Akai Mpc Touch Software Download
Arabella Kochanski
We are pleased to announce that the critically acclaimed MPC Software 2.0 is now included with MPC Touch, greatly enhancing the capability and functionality of these full-featured production solutions.
MPC Software 2.0 is a cutting-edge production suite combining 128-track sequencing capability, real-time time stretching, clip-launch functionality, advanced MIDI editing capability, VST compatibility in controller mode, operation as a standalone application on Mac & PC, advanced sampling & audio editing/recording functionality, seamless DAW integration, a redesigned GUI, Ableton Link Compatibility and much more. Whether you're seeking freedom from computer based music production, or searching for the perfect controller for DAW-centric creative exploration, MPC Software 2.0 grants the ultimate in adaptive creative versatility.
Return of the King: Our newest addition to the legendary MPC series re-writes the rules with an intuitive controller featuring multi-touch functionality, creating a truly immersive production experience.
In creating the MPC Touch, we have once again established the iconic MPC series as the thought leader in music production technology. Combining the might of a pro-level piece of production gear truly fit to carry the MPC shield with the tactile ease of use found on smartphones and tablets, the Touch is truly a workflow revolution. How producers interact with all aspects of their sound has been forever changed.
Introducing a new approach to music production with an ultra fast and super intuitive workflow, the Touch is powered by a radiant 7" color multi-touch display. Literally grab and pinch waveforms, draw midi events, adjust envelopes, chop samples, add effects and precisely set your controls using your fingertips. Combined with the classic MPC feel, sound and vastly improved pads, the Touch embodies the best elements of our past while taking music production tech into the future.
The hardware in question is an attractively compact, solid slab, with the standard 4x4 pad grid to the left, touchscreen to the right, plus four rotary encoders, a larger data wheel, and a modest selection of dedicated buttons. The colour backlit pads are the same as those I recently enjoyed on the new MPDs, with their best-in-class feel and sensitivity. The other rubber buttons register your push with a satisfying click. On the back of the unit are audio inputs and outputs on quarter-inch jacks and a headphone output with volume control, evidence that the MPC Touch is also an audio interface that provides for direct sampling and monitoring.
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Despite initial concerns online that this stand seemed somewhat unstable, I can confirm that the Touch remains steady as a rock with the stand attached, although ultimately this stand is only adding a very slight tilt to the unit, but I suspect anything steeper was going to introduce instability when bashing the pads.
The back panel sports the audio inputs and outputs of the built-in audio interface, along with the USB port (which carries all the data back and forth between your computer), a power supply input (for the included standard PSU), record and master volume controls, 3.5mm headphone socket and MIDI in and out ports for attaching hardware MIDI devices (cables are included that convert these 3.5mm ports into proper MIDI sockets).
This is obviously not the cornucopia of audio options offered by the MPC Renaissance, with the MPC Touch lacking dedicated phono and mic inputs, only two analogue audio outs (versus four on the MPC Renaissance) and no S/PDIF in/out; this means sampling analogue line-level sources only.
The screen itself is fairly shiny and and like the majority of touch screens on phones and tablets is somewhat of a fingerprint magnet (a handy cleaning cloth is provided in the box), so if you are working near a window or directly under lighting you may have to carefully angle the MPC Touch to avoid any nasty reflections.
I absolutely love the MPC Touch pads, they are satisfyingly solid, very responsive and quite simply a joy to play. If you like to play with FULL LEVEL turned off, they will happily pick up every nuance in your playing.
Pad colours are controlled within the MPC Software and here the MPC Touch can happily stick two fingers up to his MPC-siblings as the Touch pads support a full RGB pallette of colours. That means that in addition to the familiar red, orange, green and yellows we now have all the colours of the rainbow plus a view extra shades thrown in, including white and grey.
