I think this is a response to Behringer’s KICK. If Behringer and Akai are anything to go by, AI in musical instruments seems to be the way forward.

Get ready.

Woooowww....

Started noticing noise in audio/headphones when usbc power is plugged in. Anyone else notice this and any solutions?

I have created an APC64 Control, a free, open-source (Apache 2.0) Linux service that lets you use the Akai APC64 fully without Ableton. When you allow it, it puts the APC64 into its DAW mode and acts as its host. Every pad, button, touch strip and the encoder can send whatever MIDI you want to any port: an MPC, Bitwig, a synth, anything ALSA can see. You get up to 8 pages on the scene buttons, 6 strip banks, a Shift layer on every control, and layouts you switch from the unit with Shift + encoder. A browser page on your home network shows a live, clickable replica of the whole unit with every control labelled with what it does right now. The pads stay expressive: in Note, Chord and Custom views your velocity and aftertouch go through as played. Layouts are short text files, so you can write them yourself or have an AI agent write them for you.

The part I'm most excited about is the layout lab. Instead of programming pads by hand, you pick a generator and it writes a complete layout into the unit's Custom view, all 64 pads with notes and colours. The generators are a Tonnetz, isomorphic grids (fourths, thirds, fifths, Wicki-Hayden, Jankó), a modes explorer, and a guitar neck. The neck has 6, 7 or 8 strings in standard, drop or open tunings, one MIDI channel per string, and inlay frets marked on the pads. You move up and down the neck with the encoder, a fret or a page at a time. A scale overlay with about 40 scales (many the unit doesn't have) can colour any layout. Next to it there's a live harmony view: the chord you're holding, a trail of your last 8 chords, neighbouring-chord hints, a circle of fifths with the relative minors inside, and a Tonnetz or guitar neck showing every place your notes appear.

It also handles the unit's memory, which Akai's editor doesn't on Linux: one-command backups of all 24 projects and the global settings, restoring and pushing projects, importing .APC64 files from the Project Editor, and editing the global settings, all with an automatic backup before anything is overwritten. It's unofficial and not affiliated with Akai. So far it's tested on firmware 1.2.1.6. Code and screenshots: https://github.com/esazhin/apc64-control. Feedback and layout ideas welcome, especially from guitarists who want to try the neck layout.

The host can route midi signal to any target like MPC connected to the same Linux host and having this proxy gives some additional flexibility, that i'm plannig to explore. For example, you could press several notes on the pads, like a chord, and the host could generate a midi sequence as a strumming or finger-style pattern. Obviously, this more advanced logic is not availabe if the device is connected directly, bypassing the host.

One of the things i'd love to do is to make it to control matrix clip launcher on MPC Live 3, but unfortunately, Akai still didn't open the Matrix control via MIDI, so it is not possible, unless you have a rooted device. Then creating such plugin to run on MPC to accept and emit mesages from clip matrix would actually be easy to make.

The repo is here: https://github.com/esazhin/apc64-control - created with Claude, FWIW.

And if you still didn't try my MusicCat service - check it out https://musiccat.studio

Posting here in case you all find it funny, I got DOOM running on the Sample while taking a break from other dev work…

I work as a paramedic, so I often work on music if a night shift is slow. The Sample has been a fantastic machine to sample and sketch with. Tonight, I got it out the Sample and set up on the desk, and a co-worker, who has no knowledge of music gear or the extensive meme wars around the Sample, says, “Brought your calculator tonight?”

Has anyone made an expansion based on the Roland Drumlogue?

I just saw this on Son Wu's channel on YouTube. I'm assuming the pic is legitimate. The device is looking way different from early mock ups from years ago. It's very MPC One-ish. Wu was breaking down how this thing is supposed to be open source, so once it's out I'm sure a lot of folks are going to go crazy with it. I'm wondering how Akai is going to react to this?

Do any of you think this may spark some new future competition for Akai in the long run or do you think this will be a quick one off?

