AKAI Professional Force Reviews

The best Beatbox on the market

A daw in a box. Synths, drums, samples and scope to record instruments. With disk streaming it's now unstoppable as there is no limit to audio tracks. I've had the machine for almost 3 years and it's great.

All-in-one Box of Fun

All the latest improvements and avail addons have made this such a versatile device - it encourages creative music making and i’m always amazed by my output and fun compared to using a PC/MAC based DAW

Great gear but mine may be faulty

I love this box and with the Akai Force 3.2 updated it is unbeatable in my opinion. All though they're a few bugs with the update.

The only thing is my unit seems to have an issue with the pads, from day one. They are not really responsive too light taps. Even after messing with the pad sensitivity the velocity jumps from very low to 127 with pretty much the same amount of pressure applied to the pads. It's really hard to play at a decent level. It's either to quite or to loud. No one else seems to have this problem that I can see.

Massive all-in-one device

If you are looking for many features conceived in a no-way compact form factor, the Force might be what you are looking for. The greatest takeaway from me would be the Ableton style manner of clip recording, launching and playback. Akai had treated the MPC/Force series well with periodically useful updates.

The best beast for live and studio !

This is the best machine for live performance and studio ! Amazing workflow, quality of the materials pretty amazing. Quality Price Top ! Love it !!!

COMPLETE STANDALONE GEARS

AKAI FORCE complete standalone gears for Home Recording, Sampling, DJ/Groove and Synthesizer. Thousand of MPC sampler available at the market. Excellent... two thumb up

Great product with caveats

The workflow is great, samples and loops are poor. Really made for hiphop and house. Not many on board synths. Bluetooth midi is unusable due to big latancy.

Amazing device

This machine is amazing and really feels like a standalone version of ableton live, especially with update 2.10. Really hoping for more support from Akai, the last few updates have been amazing. Great for sequencing, sampling and as a groovebox/synth.

Absolutely worth the money

This is just amazing, can't wait for the next update with new synths.

Almost perfect - but instable

I love the sound of the Force. It is an awesome sampler, has nice synth engines. It ist extremely extensive. You can record mic and guitar input, loop&overdub it in the looper mode, prepare a huge amount of snippets for live performance, create whole songs etc.

This complexity comes at a cost: It is heavy, I spend a lot of time tweaking sounds and thinking through patterns, micro adjusting notes and playing with plugins and tapping on the touch screen. This hindered me from being productive. I usually prepare projects with versatile drum kits, have user-defined synth sounds prepared and both audio tracks already prepared as a basis for all my new projects.

If you don't really need that many options and you want to be more productive on your couch, I would recommend smaller groove boxes e.g. Elektron Model:Samples over or in addition to the Force.

Get's better with time (and updates)

Not long ago there was a great disturbance in the Force, as if all the owners suddenly cried out in joy and were suddenly able to create more freely. Yes I am using puns to review this. I'm strong with the Force, especially after 3.0.5 Firmware update and the Force is with me. There is a lot to unpack here and a video will probably be a better medium for it. My main point here is that I thought I was buying a pretty capable standalone device, and It was good for what it was but now with all the updates AKAI transformed it into something much better than I thought. I can't wait to see what will be added in the future.

Not really good, not really bad :)

This product is a very good ideea of new era of making music.

But AKAI with this FORCE (3.04 FIRMWARE), failed to materialize the functionality of this "studio station"

CONTRA:

- heavy workflow

- low memory ram

- poor warping algorithm

- insignificant software updates

- Ableton Live 1/2 integration

PRO:

- made with quality materials

- good touchscreen, good resolution

- standalone

- multiple connections

- good processor

One of the best standalone

can extend the storage specially with ssd which delivers fast

streamline integration of on board expansion

8*8 grid can work as extended drum machine

Pending realisation

There is much i don't understand about this instrument the manual is badly written and ive yet to find a good tutorial , im sure there is lots to unfold its taking me more time than i expected., a really good looking thing it seems badly implemented and documented, one day ill understand it but not yet.

one device for all.very supreme machine.