There are many different ways of controlling pad colour, either with continually fixed colours or a number of velocity dependant changes, all of which can be applied the same across all pads or with unique settings on a pad-by-pad basis. Pad colours clearly come into their own when performing live and can be used to organise pads into sample types (custom pad colour assignments are saved within each kit), or of course used purely for eye candy purposes.
I would point out that if you are a legacy MPC user who loves the very soft, spongy pad feel (and there are people who soak and boil their pads in an attempt to soften them up), then you might want to try the MPC Touch pads before buying to ensure you can live with a more solid style of rubber.
Along the bottom you can see the sub-screen tabs for all the different areas of Program Edit. Users of the MPC Renaissance and MPC Studio will recognise this as fundamentally mirroring the way their LCD interface is structured, albeit substituting the reliance on the cursor or Q links in favour of touch-friendly navigation.
What I found was that pinch-zoom was fine, as was dragging edit point markers slowly, but if you try speeding up the drag the marker appears to be having trouble keeping up with my finger. In the following video notice how when my finger stops dead, the marker continues moving until it finally catches up:
The MPC Touch also comes with a completely new mode called XYFX, which is simply an interface to perform real-time effect or filter parameter changes by dragging your finger around the screen (think Korg Kaoss).
The GRID EDITOR is another mode that feels right at home in the touch environment, allowing you to quickly and easily add, edit and move events within your sequence, fully benefiting from pinch and zoom abilities to get close to each event for more accurate editing:
As was the case with the Ren and Studio, the whole Browser loading process itself is more limited in the hardware compared to the computer GUI, with no drag and drop to pad option and no way to select multiple but specific files for mass loading (you can load a single file or an entire folder in one action).
Hopefully all these issues will be addressed in the coming months, and to be fair since the release of the MPC Software Akai have certainly shown a dedication to providing regular and useful updates, some of them quite epic, although many heavily requested features do remain missing, such as the unrelenting demand for audio tracks.
MPC-Tutor (Andy Avgousti) is a beat maker, musician, sound designer and a leading expert on the Akai MPC sampler, who since 2002 has been creating critically acclaimed MPC tutorial books including the groundbreaking 'Beat Making on the MPC' and MPC Bible series. He runs the MPC-Tutor.com network of sites, which includes MPC-Samples.com and the thriving MPC community at MPC-Forums.com, regularly helping tens of thousands of MPC users every month with MPC technical support and guidance.
Cool review. I already own one since December last year and I can say its better than described here also the scroll feature can be sped up by using two fingers vs one, three goes even faster and four is ridiculously fast. P3ace
hi i hope anyone can answer my question which o couldnt figure out haha. When you program a pattern in iets stepsequencer or some bars in the grid editor does that get transferred to the grid /piano roll in your daw or is there an easy way tot move it there without exporting and loading it into the daw ? Can i use the mpc touch as a direct midicontroller for editing the piano roll / step sequencer of my daw ? That would be so liberating for me ?
Just read this on Sonic State website. As soon as I saw the image, it looked like it would be standalone. My jaw dropped to the floor and my wallet opened lol. After reading it's just a controller for the software
it has some strange marketing copy going on, like what does 'with it's decent onboard abilities' mean, are they only talking about the touch screen or will it allow you to load up some beats to play away from the computer like a live playback machine for a show or something?
I really, really hate that they went to light-up pads. Since the Numark merger, MPC pad quality has consistently fallen. Now with the light-up pads, I can't find replacements (MPC-Stuff makes replacement pads for MPC's through the 1000 and the older MPK line).
I've been more active with my MPC1000 now than I've probably ever been. I look at like this: an MPC1000 can be found on Craigslist these days between $400-$500 average. You can then: Put amazing pads on them, max the RAM to 128MB (plenty for me), load a hard drive, put a screen twice the size of the original, and most importantly, put a great aftermarket Operating System designed by an old Akai programmer (JJOS). After doing all that, my MPC1000 is very powerful, useful, dynamic (I cannot stress enough how much better these pads are than anything you'll find on a new MPC). It even plays lovely with my iPad!
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