Akai MPC5000

The MPC line have long been what Akai has been known for, and rightly so many would say. These machines essentially pack a small studio into a solid shiny portable unit. Hardware sampling, MIDI Sequencing, MIDI control of external equipment, and a whole array of nifty drumming and percussion effects that have helped craft some of the worlds most popular hiphop and electronic tracks, as well as finding a place in the hearts of producers of other genres.

It's once again time to welcome the next level of MPC shiny gadgetry to the production scene... the MPC5000.

With each progressive flagship model of MPC, Akai manage to raise the bar, by adding yet more features and increasing memory and other technical specs.

Naturally the MPC5000 is no exception to this, and has managed to get double the LCD screen size of the MPC2500, making it now 240x128. Full waveforms can be shown clearly on this new backlit LCD. The screen is also capable of tilting to whatever angle you'd like, which I'm sure many people will find suits their production seating arrangements, rather than having to always look straight down on the MPC in order to view the details on screen.

Perhaps one of the most exciting new features which the MPC5000 brings to the line for the first time is a 20-voice, 3-oscillator virtual analog synthesizer with arpeggiator, which is quite a move from the rock solid Akai MPC standard feature lineup. The VA synth includes hundreds of presets.

Also sure to create quite a buzz is the addition to the MPC5000 of 8-track streaming hard disk recording, again something which a lot of people will surely react very positively too.

The basis of the MPC5000 hasn't avoided a complete overall either, with the brand new sequencing engine thats been built, with a higher resolution, allowing for greater detail in the MIDI sequences laid down. I notice other details such as a turntable preamp have also been built into the MPC5000.

The core function of the 64-voice drum/phrase sampler comes equipped as standard with 64MB memory - which is expandable up to 192MB.

This is a video of the MPC5000 from NAMM 2008:

This is the official Akai Professional MPC5000 video:

All in all this new beast from Akai is looking pretty dam lovely, though naturally all this hardware packed into a portable unit comes at a price.

I suspect that not only will diehard MPC fans be looking to upgrade, but that the extra additions such as the hardware synth and so on will most probably begin to persuade some others who in the past weren't overly interested in the MPC line of production tools.

For more info and current pricing click here for the MPC5000 listing at zzounds