G.A.S. Attack - AKAI MPX8 (Now with a review - 5/24/2014)

[Blooby]

*Update - I picked one up and proceeded to annoy John with it last night at a gig. Scroll down about three posts for details and a sound sample.

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Anybody dinker around with one of these?

For $99 (U.S.), this looks like a heck of a lot of fun for gigs.  You can get about 5 minutes of samples into this thing in mono (although it is capable of stereo).  You can loop the samples or do one-shots.

I figure I can load up the sound of crickets to enhance the apathetic response to our live offerings.

     -Add mono or stereo samples via standard SD card (sold separately)
     -8 velocity-sensitive and pressure-sensitive pads
     -USB MIDI plus standard MIDI inputs and outputs
     -Also controls computer MIDI software and outboard MIDI gear
     -Drag-and-drop sample kit editor for Mac® and PC included
     -Built-in library of popular sounds and samples
     -Includes additional free Akai Pro loop library download
     -Tune, add reverb, and save sample sets for easy recall
     -(2) Balanced 1/4-inch outputs (6.35mm)
     -1/8-inch headphone output (3.5mm)

They are coming out with the MPX16 with 16 pads, microphones for immediate recording of samples, and other bells and whistles for $199 (U.S.)

http://www.akaipro.com/product/mpx8

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

[Flash Harry]

ooh!

Oooh!

OOOOH!

[Oldrottenhead]

i have had my eye on one for a while, they retail here for £79 but recently 64guitars alerted me to the newer model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BafAMQUbz0U

[Blooby]

I picked one up last week and used it at a gig last night for comic relief (portions of samples attached). John appeared dismayed at my enthusiasm, but he's been pretty grumpy lately anyway. I plopped in a rim-shot for his one-liners, some Monty Python Holy Grail audio clips, "The Girl from Ipanema" for bathroom breaks, and various other sound effects.

The samples loaded pretty painlessly. Editing the audio clips from YouTube or whever took the most time. I did have some issues with the software editor regarding saving multiple kits (banks of sounds), but my workaround was doing it all through the hardware. I'm sure I'm just missing something. If anybody else jumps on board, I'll be happy to share whatever sounds I've generated by that time.

The pads are touch-sensitive, and reverb (nothing special), level, pan, and midi channel can all be tweaked to individual sounds/pads. Samples are either one-shot, or you can loop them. I imagine I'll find a good tamboura drone and tabla loop down the road a bit.

Pros: It makes me giggle (much to John's dismay). I especially enjoyed triggering crickets in response to the silence we would receive after some of our tunes. Made me kind of look forward to patron apathy. Triggering "The Girl from Ipanema" as we bid farewell was a nice touch as well. I plopped a 32 GB card in it, and I've used less than 2 gigs after creating three full kits/banks. My samples are pretty long as well ("The Girl from Ipanema" being about three minutes). The video says you can have 2.5 minutes of stereo samples (twice that in mono) in memory at any one time, but I've somehow managed to exceed that. A heck of a lot of fun for $99.

Cons: The display truncates file names to I believe 5-6 characters. You might be better off just numbering them and keeping a master list of what's on your SD card. Kits (banks of sounds) can take over a minute to load (or longer), depending on how long your samples are. If you're just loading brief percussion samples, it would be pretty quick. When I wanted to jump to a different bank, I started the process as we would begin a tune, and it would always be done by the end of whatever song we were doing. It just dawned on me a minute ago that I don't need stereo for live gigs. I'll eventually convert my samples over to mono, improving memory and load time issues. Another con is that now I must have the MPX16 (with 16 pads) when it comes out in July or August. When that happens, I'll sell this one if anybody is interested. By the by, it ships with a handful of internal sounds and there is a free download of hundreds more sounds and loops.

Next time we do Pink Floyd's "On the Run," I look forward to helicopters, footsteps, and shutting doors.

Peace.

Blooby

[T.C. Elliott]

Back when I was a coach, scorekeeper and announcer for the local in-line hockey league I always wanted an easy way to do some sound effects. I managed with an ipod and a playlist but something like this would be more betterer.  A few things "HE SHOOTS! HE SCORES!!!" and the like would be great.

[Flash Harry]

nice.

$99 you say....

Hmmm....