Like many other songwriters and musicians, I have long seen Akai's MPC (Midi Production Center) line as more than just a drum machine. The brainchild of Roger Linn, best known for his iconic drum machine the Linn 9000, MPC's have always been known for their rich and warm drum sounds. We personally favor 1993's MPC 3000, a machine that still fetches a pretty penny to this day.
Of course, as PC-based recording became more affordable, and latency-free, many migrated from standalone gear like the MPC to Native Instruments' Maschine line of drum machine/midi controllers and recording platforms like Fruity Loops and Ableton, but none have come close to recreating that MPC sound.
So we sound hounds found ourselves between a rock and a hard place: do we stick with our 20-year-old standalone units with the warm circuitry and ease-of-use, or do we join everybody else in embracing the power of PC-based virtual instrumentation?
The decision, of course, was made for many of us when MPC themselves dove head first into the PC-based waters by unveiling the Renaissance, which combined ,many of the features of their standalone units with integrated PC-based software. In other words, Akai had created a machine whose capabilities were literally endless...on paper at least...but that you needed a computer to run.
That would have been great if the software hadn't been so buggy that even MPC's most ardent fans were finding it hard to say nice things about the Renaissance. Akai released numerous software updates, but still the problems continued and Akai's glistening reputation was in sudden decline.
Until now, that is.
After much advance hype and speculation, the 1.8 software update has finally hit the streets and not only does it work out some of the major bugs, but it also adds a ton of great new features and workflow improvements that can best be experienced and explained in the above video by DJ Hellfire, one of the many musicians on Akai's beta team who not only test-drove the company's latest tweaks, but fought for certain enhancements to be made.
All I can say is that, with this update, the MPC is back, baby.
Download 1.8 update here (scroll all the way to bottom of the LINKS list).