Finally glad I bought an Akai Force…

Svetlovska

I waited a long time… but now it is finally doing disk streaming. Class compliant usb audio. And a shed load of other stuff:

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ashh

Whoa! I've just got a MPC X. I don't really get the update thing with the Force and MPCs. Are they roughly the same thing, feature-wise or is the Force a completely different update to the MPCs?

StudioES

@ashh Almost identical.

First thing I did was load a drum loop and test the new Granular, Stutter, Diffuser Delay, and Half Speed effects. Wow, they remind me of my favorite plugins (iDensity, Dedalus, Replicant, Halftime, Fly Tape). No perceptible latency either.

Solina and Odyssey sound very good. Odyssey definitely sounds more '70s analog' than Tubesynth....those beating oscillators and that filter and VCA...

Reminds me of COTCD or BoC!

So many improvements and enhancements!

ruggedsmooth

Nice, gas just shifted back again from the new SP…lol

Svetlovska

@ashh : I’m no expert, but the Force has been the red headed step child of the lineup for a long time, and it looked like just the MPCs were having all the fun. This latest update comes after the recent MPC updates, but adds just so much stuff… a lot borrowed from them, I think, but also stuff just for it. More synths, more fx, mix automation, midi learn… the most important for me is audio recording to and streaming from disk, and class compliant USB audio.

Before, you were limited to 2gb RAM per project, which is no good for me as I trade in looooooooong wav recordings from AUM. Now, you can record into and stream from the Force for as long as your SSD can take it. I’m hoping this will mean I can add an ssd, and just spool my AUM sessions straight into the Force from the iPad, then do all the Ableton-y clip launching, and mix automating stuff directly on the Force, away from the DAW. Since it can now swap full Ableton sessions back and forth, I might finally have got the away-from-the-computer, sofa surfing studio (with added cv for modular goodness) I hoped for when I first got it over a year ago.

Fingers crossed, but it’s looking good…

StudioES

My Force has an old 7200RPM 1TB HDD in it...let's see if disk streaming works.

Edit: I loaded an old project that uses 40 8-bar loops I recorded from AUM. They're all loaded in 8 audio tracks. It uses ~22% of the Force's RAM.

• Manually switched all 40 samples from loaded-in-memory to stream-from-disk. Memory usage dropped to 0%.
• Then I enabled warping, set all samples to 100 BPM (original tempo) and set the project's tempo from 100 to 120.
• No problems streaming from a 10-year-old 7200 RPM HDD!
• I haven't tried yet, but I don't expect the same results when streaming samples in drumkit and keygroup programs from disk. But for audio tracks, this ancient HDD should be fine for my usage.
• I'll test recording direct-to-disk later.
• Edit: When saving or quick-saving, it resaves all samples, regardless of whether or not they were loaded-in-memory or streaming-from-disk, so definitely get an SSD if you can afford it.

Another thing I noticed when loading a project - it loads much quicker. Also all 70+ expansions load quicker when hitting New Project (Force sort of reboots when doing that).

@Svetlovska Does Force's Live Control Mode in firmware V3.1 work with Ableton Live 11?

ashh

Cool. Thanks both.

Svetlovska

@ocelot : no idea! - I only just watched a few YouTube clips on the release, starting with this one:

Next thing on the agenda: update my firmware, and buy an ssd…

ruggedsmooth

@Svetlovska how do you find the ergonomics of using the Force, do you have to reach a lot to use the touch screen?. How comfortable is it in use? I would think a stand of some sort would be a must no?

I want one but the form factor is a little bit large. Probably get a dedicated stand like quiklok400 for it.

StudioES

ruggedsmooth, QL-400 will block the small knobs on the front, right of the Force. You can widen the bars (and pray your Force doesn't fall) or place a piece of sturdy plastic or wood spanning the full-width of the bars to get around that.

Gibraltar GEMS won't block the knobs. And it's a much sturdier product than the QuikLok QL-400 or On-Stage Mix-400.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GEMS--gibraltar-gems-electronic-mounting-station

@Svetlovska Thanks, watching the new videos now. I'm blown away.

Svetlovska

@ruggedsmooth : Reaching is fine, the screen is very visible from quite oblique angles, but I can confirm it’s tricky getting the Force to sit on a stand, because of the small knob, and because of the positioning of the sd card slot at the front. I tried with a DJ stand I had: no dice. Since I’m using mine at home only a tabletop is fine, but it is certainly a bit of a beast.

For performance I’d probably look at something like stands made for overhead projectors, I.e. heavy duty mini tabletops. In fact:

@ocelot: yeah, exactly like that: that Sweetwater stand looks the business!

