Review: AKAI MPC KEY 61 // vs MPCs & other workstations // Review & Tutorial including MPC 2.11

Watch closely to this video my dear people at Native Instruments! Because this is how you use your build in display(s) to enhance the user experience when using plugins. Not the boring NI way of displaying the plugin name in a gigantic font and some white numbers in the lower part wasting all that nice double screen space of a Machine or S49.

IT’S A GREAT TIME TO BE ALIVE!!!! Thank you for this review.

I've been waiting decades for this!

Man. Wether I agree or disagree with your opinions you always have the most balanced opinions and by far, the best visual presentation of them all. Again, well done! Props on all the videos. Keep them coming. Signed A fan

I knew this vid was coming - What a way to start my morning!!

Brilliant, if I hadn’t already bought the MPC One, I’d order this ASAP ! Great review

Absolute CLASS ( pun intended ) of a review / tutorial as always ..... just cannot thank u enough !!🙏

Imagine if this thing had USB 4, and could drive a second external display over USB C. I think Akai could really compete with DAW's if they advance this stuff enough.

Montage/MODX also have a great integration with the DAW via Montage/MODX Connect, which synchronizes the performance in the synth and saves it in the DAW, and also lets you drag and drop your patterns from the synth into the DAW. So great for the described workflow of sketching on the synth and developing in the DAW.

This is the heart of everything. You don't need anything else it seems. Keep up the great work!

thank you for the thorough & competent review!

Clear, concise and comprehensive.

Definitely the review that matters in my book!!

Wow what a music hub...Amazing explanation as always....😄👍

Omg that's the sickest intro I've ever heard/seen. When you THX'ed it. 😭 I'm going outside for a walk to process this then I'll come back and watch the rest of the review.

yes! AWESOME AKAI. AWESOME LOOPOP

Perfectly explained! THX-a-LOT for that!

Very nice presentation on that keyboard you did a hell of a job

You did a wonderful job on this tutorial !!!!!!

Great overview. I’ve been using mine for a few weeks. Love it. More cons (not specific to Key 61) include 1) you can’t just connect to your computer and choose MPC as your sound interface. You must open the MPC software to connect it as an interface. MODX is much nicer in this regard. Plug and play. 2) controller mode doesn’t maintain user defined icon positions, so if you’re switching back and forth between standalone and controller modes, at least as of now, I’d recommend leaving the default icon positions, which sucks. 3) there’s pretty long load times for the new plugins and a lot of the new expansions. But Hype and the older ones still run as quickly as they did in prior OS. It’s unusual to have such lags when switching presets on a software synth today. And some expansions that load up drum samples on several pad layers can take a notable amount of time to load. Not sure if that’s the case on Live and One etc. but overall this latest OS just feels slow to load presets and change projects - which is a serious negative vs MODX. You don’t cutoff sounds when switching tracks so that’s key for gigging but I wish a key combination would hold the track matrix view achieved by holding down Menu. That would be analogous to MODX live mode where you have a grid of performances to select as you’re gigging. I want that grid of tracks to stay up on the MPC screen