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stompboxjon « Akai headed to the future »
Published on 12/06/12 at 21:44Unlike any other MPC, the Renaissance is more geared to work with your computer set up better than the other models that have come out. You will get the real MPC pads on the Renaissance which are what all MPC enthusiast love and have to have. You will also get all of your basic MPC functions like MPC Swing. But the main place where the Renaissance sticks out is that it can synch with your computer in ways that the other MPC’s just cannot do.
The Renaissance supports all of your standard audio file formats like WAV, MPC3 and it can even host VST plug-ins. It comes loaded with a ton of sounds, over 6 gigs of sounds. You will be able to use the Renaissance on a Mac or a PC and whichever one you use it on. You do not have to worry about problems syncing them up. It is pretty much automatic and can be done in seconds.
You will also get a vintage mode that will give you the sound of the MPC3000. It would have been nice to get the sound of the original MPC 2000 but we will settle for the 3000. The Renaissance gives you a 64 bit sequencer and sampler but the area where I feel that it lacks is with how easy it was to find what you were looking for in the original MPC’s. For some reason they have changed some things up, to some people they might be minor things. But for people that have used MPC’s for a decade, then they come out with this one and some of the Menu options are different and sub menus are a little different (mainly just switched around) it can become very frustrating and felt like I had to learn the whole system over again.
But overall, you will love the new things you can do with this MPC over how the older ones used to be. I you are still using a previous model MPC; I do not think it is worth the upgrade to the Renaissance. Just stick with what you have and what you know. But if you are new to the MPC and getting your first one, then this will be a great start toward the new direction that Akai is going.
The Renaissance supports all of your standard audio file formats like WAV, MPC3 and it can even host VST plug-ins. It comes loaded with a ton of sounds, over 6 gigs of sounds. You will be able to use the Renaissance on a Mac or a PC and whichever one you use it on. You do not have to worry about problems syncing them up. It is pretty much automatic and can be done in seconds.
You will also get a vintage mode that will give you the sound of the MPC3000. It would have been nice to get the sound of the original MPC 2000 but we will settle for the 3000. The Renaissance gives you a 64 bit sequencer and sampler but the area where I feel that it lacks is with how easy it was to find what you were looking for in the original MPC’s. For some reason they have changed some things up, to some people they might be minor things. But for people that have used MPC’s for a decade, then they come out with this one and some of the Menu options are different and sub menus are a little different (mainly just switched around) it can become very frustrating and felt like I had to learn the whole system over again.
But overall, you will love the new things you can do with this MPC over how the older ones used to be. I you are still using a previous model MPC; I do not think it is worth the upgrade to the Renaissance. Just stick with what you have and what you know. But if you are new to the MPC and getting your first one, then this will be a great start toward the new direction that Akai is going.