#42

I’ve spent a few hours digging into this.

Overall though, as someone who isn’t an Ableton user, after a short session of poking at a demo, and a long session of poking around a blank song, I was able to figure most of the things out.

My early issues:

  • I wish the Clip button had Track printed on it for shift, since the hot key for track edit seems to be shift + Clip. That took me an unnecessarily long time to discover, and it is super important if you want to make a lot of use of the plugin instruments. The alt modes for those top buttons in general shoudl have the shortcuts printed like the bottom buttons. :crazy_face: Mostly a new user issue, but still!
  • I need to mess with the record mode settings. The whole recording workflow for notes feels needlessly complicated with the default settings. If I hit record on while on a track that doesn’t have a clip or record enabled, please just do that for me. I hit record when I want to record. :stuck_out_tongue:
  • My initial impression of the piano roll is that working with it is pretty diffifcult. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted a mouse for so far. Selecting and transposing notes is hard! (Any tips? Maybe I am missing something.)
  • I get a little mixed-up by the buttons at the bottom somtimes.
  • I wish Hype had an advanced mode exposing more of it’s gubbins. It’s nice that there are an incredibly large number of presets, but I’d like to be able to have more control over their construction.
  • The length of the device makes working with it for a long periods of time tiresome on the back and shoulders.
  • I really really wish it had a spectrum view to aid in mixing.
  • It’s suppose to support bluetooth keyboards, but neither of mine will pair.
  • The inability to re-arrange the order of tracks and effects is maddening. I knew this going in. Some of it can be solved for by planning a good template, but it’s hard to make sense of why it works this way.

Stuff I like so far:

  • Bootup and shutdown are pretty quick.
  • After playing around for a bit, the devices to starts make sense without much memorization.
  • The gamut of effects and synth plugins all sound pretty damn good.
  • From my early tests, it seems like the device has ample CPU for what it’s built to do.
  • The shift combos are mostly intuitive.
  • That knob row is super dope. It is hard to communicate how luxurious those knobs are. They’re hyper smooth and touch sensitive, and the screen mapping feature is very well implimented. Almost every screen control is readily accessible within a tap of the knob button.
  • It also seems like there are a good set of options in the settings to adjust the defaults to match your preferences.
  • All of the input modes seem to work well, and aside from setting up recording, the actual input is pretty intuitive.

I haven’t tried to do anything especially complex yet, but it’s been a generally positive experience so far.

One other question: It seems like aftertouch isn’t mapped by default, and the guide is pretty vague about how to map it. Any tips on how to map it easily? I’d want to map it to the plugin instruments, but I’m not entirely sure how.

5 Likes
#43

Great review. I’m with you on many of the wants.

On the “record mode should auto-add a clip”, yes. Force should simply add a clip at the default length. I think it may not as you can set different clip lengths per clip. So, a couple more clicks to get a clip started.

The bottom buttons also got me. I then started using them more and now I pretty much can cue in on the colors and know what’s going on.

No clue on aftertouch mapping yet. I think MIDI mapping is not well addressed in current firmware. There’s no way yet to map an external controller (think “faders”) to the internal plugin parameters.

One thing you didn’t mention in your review is the ability to record parameter changes, i.e.: volume, pan, modulation, etc. Very simple. Hit “record” while a clip/track/tune is playing, week the knob or on-screen widget to control the parameter. Stop recording. It plays back just as you recorded. Can also go into the clip/track edit mode and make modifications to the recorded parameters.

1 Like
#44

Akai get round to releasing the next iteration of force firmware. At last the arranger has been made public. Among other updates.

New 3.0.5 firmware. Thats tonight sorted!

1 Like
#45

It’s a major move forward and pretty big update for Akai Live / Force line as a DAW (makes it even more interesting to me, quite a powerhouse).

2 Likes
#46

Looks like a great update, hope to see that arranger on my MPC soon!

#47

Looking forward to this. The arranger mode is great on it’s own, but everything else also seems like valuable additions.

#48

I’m quite excited by the midi routing. Should be able to connect a few synths hiccup free. :crossed_fingers:

#49

Hoping I can bounce material out to my modular and record it back in via arrange mode. Will have to see how well that works!

1 Like
#50

I finally pulled the Force off of my rarely used gear shelf now that the new update is out. I feel like a bit of a sucker for buying this thing at launch for full price, but this update seems to make it worth all of the waiting.

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#51

I let mine go, and then picked it up again when I got wind of the beta that was being tested. This is an enormous update with a lot of fantastic features, and I’m really looking forward to trying it out.

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#52

I’ll be interested in hearing how that goes. Would make for some unique key group instruments using the autosampler.

#53

I am selling mine(EU), after I had to learn that the awaited arranger totally NOT fit my workflow.

#54

loving this firmware’s features, almost sold the force last week after getting an MPC X.

the two are an amazing duo :0

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#55

I had been eyeing the Force for a while and this latest version convinced me to part with some hard-earned.

Overall my impressions are really favorable. Seems to deliver on the DAW-in-a-box dream as well as be a pretty playable instrument and master controller.

What’s up with the factory content though? Doesn’t seem very, uh, eclectic. All 10gb are “club” genre oriented unless I’m missing something. 248 drum kits and I don’t think there’s a single acoustic kit. Seems like there’s more variety in the MPCs, just from watching videos about them.

#56

The factory content is usable but IMHO it’s worth loading other content.

I recommend the third party app kitmaker (no affiliation).

It’s easy to add sample libraries converted from NI Maschine too. Kitmaker lets you drag and drop samples and save these as xpm kits, for loading quickly.

I find this is a very nice 3rd party app for the master (no affiliation):

Horses for courses and all that.

s

2 Likes
#57

I generally agree with your thoughts @grey. I can maybe help some with a couple of the early issues.

In grid view, if you press one of the keyboard keys on the left of the LCD (or drum sample names) it will select all of those notes in the clip - the whole row.

Also, the 3.0.5 firmware lets you select one or more steps in step sequencer mode using the clip launch buttons. With the bottom half in step sequencer mode, select + clip launch button selects a step. Shift + select + clip launch button to select more than one step. This is probably the best way I’ve found for selecting notes that aren’t in a contiguous region. It’d be nice if on the LCD there was some way to add to/subtract from an existing selection with the lasso, though.

One other way is to go to list view. You can filter to see, e.g. just notes. Touching a row selects that note event. Shift + touching another row adds to the selection. When you go back to grid view those note events are still selected for whatever operation.

You can copy a track by holding the copy key, then then pressing the track select button (1, 2, 3 etc) for the source track, then pressing the track select button for where you want it to go. Then you can delete the original track by holding delete and pressing the track select button. They could probably come up with a slicker way to re-arrange tracks but at least some re-arranging is possible by leap frogging tracks around this way.

Does anyone have an account on Akai pro forums that would be willing to send me an invite? Seems that’s the only way to register. If so, please PM and much appreciated!

1 Like
#58

Hey other force owners i updated to the current 3.0.6 from I’m not sure what one and there used to be a Timing Correction knob that you could dial in the amount of quantization in the matrix mode with the knobs set to screen and now its just gone. Is there a way or setting to get this back? I know the other way to access it is holding shift and the tc button but this was a very useful knob and is well missed.