I am totally new to this world so please help with how to connect the Akai up so that it can loop guitar and vocals/percussion. You say use an A/B box for mic, and a mini mixing desk, but please can you tell me what input/output conections to use on the mixing desk; for example; do the mic and guitar go into the mixing desk fader channels; and if so what output on the mixing desk do I use to route it to the Akai. Do I use the Main L & R outputs (or just one of these), or do I use the Control Room outputs (or just one of these)? Or am I totally wrong. You mention A/B box for Mic, and I have no idea how to connect this up to or from a mixing desk. It would be helful if you could email me a little diagram or description of the input/output connections to use and then can buy what I need.

LECok4 <a href="http://uwvofpktbtfw.com/">uwvofpktbtfw</a>

hola les cuento q me compre por medio de amazon un akai ewi usb y solo me duro 2 meses, el aparato no prende el led, ya le cambie el cable lo probe en otras computadoras y nada y lo peor el que no me dan la garantia,
si saben que puede ser el problema con el ewi agradeceria la ayuda ya q tengo q llevarlo a reparar algun lugar.

I ordered the Synthstation 25 from Dolphin Music after finding that they had a very competitive price for it AND were giving free headphones away with it.

I'm very impressed with the keyboard - It works both with your iPhone / iPod touch with a number of apps including Synthstation, Nanostudio (which is far better), iVoxel, Xewton Music Studio, 50in1 Piano and Nlog.

I'm only using the iPhone 3G and was sceptical about latency issues with the keyboard because of my old phone, but on the whole, I was very impressed. For the most part, the Synthstation 25 works with no stuttering or latency (or at least no more than using the apps without the keyboard). There was a little more here and there, especially with more complex samples, because of the added midi data flying around that needs to be processed. However, on the whole, the keyboard provides a great way to make the music making experience with your iPhone / iPod much more enjoyable. I'd recommend it, especially to those with newer Apple hardware than me.

One thing which I did find a little amusing however, is that the Numark headphones that come free with the Synthstation 25 have a 1/4 inch jack on the cable (no 3.5mm adaptor provided) and the Synthstation 25 has a 3.5mm headphone out :-D (so make sure you have a spare 1/4 to 3.5mm adaptor handy if you want to actually use the headphones with your new keyboard!)

Overall, very happy with this product.

Class

The Akai Professional LPK 25 is fantastic. It’s about the length of a twelve inch ruler and is great for quick midi programming. If you are tight for space and use a programme like Cubase on your desktop or laptop PC, the LPK 25 is ideal for adding drums, synth, piano, halion samples etc. As a mini midi keyboard it’s hard to fault. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

I have read that some people have latency problems (a time lag between hitting the keys and hearing the sound) with midi keyboards. This usually has nothing to do with the keyboard and certainly has nothing to do with the LPK 25. If you have a good sound card with decent ASIO software you’ll have no problems with latency; my desktops immediately ran perfectly with the LPK 25. However, there will be those with cheaper laptops (like me) who having plugged in the LPK will probably experience latency; in my case it was embarrassingly bad. Again this is not the fault of the LPK but the cheap sound card on the laptop. It was easily fixed by a great free download from www.asio4all.com (and I’m really grateful to those guys). I’m also grateful, as usual, to Dolphin for their incredibly fast delivery and great price.

I hope you have fun with the LPK 25, it’s a useful little keyboard.

This is as close to a real piano you can get . It's sex on legs ,literaly. Make sure , if you have a partener that you try not to neglect them too much once you've got yourself a nord stage . Or just end the relationship to give yourself the time and space you need to make lurve to the nord .It's like mission control on the millenium falcon , capable of creating any sound imaginable on the synth section . Never a dull session on this mahine. Get one!!

As a performing singer/guitarist/songwriter of originals and covers I wanted to add live-looping to bring an extra dimension to a few songs, without using backing tracks. After a fair bit of online research, I chose the Headrush over the competition, the clincher being the various videos of K T Tunstall on YouTube using the pedal in her shows, and also doing demos of it.

First impressions out of the box is that it's a fair-sized, heavy-duty box of tricks, with four good rubber feet that prevent it skittering around onstage even under my size nines. Solid metal casing, bright LED's, no flimsiness in the knobs and switches. A good length of lead on the power supply too, for once.

Got it up and running in no time, though the manual is not of the best: to create a loop you hit the record button, then the play button - not the record button again as in the manual, which caused me a few anxious moment until I figured it out. To erase your "song" and start a new one, you toggle through the other two effects and back to "loop." The manual doesn't tell you this, either.

Quibbles about the manual aside, it's not exactly rocket-science, and I was looping like a good 'un in minutes. Using an electro-acoustic, I set up rhythm patterns by tapping on various parts of the guitar body, and raking across muted strings to get a kick/snare/hi-hat kind of vibe. You can add basslines (with or without an octave pedal), chord sequences - whatever your creative instincts tell you. My tip, here, though, is don't overdo it - less is more.

The memory isn't enormous: just under 24 seconds at full sampling (44.1 KHz) although you can extend this by using the lower sampling rate of 29.4 KHz, and get yourself up to around 35 seconds. Both these figures are cut in half if you want to overdub (and of course you do), but in practice you have plenty of time in hand. No, you're not going to be recording complete verse and chorus parts, with all the chord changes (and would your audience want to wait while you did that?) but two, four or eight bar loops, or even longer, are fine, depending on your tempo.

