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First some history...

Several years ago, my brother who is a professional keyboardist & arranger, turned me onto that "big black sound" of Jam's/Lewis and the whole rap feel that has since become hip hop. He explained that it was the "feel" of the drum machine that was making the tracks swing the way they did.

He went on to explain how their was only one drum machine that had that sound, that "feel", and that was the Akai MPC60. He challenged me, to try as I might, I wasn't going to get that feel out of any other drum machine.

It took me a couple of years to realize that he was right! In the mean time I played with various other sequencers and drum machines, always trying to get into that pocket that the Akai's did naturally (all pun intended). Later, Akai came out with the MPC3000 which was a bigger badder version of the 60 but was very expensive.

I think a loaded 3K ran around $4,000 at the time. But again, if you wanted that "feel" you were stuck, which is part of why loop CD's like the Black2Black & Vinylistics series became so popular, but that's another story.

So the MPC3K was out of reach of most of us mortals & we were still pissing about with our Dr. Rhythm's, Korgs and Rolands. Some of us were using computers but those sucked at sequencing drums so bad, that they made the Korgs sound great.

Finally, in 1997, The Akai Musical Instrument Corporation of North America released the MPC2000 (2K) on an eager audience. They touted it as the real drum machine for the masses and it sounded great, in theory that is. A drum machine with 64 midi tracks, 128 onboard samples, up to 32 megs of ram, and optional onboard effects and multiple outputs, up to ten.

In reality, though Akai built the 2K up to be the godsend from above, they actually released a major lemon. The 2K was not ready for shipment, it's operating system was (& still is) flawed. In May of 1997 I ran into an equipment tech for one of the biggest techno bands of our day in a San Francisco music store who was on the phone with Akai, & later dissing them publicly about the OS and how the thing simply didn't work.

He told me that even though they were Akai endorsees and had received all their Akai gear for free, they were seriously considering going with Emu or Yamaha. I remembered that conversation but damn, I wanted a 2K! So I bought one. You know what?

The thing simply didn't work right! Here's the deal:
Early versions of the OS would periodically crash or freeze without warning, ruining your work since the last save, assuming you did a save, you DID do a save didn't you?!? Additionally, up until last year the thing wouldn't take .wav files like a PC puts out but instead used a PROPRIETARY sample format not even compatible with Akai's other equipment like the S series. This is all software stuff folks!

Nothing that good programing wouldn't fix. But the Akai geeks in their silicon towers in Tokyo can't be reached, let alone bothered to fix the major glitches in the system, only after hundreds & hundreds of phone calls from dissatisfied users from around the world did they begin software revisions, and include ".wav" capability. oooooooh neat.

Next:
I hooked a 1gb Jaz cartridge up via Scsi to the 2K and started writing grooves NOWHERE in Akai's literature nor on their web site did I find any information about doing this, even though they included a Scsi port? Hmmmm. So the 2K needs to format the Jaz cartridge to it's own proprietary format and gives me a choice of how many partitions I want to use. I chose the maximum, 25 (?) so that I could have redundant file names like 'kik1' or 'boom2' in different partitions, kind of (but not really) like using folders to put various files & songs in.

THEN THE UNTHINKABLE HAPPENED, I wanted to edit some of the sounds that were on the Jaz cartridge, since they were larger than 1.4 megs I couldn't put them on a floppy, and no provisions were made by Akai to handle multi disk samples (imagine that). So, I hooked the Jaz up to the PC and guess what? The PC only recognized 2 partitions, and could only really access the "A" partition which it also indicated was HALF of the capacity of the Jaz cartridge (not 1/25'th).

In other words, the PC erased all the partitions, and would then only recognize the samples & programs that were in the "A" partition before the disaster. ALL work in partitions B-Z was destroyed, permanently.

Calls to Akai in Dallas proved fruitless.....My shit was gone.

It was about 5 days of solid work. Damn I was pissed off.

The up side is as follows; This mutated Jaz cartridge is now my 'Rosetta Stone' between the world we all live in with PC's and the Akai and it's whacked out operating system. Even though I can still only see 500+ megs of the Jaz from the PC, I can transfer huge files easily back & forth from the PC after editing to the Akai.

Did I mention that editing samples on the 2K is akin to performing dental surgery, in a mirror? Ever try doing critical edits while squinting into that little window?

Apparently, depending on which simm chips you had installed in the machine's ram memory would determine how often your 2K would crash and to what extent. This includes ram that came from the factory from Akai. I've received dozens and dozens of emails from 2K users around the world experiencing these anomalies, some major some minor, all very very annoying. This is professional gear??

SUMMARY:
Though I love the 2K's feel and the way that it quantizes sequences, I hate the Operating system and the lack of concern from Akai about these issues. It's a great drum machine, but a lousy sampler and an even worse editor. It is definitely NOT the be all end all workstation that Akai promoted it as.

Nick and the guys in Dallas at Akai U.S. are great and do their best to field problems from the masses, but these guys are caught between a largely disgruntled public and a company that just doesn't seem to care about the consumer, it's like - 'we got your money, now piss off'.

They've now released the MPC2000'XL' which apparently supports folder formatting on an external drive among other minor revisions, thus negating the partitions issue. My question is this; "why release a new model that doesn't really change the machine, yet costs more, and addresses issues that could have been fixed by reworking the existing OS?" Why? One word: GREED.

I think Akai KNOWS that there's about to be some bad ass products coming out from other manufacturers that are gonna kick the 2K's butt, and are trying to exploit the masses in advance of these products being released. What might these products be? Well to start with, Yamaha's working on some stuff that supports ANY file format including Akai's imagine that!

I also think we're going to see something like a 'virtual MPC60' endorsed by Roger Lynn and akin to Rebirth in it's emulation of the original MPC60, for the PC. This is merely speculation mind you, don't quote me on that one. Ah what the hell, quote me!

Thanks for listening to my rant about this machine, I encourage you to email us with your comments both good and bad about this page. We love getting flamed for 'being idiots' and not knowing how to work our gear, we love it! We also love hearing about any problems that you may be experiencing with this wonderful piece of gear.

Please, do comment in our Guestbook.

Alpha66, March 2000