Akai just revealed its most powerful standalone groovebox, . For the uninitiated, the MPC has been around since the 1980s and pretty much defined hip hop from that era. The line has continuously iterated to keep up with the times and the XL looks to be the baddest of them all.
First of all, it offers four times the processing power of previous MPCs, which is enough to load up to 32 virtual instruments at the same time. This is assisted by a full 16GB of RAM, which is a whole lot in this . The XL can handle 16 audio tracks simultaneously. In my experience with previous units, this is more than enough for a full song.
It runs on a proprietary OS and features a 10-inch OLED touchscreen for making adjustments. There are also dozens of knobs and buttons to play with, including 16 knobs that integrate with the display for real-time feedback.
The XL features a step sequencer, but this is an MPC. The real star attraction are those 16 drum pads. These pads can be set to trigger samples and hits, but can also be programmed to initiate effects and do all kinds of other stuff. Each pad has four quadrants, one for each corner, and they are all fully adjustable.
Looking for even more nuanced control? There are two assignable touch-strips and plenty of short-cut keys. It has built-in microphone preamps, phono inputs for sampling, instrument inputs and numerous other connectivity options. This is a true flagship in every sense of the word. It’s also very, very large.
The MPC may have started as a hip hop machine, but newer models are useful for any genre of music. To that end, it comes with an extensive collection of plugins, samples and effects. These even include some plugins made by .
The software can handle stuff like stem separation, time-stretching and more. The workflow has been heavily inspired by modern DAWs, with a full arrangement view available on that OLED.
The MPC XL is a standalone unit, so it doesn’t need a computer or anything like that. The power requirements here, however, don’t allow for batteries. This thing has to be plugged in, much like . It’s available right now and costs a whopping $2,900. This is a serious machine with a serious price tag, just like Roland’s recently-released .