

The software onboard acts like a multitrack “DAW”. The physical part of this Akai artifact: The touchscreen, knobs, pads and buttons are the controls to act over samples with your hands. It’s not the all-time classic hardware that may record, upload and reproduce sounds, the central and great difference is THE SOFTWARE into the unit. I think MPC One (and series) is the greatest ting into sampler’s world. The CV track allows control voltages to be sent to external modular synthesizers. control change values (96 virtual and assignable knobs can be automated in this way) as well as note sequences and other commands which can pilot external modules, or even your DAW, via midi. Another MIDI track type is available for programming ‘pure’ midi, i.e. They can be looped and synchronized to the tempo via the time-stretching function. Clip tracks allow samples to be assigned to pads and triggered in this way. Instrument tracks can play back samples melodically and have a multi-sample function. Plug-in tracks can be used to load one of the three internal instruments. Drum tracks allow different samples to be triggered via the pads. There are six different types of MIDI tracks.

Each sequence consists of a collection of different tracks (and therefore different instruments) such as synthesizers, drum kits, bass and vocals. A project consists of several sequences, here called scenes.