It does test your timing; there is no quantize function here, so you need to be fairly accurate. You also can't delete one or more overdubs selectively: you can delete all except the first loop, though, which can be useful (by hitting record twice while in overdub). You also can't store your creations; there is no permanent memory on board, nor can you download to an external device. But that's not a problem for me: I want it to create live loops, and it does that very well indeed.

If you get yourself an a/b box for your mic, and a mini-mixer, you can add vocals, hand percussion, or just about anything else to your loops, a la the aforementioned K T.

The main use of this unit for me is as a looper, so I've done no more than quickly experiment with the echoes: they sound wonderful, though, and very organic, no harsh digital sounds here, and the tap tempo is very easy to use. If you have more than one amp, you could probably easily create some Brian May type harmonies with the four-head simulating tape echo, for example.

I haven't noticed it adding any noise to the signal chain, and it has true bypass too.

Overall, I am very pleased with the Headrush. It does its job very well, and is simple to use: I took it to an open mic session after I'd only had it a few days, and was confident to use it - it'll get its first proper outing at my next full gig at the end of the week. Obviously, as yet I have no real experience of its reliability, but it is, as I said, very solid and feels bombproof.

Full marks to Akai for this one.

Firstly, I would like to say WOW! That wasn't just any wow, It was a 'what an incredible piece of ingenuity, I might just cry' WOW. Okay, that might be a bit excessive, but my point is that the Akai APC40 is a great piece of kit. It contains a plethora of functions and controllers, has a logical and simple layout (but ironically encompasses vast complexity) all bound in a quality chassis.

At first I was skeptical of such a mythical creature, and the price at first put me off. However, after reading other reviews and texts blithering on infinitely about its functionality I felt it was morally and ethically right that I purchase one to call my own. Go me!

I really would recommend this performance controller to anyone who has interest in music production. I don't think I've come across hardware that can top it, so in light of that, it's simply an investment.

What’s the first thing you do with any piece of new gear? Why, twiddle its knobs and push its buttons, of course! The APC40 passes this test with flying colours (pun intended), with smooth (but not slack) fader travel and a satisfying knob action. It feels solid all round, and the LED-ring encoders

Soon as I knew this unit was on the way I ditched my Three Faderfoxes and ordered the MPC40. I was not disappointed. I've tried various controllers with Ableton and up until now the Faderfoxes did a great job, but I really wanted a single unit to cart around without having to plug in all the midi cables.
The learning curve to get used to this unit is almost nil.
If you have the money, buy the MPC40, if not get the faderfoxes.
negatives :-
Due to the size of the MPC40 you should get a laptop stand to stack the laptop over the controller.
Why didn't they put the leads to the left of the unit for users who want to sit the laptop behind the MPC40?

One of the best Midi controllers ever made. My only gripe is the pads, they could have made them a lot softer.


Shirt

www.todaysbeats.com
Admin/ Co owner

This is an amazing pedal. I particularly like the ability to make the repeats muddy like an old analog unit. It's pretty easy to use with good colour coding on the controls for the 3 operating modes. The loop function is brilliant and very useful for soloing practice over short chord sequences and grooves. You have to be accurate with timing, not sure if I will ever get the timing accurate enough for live use, but check out KT Tunstall's videos on U-tube. It can be done! Unfortunately the instructions for the loop function are completely confusing. I think someone has their left and right mixed up! (This is why I have rated it 9 rather than 10) With a bit of intuition and trial and error its fairly easy to work out the correct functions. Sound quality is good even in extended loop mode and the construction looks sturdy with a pleasing design. As usual first class service and next day delivery from Dolphin.

I bought this pedal about 7 months ago and I have regrets. If one had a lot more money then there are plenty of other options but for its price the Head Rush is outstanding. Switching to a lower quality loop doubles the available record time and I can't really hear much difference especially when used in an effects chain. The only feature which took a while to get used to in live performance was that tapping the right pedal whilst over dubbing strips back to the original recorded loop only, it doesn't just remove the overdub you were recording. However I have found that actually this is a feature to be exploited.

The tape loop function is excellent allowing more flexibility than I have seen on many dedicated units.

The ridged edge to the knobs means that you can control them with your feet if you want; this is always a bonus for me especially with looping when I want a fade out of the looping unit only.

Excellent value for money

I bougth it about 2 weeks ago, and after the updates it works great.

If your having problems with the keyboard update the folowing:

The Firmware,
The vyzex software,
The reason codecs,

Download it in akaipro.com website:
http://www.akaipro.com/supportos.php#MPK49

Reason users read this:
http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=229353

This will eliminate the pitch bend and others issues.

I got my Akai MPK49 last week, Im a Hop Hop Beatmaking instructor from Todaysbeats.com. I was somewhat dissappointed as well,but found some workarounds until the driver and compatibility issues is resolved. I've done some extensive research and is still working as we speak,but this info is much to detailed to blog. I set up a Youtube tutorial series to tap into the heart of the issues with workaround butstable solutions to most of our problems we are experiencing for our Akai MPK49. Check it out at TodaysbeatsTV on Youtube, here is a link to review the series videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPC8vb7Z9wE