StudioES

Check Reverb for the 3DWaves AF1 (18° angle) or AF2 (30° angle). $55 or $60 with free shipping, but likely only for US folks.

SpookyZoo

Can the Force record MIDI aftertouch into it's sequencer?

Crabman

I hope DS and the arranger comes soon to normal MPCs as well.Someone from akai at least confirmed this at superbooth.

StudioES

@SpookyZoo said:
Can the Force record MIDI aftertouch into it's sequencer?

Just tested, and it still doesn't record aftertouch from the Force's pads. Dang. That was on a keygroup program, and I set AT to modulate filter cutoff. I don't know why Akai doesn't fix that. There's been a 'Record Pad Aftertouch Events' tickbox in the Prefs for ages.

Edit: I was wrong. It does record AT from the pads, but it isn't shown in the MIDI Grid Editor (aka piano roll view), only the List Editor (aka tracker view). Weird. Probably because it's polyphonic AT.

Edit 2: The Force now records channel aftertouch from an external MIDI device, and the automation is shown in the MIDI Grid Editor (aka piano roll view).

SpookyZoo

@ocelot said:

@SpookyZoo said:
Can the Force record MIDI aftertouch into it's sequencer?

Just tested, and it still doesn't record aftertouch from the Force's pads. Dang. That was on a keygroup program, and I set AT to modulate filter cutoff. I don't know why Akai doesn't fix that. There's been a 'Record Pad Aftertouch Events' tickbox in the Prefs for ages.
Didn't try an external MIDI keyboard.

Ah that's disappointing, thanks for checking.

StudioES

Edit: I was wrong. It does record AT from the pads, but it isn't shown in the MIDI Grid Editor (aka piano roll view), only the List Editor (aka tracker view). Weird. Probably because it's polyphonic AT.

Edit 2: The Force now records channel aftertouch from an external MIDI device, and the automation is shown in the MIDI Grid Editor (aka piano roll view).

tahiche

I backed off from getting the Force because of the 2gb memory limit which was extremely crippling. This is a game changing update, whole new thing. Gas, gas, gas.

ervin

@Svetlovska said:
just spool my AUM sessions straight into the Force

Can we please stop for a moment and appreciate the old-school scifi beauty of this Jedi-inspired sentence 🎖️

ashh

@SpookyZoo said:

@ocelot said:

@SpookyZoo said:
Can the Force record MIDI aftertouch into it's sequencer?

Just tested, and it still doesn't record aftertouch from the Force's pads. Dang. That was on a keygroup program, and I set AT to modulate filter cutoff. I don't know why Akai doesn't fix that. There's been a 'Record Pad Aftertouch Events' tickbox in the Prefs for ages.
Didn't try an external MIDI keyboard.

Ah that's disappointing, thanks for checking.

Did you see the edit?

ashh

@ocelot said:
Check Reverb for the 3DWaves AF1 (18° angle) or AF2 (30° angle). $55 or $60 with free shipping, but likely only for US folks.

Mad that they don't all have screens that can tilt. I chose the X partly because of that. Also because of the QLink knobs. They are nuts. It has made me understand what these bits of kit are: not a DAW in a box but a workflow in a box.

SpookyZoo

@ashh said:

@SpookyZoo said:

@ocelot said:

@SpookyZoo said:
Can the Force record MIDI aftertouch into it's sequencer?

Just tested, and it still doesn't record aftertouch from the Force's pads. Dang. That was on a keygroup program, and I set AT to modulate filter cutoff. I don't know why Akai doesn't fix that. There's been a 'Record Pad Aftertouch Events' tickbox in the Prefs for ages.
Didn't try an external MIDI keyboard.

Ah that's disappointing, thanks for checking.

Did you see the edit?

Aha, cool. Thanks both!

iansainsbury

I had one for about ten minutes shortly after release. Am I right in thinking you're still locked into 4/4 unless you use convoluted workarounds?
That killed it for me.

knewspeak

@SpookyZoo said:

@ocelot said:

@SpookyZoo said:
Can the Force record MIDI aftertouch into it's sequencer?

Just tested, and it still doesn't record aftertouch from the Force's pads. Dang. That was on a keygroup program, and I set AT to modulate filter cutoff. I don't know why Akai doesn't fix that. There's been a 'Record Pad Aftertouch Events' tickbox in the Prefs for ages.
Didn't try an external MIDI keyboard.

Ah that's disappointing, thanks for checking.

