8. The renaissance/studio is likely to have 16 stereo outs that you can use as 32 mono tracks (you can do this in Maschine if you pan things hard to one side or the other and aren't fussed about crosstalk at about -130dB). Plus the Renaissance & Studio will be able to host synth plugins as opposed to just outputting MIDI. Plus, syncing a plugin to a host just happens…MIDI sync b/t your DAW and an MPC or Octatrack takes some effort.

It depends entirely on workflow, but being able to record an entire beat including synths in one shot and still work entirely with Audio inside PT or Logic or whatever seems like it's probably worth it.

I really do get what you're saying. And there's something awesome about not having to use a computer. But that's one place where I just think it's worth it.

Now…if the new MPC was an all hardware MPC that had a USB/FW sound card that did the same audio streams…plus a plugin to help handle the IO and syncing issues……that would have been freaking awesome. You'd literally get all the functionality of a 2500 with the same workflow and the improvements to recording.