Akai S1000

Been using an akai s1000 since it came out, bought new for over ??1000 back in 1993?. As much as I like the tightness of the machine, how so many reviewers could give Akai high mark for ease of use is beyond me. Took me months to get to grips with its O.S. Still now makes me sigh at how many buttons one must press to get to pages for programming. There are so many better products out there now that are so much more simple to use, the S1000 is for geeks, move on!

Again, the Akai was the DON back in the day but it is limited compared to what's around now. Great for a dinosaur. Great filters still. Great that it has 8 separate outs.

Like I say, the Akai is tight, very tight! Has 8 seperate physical outs which is great for individual expression if you're using a mixer.

It was a workhorse for me back in the day, I get it out less often these days precisely for the reasons I specified earlier, it's a B to set up and takes a lifetime to save your set up. Saying this, imagine your Akai as a piece of clay that you take days to mould into shape, squeezing and shaping, adding and losing bits... This is how I work on this Megasor. It's 96% per cent reliability is great...until it goes down, and it does occasionally. And when it does, there is no recovery. The 31/2 inch disks are the worst part of all this, they regularly corrupt becoming unusable, and there to the gods go your genius samples!

You can buy external memory, get the screen replaced, connect it to a hard drive but in this day and age, all the hassle isn't worth it. Like I said earlier, this is an early 1990 machine, there are so many better options out there, why bother?

I started with version 1.1 in 1989, then later I when all the way up to 4.4. This machine is simply amazing, I used other samplers from the same era, nothing to compare, it's just so easy to work with.

Again nothing less then perfect. Everything is easy to use or easy to figure it out, the manual is clear and simple. the only thing that I would have love to have was the possibility to connect a regular PC monitor to it for display, but then again without it, it is also just fine.

It will sound as good as the sampling you make with, I almost never used pre-made sampling, I always recorded my own, it was so much more fun. The sound is CD quality, so it's good enough for it's time anyway.

Very reliable, it will not let you down. I remember the day in 1990 when it fell at the dock of the theater in Quebec city with the entire load of the 40 foot truck of our PA, the road case had a 3 inch hole in it but still the sample was running, nothing less was expected and the show when on the next day.

I call a few year ago Akai USA to figure out a way to buy the digital in/out card for it, even if they didn't have it anymore in stock, an employer call me back the next day, after he took it on himself and when looking in one of there warehouse and found me a card, which he sold me for $100 shipping included, just unbelivable they still care after 12 year. If that is not good support, please kill me.

Amazing, I paid the full price for it, I bought it when it came out in 1989, I used it until 2002, and still today I have it in my studio and if I feel the need for a good old sampling, I will use it without any hesitation. A pleasure to work with, if it could only talk back to me sometime.

Very easy to use BIG DISPLAY!!!

Editing is like a dream.

Manual is nice.

It's a classic sampler streetprice around $200.

Can't beat the quality for this price.

It's a little dated but still can be a great workhorse.

For percussion synth FX it's great but for piano organ etc there is better to be had.

Can sound dated.

AKAI built like a tank.

CHeck for display fading, the only typical thing about this machine.

AKAI is awsome, after emailing they sent me a OS upgrade in the mail.

Respons within 24 hours!

GOOD job AKAI.

For around $200 this is a beaty, I got 10 mb plus the SCSI interface card.

Very, very easy. There are a few editing quirks that might take getting used to, but besides this there is nothing too challenging at all - in fact once you've master this you'll be hard pushed to find another sampler that you can't use.

Okay, it might seem limited on all counts: polyphony, filters, editing, processing. However, with the digital interface installed and some nice new outboard you should be able to make it sing. Don't forget the 11(!) outputs. Get one with as much RAM as possible, although you can still get hold of the 8Mb baords for a cheaper sum than before (#115).

The routing options for modulation and envelope aren't too shabby. Sounds? Well, depends how good you are.

Utterly reliable, mine had the shit kicked out of it at Parkland Studios (Southampton, UK) and it's still going.

Should be fine.

It's great! The sound quality is more than adequate, especially with digital I/O, and so long as you have a good armoury of other gear to feed it, it should last you a lifetime. The main benefit of having an S1000 is the fact that whatever you upgrade to will be able to read your library.

I use v4.04 of the OS if I have to edit programs or setup keymaps. I have the Playback version. It's kind of like a sampler that doesn't sample.. so is it REALLY a sampler?! I don't know, but whatever it is, it's very easy to use. I didn't get a manual with it, but there's not much to learn.

This thing has 16 voices and two filters per program. One filter controls volume and the other can be set to control pitch, frequency cut-off, LFO or a combination of all three. 2 megs of RAM is ok, but it's too expensive to get proprietary RAM for this thing. The SCSI port is nice, if I could figure out how that works. The MIDI capabilities are stantard, 16-part multitimbrality and it responds to velocity. Keep in mind that this is the S1000PB. I think the regular one has timestretch and some other things.
Almost forgot, outputs. And does this thing have them. 8 assignable outputs. If you already have outboard effects, this can't be beat. I love sequencing a couple loops and sounds and running them through a couple of boxes and tweaking away. Very wicked.
This thing is good, but a little dated. Although the only thing I've seen on new samplers is a little more polyphony and effects. You pay more for 8 outputs on the S2000.

Not much to say here, it's a sampler.. it's as good as you make it.

It's a little old, so sometimes the buttons get stuck when I'm trying to edit things. As far as loading sounds and playing it has never screwed up. I'd definitely gig without backup, especially since it's all I have.

I've never dealt with Akai.

If it were stolen, I'd definitely get another, just for playback. And at $190 everyone can afford one. I had an S20 and as soon as I saw this thing in the store, I bought it and sold the S20.
This thing came with a huge sample library, too. Like 70 disks. And every single sounds is so 80s it's not even funny, I love it.
I'm going to try to get an S2000 in a little and keep the S1000PB for the extra polyphony and outputs.
If you can afford it, get an S2000 for the polyphony and effects. That said, it's just a sampler, it's only as good as what you put into it.