The Force from Akai professional is a standalone workstation and DJ performance system with extensive control capabilities. With the Force, Akai has achieved a great success, because it combines sampler, synthesizer, looper, arranger, Ableton Link, MIDI tracks, CV tracks, step sequencer and much more in one compact device. Above all, Force is the first hardware instrument to feature the unique clip sequencer from Ableton live!
The Akai Force, is also designed for performance DJing, and is the perfect partner for music production, live gaming, sampling, and control without the need for a computer. In no time at all you can create your own beats, record a guitar riff via the instrument input, record it with the Looper and add effects. You don't play guitar? Four virtual instruments and 16 GB of sampling and recording material are just waiting to be arranged and fired using sequencers, launch pads and controllers. In MPC style, you can edit clips and tracks, create MIDI tracks for internal and external instruments, or record CV tracks to a modular system via four assignable outputs.
The central control element of the Force is the full-color 7" multi-touch display, where most of the menu work is done, samples are edited, loops cut and parameters edited. Among them are eight sensitive real-time encoders, each with its own OLED display to always have the best overview of the settings used. At the bottom of the Force, the 8x8 (64) button matrix stands out, allowing Ableton to assign, play and recombine Live Clips. By the way, this workstation sees itself as a "hardware link" to Ableton that can be operated in parallel on a laptop. The cool crossfader blends scenes or individual values, very effective!
Akai's Force is shipped with over 10GB of sample material. The basic library contains 248 kits, 16 demo projects, more than 2500 loops and 500 patterns.
The pre-produced material is supplemented by four virtual instruments, each with numerous presets:
It's somewhere between ableton live and a mpc. It's easy to work with although not as flexible as ITB but it compensates by being more of an instrument than just an arranger and mixer.
There are some bugs, and some are quite serious. Overdubbing is prone to errors and overall the midi sequencer could be more efficient to work with on a touch screen. I do hope akai will fix these in further updates but I'll work around them for now.
Buy it for what it is, not for future updates or even bug fixes, so if you need a flexible midi sequencer look elsewhere.
If you can find workarounds and need a clip launcher/looper/sequencer etc this is great. Not perfekt but still great.
I made an oder. I rechecked the order and had only put part of my address. I contacted dv 247 and informed them i it was oncompleted address. Even though it was the delivery day they went out of their way to make sure the item was delivered.
A very positive customer service experience.