From an external keyboard on the MPC One, you can record Poly Aftertouch, but editing events is a pain, hopefully this will improve.

Svetlovska

@iansainsbury : what’s a time signature? Asking for a friend.

tahiche

So the Force can now stream from disk. It means you actually do whole songs with it without worrying about audio constrains. Also it seems to load faster… in short disk streaming seems like a gigantic feature.
Which makes me wonder. Why doesn’t everyone implement it?. Is it that hard to implement?. What does it imply?
I own a Digitakt that would greatly benefit from this. iPad apps would too, specially samplers. I believe Audiolayer has disk streaming but it’s sort of an exception. I’m thinking of Roland Verselab too, which claims to be a “compete song” solution but is useless with a ridiculous 12 min (mono) audio limit per project.

Why isn’t disk streaming the “default” just about everywhere?.

StudioES

@iansainsbury said:
I had one for about ten minutes shortly after release. Am I right in thinking you're still locked into 4/4 unless you use convoluted workarounds?
That killed it for me.

Yup, disappointing, though building custom metronome patterns for meter changes along with a little math and clip length tweaking ain't too bad.

I need to test if slaving Force to MIDI clock still disables audio recording. 🤬

iansainsbury

@Svetlovska said:
@iansainsbury : what’s a time signature? Asking for a friend.

Boom, bap, boom, bap = 4/4
Bum, plink, plink, bum, plink plink =3/4 (waltz)
bingop, a bing, biff bop, bingop, a bing, biff bop
and
bibble bibble bibble flibberdum, bibble bibble bibble flibberdum, bibble bibble bibble flibberdum, flibberdum flibberdum flibberdum
= Dave Brubeck
That covers most of it

iansainsbury

@ocelot said:

@iansainsbury said:
I had one for about ten minutes shortly after release. Am I right in thinking you're still locked into 4/4 unless you use convoluted workarounds?
That killed it for me.

Yup, disappointing, though building custom metronome patterns for meter changes along with a little math and clip length tweaking ain't too bad.

I need to test if slaving Force to MIDI clock still disables audio recording. 🤬

A device claiming it's “ the ultimate in standalone end-to-end production workflows, complete with every tool you need to produce, remix, mashup and perform your tracks live” should have different time sigs built in. I really wanted to like it. Still, if I hadn’t sent it back, I’d never have ended up discovering other great bits of gear over the past couple of years, so I’m not too upset. I’ve watched a couple of people making odd time signature stuff on the old SP-404 in a more freeform way, and that's piqued my curiosity.

celtic_elk

@iansainsbury said:

@Svetlovska said:
@iansainsbury : what’s a time signature? Asking for a friend.

Boom, bap, boom, bap = 4/4
Bum, plink, plink, bum, plink plink =3/4 (waltz)
bingop, a bing, biff bop, bingop, a bing, biff bop
and
bibble bibble bibble flibberdum, bibble bibble bibble flibberdum, bibble bibble bibble flibberdum, flibberdum flibberdum flibberdum
= Dave Brubeck
That covers most of it

I'm dying, mostly because I can hear those Brubeck tunes with this onomatopoeia. Thanks for that.

StudioES

@iansainsbury said:

@ocelot said:

@iansainsbury said:
I had one for about ten minutes shortly after release. Am I right in thinking you're still locked into 4/4 unless you use convoluted workarounds?
That killed it for me.

Yup, disappointing, though building custom metronome patterns for meter changes along with a little math and clip length tweaking ain't too bad.

I need to test if slaving Force to MIDI clock still disables audio recording. 🤬

A device claiming it's “ the ultimate in standalone end-to-end production workflows, complete with every tool you need to produce, remix, mashup and perform your tracks live” should have different time sigs built in. I really wanted to like it. Still, if I hadn’t sent it back, I’d never have ended up discovering other great bits of gear over the past couple of years, so I’m not too upset. I’ve watched a couple of people making odd time signature stuff on the old SP-404 in a more freeform way, and that's piqued my curiosity.

It took Akai 2+ years to deliver what they initially promised at launch. But today we still cannot re-order tracks. Not to mention meter and tempo changes. Edit: Track Explode hasn't been implemented yet either. (Though mine has been powered on nearly 24/7 for almost 2 years and it's had zero issues, other than a few software bugs).

What other bits of gear have you tried since sending yours back?

Re SP-404 MK2, looks like a wonderful evolution, and lightning-quick compared to the Akais. It may kill the SP essence, but all of its new features make me really want a step sequencer, or at least basic MIDI/pattern editing after finger drumming something in on those new velocity pads.