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Akai's turn for the cheap analog thing


digman

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At $500 it doesn't seem that low budget to me.

Pretty low budget for a new analog polysynth with VCO's even if they do take 30 min. to warm up

 

God help me I am actually sort've attracted to this thing what is wrong with me

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A few people I know were working at Akai just before and during the Rhythm Wolf development and while I don't know exactly how it went down, the whole "wolf" thing developed from a running thing a few of the testers and designers had for a while where they were basically trying to come up with the stupidest product names they could and then imagine what the product that went with the name would be. Apparently after one of them left the company the Rhythm Wolf's name kind of evolved out of some of the things they'd come up with.

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At $500 it doesn't seem that low budget to me.

Pretty low budget for a new analog polysynth with VCO's even if they do take 30 min. to warm up

 

God help me I am actually sort've attracted to this thing what is wrong with me

 

Yeah I get that, just seems that you've got decent options for other synths at a lower price. Some of the features are definitely interesting, but it just sounds fucking TERRIBLE. To my ears anyway.

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At $500 it doesn't seem that low budget to me.

o god i thouht 200$

Garbage, buy might serve some purpose. For example: Making shitty music.

 

As far as tuning is concerned, apparently this does or at least can stay in tune (?), but it takes 45 minutes or something like that to warm up properly. Still sounds retarded, though.

lol

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Why couldn't they just play to their past strengths and reputation and make a small, powerful, affordable sampler? I feel like there's a real market for hardware samplers again but it's completely off the radar of most bigger companies.

 

It seems like technology has reached a point where they could bring out something along the lines of a beefed up S6000 with more features geared toward live sampling and manipulation for a couple hundred dollars in a small, tabletop form factor like those Eventide pedals and a halfway decent software editor.

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yeah i'm guessing their mpx line wasn't that remarkable or we'd have heard more. just in case people aren't sure, the akai we have to today is akai in name only. it's all owned by numark who also own a ton of other formerly independent companies. they re-release products under different brands, like the akai miniak which is literally just an alesis micron in a different case.

 

It's not even Numark, it's a company called inMusic that owns all of them and a bunch more. They're just outside of town so a lot of people I know either work there, have worked there or have friends there. I almost did it myself at one point but I've heard too many stories about the work environment to go near it now. Plus I actually make a better wage shipping out eBay sales for a record store than I would there.

 

I wish I could remember the non-music brands they also own. I remember a friend who was working as a product tester there had to wear an electric blanket around all day for almost a week so he could test that at the same time, according to him it was one of their highest profit items. Electric blankets.

 

inmusicheader-620x252.jpg

 

(2012)

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Timbre Wolf sounds like it would go well alongside Octave Kitten in terms of names. Synth looks like its going toe to toe with arturia's minibrute.

Yeah but the minibrute is actually a very excellent, unique synth with a lot of character.

Why couldn't they just play to their past strengths and reputation and make a small, powerful, affordable sampler? I feel like there's a real market for hardware samplers again but it's completely off the radar of most bigger companies.

 

It seems like technology has reached a point where they could bring out something along the lines of a beefed up S6000 with more features geared toward live sampling and manipulation for a couple hundred dollars in a small, tabletop form factor like those Eventide pedals and a halfway decent software editor.

I'm sure if they (or another company) released a cheap chromatic sampler instead of another fucking drum oriented sampler it'd do pretty well
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I'm sure if they (or another company) released a cheap chromatic sampler instead of another fucking drum oriented sampler it'd do pretty well

 

 

Yeah, and it seems like they're in a uniquely good position to bring one to market because their brand has always been associated most with samplers since the early 80s. I can't even think of a single piece of analog gear they brought out during their heyday, except for those guitar pedals back in the 90s that bombed (even though some of them are actually really cool - I'd never get rid of my Akai Intelliphase, and I'd love one of those fuzz pedals they made - guitarists are just a really conservative bunch). Releasing a hardware chromatic sampler seems like the most obvious move, but for whatever reason they always seem a few years behind their competitors, who are usually a year or three behind the DIY community and small companies but still GET IT when they do take the plunge on something new.

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yeah i'm guessing their mpx line wasn't that remarkable or we'd have heard more. just in case people aren't sure, the akai we have to today is akai in name only. it's all owned by numark who also own a ton of other formerly independent companies. they re-release products under different brands, like the akai miniak which is literally just an alesis micron in a different case.

 

It's not even Numark, it's a company called inMusic that owns all of them and a bunch more. They're just outside of town so a lot of people I know either work there, have worked there or have friends there. I almost did it myself at one point but I've heard too many stories about the work environment to go near it now. Plus I actually make a better wage shipping out eBay sales for a record store than I would there.

