Akai MPC-2000XL Studio Plus

The 2000XL is quite easy to use. The manual is not very thick at all. It doesn't take long to figure out what it is capable of and how to make it do what you want.

The 2000XL has 32 voices of Polyphony. I like the BPM feature. Its magic you can change the tempo of a sample without affecting the pitch as if it is actually being played slower/faster. You can specify mono, poly and simultanious for each pad. With mono while the sound is playing if you hit the pad again it will start over again. With poly the sounds overlap. Simultanious you can hit pad A1 and it will play up to 2 other pads. It has Parameters: Frequency 0-100 0 is dark and bassy 100 is highs. Tune: is pitch. Attack and Decay. There is also a note variation slider that controls the freq tune attack and decay on top of the other parameters but you can only assign one pad at a time and you have to have it set when you make the sequence you cant go back and adjust after and it cant time correct adjustments use with the slider. You cant use the 8 individual outputs and with effects the effects only come out of the main outputs. You can save a "program" which is the sounds the pads they are assigned to the mixer, parameter and effects settings. Akai should include a 100MB Zip drive and especially the 32mb simms memory chips standard. When i bought mine i had to track down the right Zip Dirve it has to be SCSI for a machintosh not PC. Then i had to find the simms meomory chips open up the unit and install them which is just a pain because you have to lay the unit on its face to undo the all the bolts. Who is going to spen $2000 dollars and then use the floppy drive they should include it in the price so you can use it the day you buy it.

It has no internal sounds. It has 32 voices of polyphony. Its 16 Bit analouge or if you install something extra you can sample through digital inputs. The pads are touch sensitive or you can set full volume. The effects have Distortion, Modulation, Delay/Echo, Filter, and Reverb. There is mulit-effects one and two that you assign the pads to and reverb 1 and 2 and there are different ways you can route the effects like mod/delay/echo>reverb or reverb>delay/echo etc.

Only problem ive had is while i was playing a sequence i was adjusting the attack and decay of a snare to get a clipping effect that sounded kind of like a DJ cutting but when i hit a certain number in decay i got an error and the screen turned to a bunch of numbers then all i could do was turn it off and start over.

Havent had to use it.

If it were lost or stolen if i could afford it i would get the EMU 4xt platimum $4300 or the new MPC 4000 or if i could find a mint condition ASR 10. I also use The Boss Dr. 770 drum machine a Behringer 18 line mixer a Roland JV 1010 sound module with controller key board and 2 Technics mk 1200 turntables and DJ mixer, Minidisc player with condeser microphone. I bought the mpc because i couldnt find a used ASR 10 in my area and im scared to use Ebay or something similar.