Akai ProfessionalMPX8 - Portable Sample Pad Controller With 8 Performance-Ready Velocity-Sensitive Pads, MIDI Connectivity & On-Board SD Card Slot

Great basic MIDI controller and sampler for home studio and live applications. I use mine at home for basic beat production/finger drumming, for which it works great. The pad sensitivity is a bit hard to get used to, but nothing ridiculous. The drummer in my band uses it on stage, with a drum pad MIDI controller triggering samples on the Akai. It works great for this as well, and allowed us to add samples and electronic drum sounds to our live set without adding a laptop or more expensive drum module to our live rig.There is quite a bit of negativity surrounding this sampler, but I think it's misplaced. The comparable 8 pad MIDI controller (no on-board samples) from Akai is $60, so the sampler portion that everyone seems to have issues with is really only $40. Yes it's limited to 16-bit mono WAV files, loads large samples slowly, and has a somewhat clunky interface. But if you need more flexibility and better performance, you should be looking at something like an Electribe or MPC. That simply doesn't exist in this price range.

I bought this to reproduce long (5 min+) samples. The software is very old and outdated. Not only it's very time consuming to load every file into the SD. It has some ridiculous limits for 2025:30 mb max sixe for ALL 8 padsevery time you change a kit it needs to load all your samples again, this can take up to 3 minutes sometimes.completely unusable for live

Buying this item was tough. I read so many reviews from various websites; I even watched YouTube videos regarding it. In the end, I believed this pad was made to serve one main purpose, and it was exactly what I needed.Hi, my name is Austin. I'm the bassist for a band called MDI. We believe in playing everything live. So, instead of running back tracks, I trigger the sounds that can't be played. (stutter vocals, 808 drops, distanced drums)Check out our song "Cruel Intentions".http://open.spotify.com/track/1tHX2WatJmDesi1fLSMW2yIn that song, I use the MPX8 to trigger the 808s in the second bridge as well as the effected vocals that follow shortly after.This pad is basically tailor-made for live shows. If you're a musician on the road, you know stuff can get damaged. The MPX8 allows you to play your samples without bringing your nice MacBook Pro into the chaos of the stage.So far, so good! I'll let you know if any issues arise!

I was looking for something to play sound effects during live gigs. Rain, chimes, thunder, intro clips that i make up. Fun and interesting add-ons and background to go along with my percussion. This does that. Simply. It loads .wav files from the sd card and easily assigns to a pad. It does not have to connect to a computer. Plays through a monitor or PA. There are enough functions for what i wanted. There are some limitations to file size. Because it is basic and simple, the interface is a bit clunky and possibly outdated, naming files takes some patience with the dial.I originally purchased an Akai pro miniplay but after struggling through the learning curve, i came to the conclusion that the miniplay was not going to do what i wanted. The miniplay is a midi controller for making beats within music software. i just wanted a standalone tool to load and play effects. Similar to a drum trigger pad, but compact and holds more sounds. The MPX8 was the right choice. Learned and set it up in about an hour the day of a gig. A good add-on.

Only reason I got this was to have a portable MIDI controller for when I’m away from my home setup, this works pretty decent for that. However, I can’t recommend this to be your only MIDI controller if you’re starting out certain features are limiting. Sample loading is possible but tedious, I operate on Mac and the computer applications to load samples won’t work as intended, I had to use Audacity and I can’t create kits with the provided app. This doesn’t bother me too much because I’ll always use this with a computer. It would’ve been a nice feature if the usability wasn’t so much of a hassle.I’m an Ableton User and this connects fine to my computer and I can create drum racks, however this device has a set octave where the pads are located (I haven’t found a work around to change this). 8 pads is enough to work with for me but you have to move each individual sound to those set of pads to get it going. Other MIDI controllers can change their octaves to provide different sound banks but this doesn’t have that feature (Not a deal breaker but it’s worth noting in my opinion).If you can get this on sale the portability is the biggest selling point of this device but if this was my only option for a MIDI controller I’d be pretty frustrated. I recommend the MPK Mini iii that’ll serve you better for an all in one.

This device continues to be a fundamental tool in my live presentations, you just have to understand a little how it works and know how to prepare the audio files for it to work correctly, even though it was launched a long time ago, it is still professional, useful and resistant. I am happy with this unit

Excellent beginner sample player. There isn't really anything else at this price range that lets you load your own sounds onto a card and output to a speaker or you can use it as a simple midi controller. I saw some complaining reviews about having difficulty loading sounds but everything is laid out in the instructions and it's very easy to do so they just didn't bother following them. If you genuinely can't figure them out that's a you issue because there's nothing really easier out there.