 

I wish I could remember the non-music brands they also own. I remember a friend who was working as a product tester there had to wear an electric blanket around all day for almost a week so he could test that at the same time, according to him it was one of their highest profit items. Electric blankets.

 

inmusicheader-620x252.jpg

 

(2012)

 

oh wow, I had no idea.

 

makes sense though :-/

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I'm sure if they (or another company) released a cheap chromatic sampler instead of another fucking drum oriented sampler it'd do pretty well

 

 

Yeah, and it seems like they're in a uniquely good position to bring one to market because their brand has always been associated most with samplers since the early 80s. I can't even think of a single piece of analog gear they brought out during their heyday, except for those guitar pedals back in the 90s that bombed (even though some of them are actually really cool - I'd never get rid of my Akai Intelliphase, and I'd love one of those fuzz pedals they made - guitarists are just a really conservative bunch). Releasing a hardware chromatic sampler seems like the most obvious move, but for whatever reason they always seem a few years behind their competitors, who are usually a year or three behind the DIY community and small companies but still GET IT when they do take the plunge on something new.

 

 

It might be advantageous for them to put out some kind of sampler for modular synths. Not a lot of companies are doing that and there's definitely a market for them.

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I'm sure if they (or another company) released a cheap chromatic sampler instead of another fucking drum oriented sampler it'd do pretty well

 

 

Yeah, and it seems like they're in a uniquely good position to bring one to market because their brand has always been associated most with samplers since the early 80s. I can't even think of a single piece of analog gear they brought out during their heyday, except for those guitar pedals back in the 90s that bombed (even though some of them are actually really cool - I'd never get rid of my Akai Intelliphase, and I'd love one of those fuzz pedals they made - guitarists are just a really conservative bunch). Releasing a hardware chromatic sampler seems like the most obvious move, but for whatever reason they always seem a few years behind their competitors, who are usually a year or three behind the DIY community and small companies but still GET IT when they do take the plunge on something new.

 

 

It might be advantageous for them to put out some kind of sampler for modular synths. Not a lot of companies are doing that and there's definitely a market for them.

 

 

Hell, they could probably clean up just releasing a new version of the Alesis ModFX models that people actually liked (the Bitrman, the flanger, the vocoder, I don't know what else; I actually like the filter - it sounds really digital but sometimes that's cool) that had CV control of the parameters and could send and receive analog sync. Those things were running on pretty much off-the-shelf, general purpose hardware, it probably wouldn't be too big a deal to port them to a newer platform. It seems like the modular synth tweaker world and the noise world have been blending together more than ever lately, at least around here, and that would fit right in.

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Why y'all be bitching 'bout tuning problems? Where's that IDM spirit gone? IMO 4 separate voices would be pretty rad, like a super shitty Vermona Perfourmer. ffs I've been using the LFO of my cheapo synth as an extra osc, tuning is way out of whack but that doesn't mean you can do no cool shit with it. Just saying.

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Why y'all be bitching 'bout tuning problems? Where's that IDM spirit gone? IMO 4 separate voices would be pretty rad, like a super shitty Vermona Perfourmer. ffs I've been using the LFO of my cheapo synth as an extra osc, tuning is way out of whack but that doesn't mean you can do no cool shit with it. Just saying.

its also about the presentation

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Why y'all be bitching 'bout tuning problems? Where's that IDM spirit gone? IMO 4 separate voices would be pretty rad, like a super shitty Vermona Perfourmer. ffs I've been using the LFO of my cheapo synth as an extra osc, tuning is way out of whack but that doesn't mean you can do no cool shit with it. Just saying.

its also about the presentation

 

 

 

For me it's about it being $500.

 

If can score one of these 5 years from now for like $75 I'll do it in a heartbeat, but for $500 you could probably get a few different interesting shitty synths and a couple shitty pedals and end up with cooler shitty sounds.

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With 500$ can buy you my Jx-3p and PG200 in the Seattle area! ANY TAKERS?! Can't give that thing away on craigslist for some reason... like most of the vintage stuff I've flipped on CL takes FOR FUCKING EVER to get sold, even though I price them lower than most sources.

 

Much better bit of gear than this hunk of shit too!

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I'd definitely take it off your hands if I was in the area, but I'm not. Just the pg200 alone goes for that kind of money over here.

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yeah they couldn't even get that right. sounds like it is capable of achieving some crazy microtones right guys??

Yeah but the fridge at Safeway has more consistent tuning. You could buy 4 function generators for like 15% of the price.

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