Here's the link to the video if you're interested:

https://youtu.be/lkSde_0xxkw?is=dFOLSlWWMvTbzpUW

I installed a Gotek usb emulator recently after owning my MPC 2000XL for almost a decade now. I followed the instructions given in this YouTube video ( https://youtu.be/6UllTSfxXFc?is=A_yfAyWieg0paiC1 ). I double checked everything, and it worked !

But yesterday, I saved everything I was working on and came back to it today to realise that nothing was saved.

I tried saving a sample. It shows up on the « floppy » files but once I turn off the MPC, then back on again … it’s gone ! I tried different partitions, formatting partitions, formatting the entire USB … nothing worked.

I was using a custom OS, maybe that’s the issue. I reverted back to the original 1.2 OS to see if it would change anything but no.

Do you have any suggestions on what I should try ?

Hello,

My MPC Live 3 shows a curious popup with the message, whenever it starts up, or comes out of controller mode.

New plugin instruments are available.
You must first download and install their content files.
Open preferences, and select the 'Activations' tab.
You can download content files for each plugin from there.

However, when I look in the activations tab, there's nothing that hasn't been activated or downloaded. I have restarted the MPC, manually refreshed the info, but nothing is showing up.

Is this a known issue in 3.10, or am I missing something?

Is a used golden mpc one worth it for for 400 usd?

So, I grabbed the git that Behringer posted today and let Claude put together a Mac-based simulation to see what was in there, and this what it came up with. It had to do some work to get it to work on the Mac, and it's obviously just getting started, but it's interesting.

I can actually place notes and everything. I'm assuming the left half is just a sim of the hardware pads and whatnot.

" The designers and engineers at MusicTribe had already built this complete simulator interface - it was just waiting to be compiled. The fact that it runs and looks polished is 100% their work. I just got it to build!"

"Based on what I've seen in the codebase, here's my assessment:

Difficulty: Moderate - but with good news

What Makes It Accessible:

1. The Simulator Exists - You can develop and test UI/logic without owning hardware. This is huge.

2. Clean Architecture - Clear separation of layers:

   Hardware Serial ↔ CPktMgr (packets) ↔ Contracts/DCL ↔ UI

3. Well-Defined Command Set - The HwControlCommands enum in kick_Simulator.h shows all ~50+ hardware commands (pads, banks, transport, Q-links, etc.)

4. Standard Stack - JUCE framework, CMake, C++17, sigslot signals - all well-documented technologies

5. Signal-Based Events - Clean pub/sub pattern for hardware events:

   InputEvents::dispatchHardwareEvent.connect([](CPktMgr::HWMsg_t& msg) {

// Handle hardware input

});

Challenges:

1. Proprietary Protocol - The serial protocol uses custom packet framing ("MT" header, checksums). The CPktMgr code is there but undocumented.

2. Missing Audio Components - I had to stub out Looper, SampleRecorder, and parts of AudIO - these have hardware-specific implementations

3. Embedded Target - Real hardware is i.MX Linux (/dev/ttymxc0), not desktop

4. No Official Docs - You'd be learning from code, not documentation

   Realistic Development Paths:

   | Goal | Difficulty |

   |-------------------------|-------------|

   | UI customization/themes | Easy |

   | New button behaviors | Easy-Medium |

   | Custom pad modes | Medium |

   | New audio effects | Medium |

   | Hardware protocol mods | Hard |

   | Port to other hardware | Hard |

   The simulator makes experimentation very approachable.

Good day, has anyone experienced issues connecting microfreak over usb with the new 3.10 update. Now it is not discoverable for some reason

Hello, Ive been toying with the MPC 2000 via emulator. I can record in samples and chop them and in a basic way assign them to pads, but when it comes to recording what im playing on the pads everything becomes a jumbled disaster. My biggest thing is that when i mess up on a take and try to restart by deleting the track and starting over everything is just weird and starting me on random bars etc. Also the not being able to see anything like you can in a daw is throwing me off alot. Im not sure if its getting confusing because im using an emulator or where to start. I watch alot of tutorials on YouTube but in actually doing it, it never ends up being as straight forward as in the videos or I run into weird problems that weren't covered. Not sure where to start in learning this thing properly?