Comments on: Roger Continues LinnDrum II Work, But Release Slips

By: Create Digital Music » A Vacuum Tube Drum Machine: Eric Barbour, Metasonix at RobotSpeak

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:09:38 +0000

[...] while MPC and LinnDrum creator Roger Linn works out for himself just what people want from a “workstation” drum machine, Eric is whipping up prototypes [...]

By: db3ll

db3ll — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:00:45 +0000

Turning the conversation slightly towards nostalgia… hopefully nostalgia’s OK. I bought a Linn9000 (the pic above) in a pawn-shop-spelunking batch buy mid 1990s. I initially thought it was a cash register. The florid miami-vice paint job was comedic, and so many parts had fallen off of it it was leprous and un(re)saleable. It was, undoubtedly, the coolest piece of gear I ever bought in the intuitive-organic-magic sense. And Akai’s OS isn’t the first to be supplanted by someone else- the 9000 I got had the Forat mod (I think they’re still doing them, but their website hasn’t changed much in 10 or so years) with a comparatively HUGE LCD screen & waaaay better OS. Notable features: You could switch the midi sequence track independently from the drum track real-time, I think you could have different time signatures for each also. Those sliders could TUNE the drums in addition to doing volume levels (& I think pan too), it had trigger ins/outs for all the pads. And SMPTE(!), which I never used, but knew that real people did. Oh, and you could burn your own sample roms too, of course (two of mine, high conga and low conga, played back at an incorrect sample rate about half the time). The inside of the thing looked as close to a machine can as having heartworm, with spindly white jumper wires running everywhere. Opening it was frightening in a “if this breaks I’m screwed way”, but the front of it flopped open frequently due to a lack of screws. It saved on 3.5″ floppies when it wanted to, and locked up and ate your work when it didn’t. So if they can make a reliable one of those, I don’t care how long I have to wait.

By: J-Beatz

J-Beatz — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:50:36 +0000

The beat thang is gonna be at summer namm, and I emailed them and they told me you can pre-order it on july 17

By: salamanderanagram

salamanderanagram — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:41:11 +0000

fix your forums!
there’s two week old spam in there!!

By: Cream of Beats

Cream of Beats — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:06:10 +0000

I’ll wait for someone to buy it, and place it on ebay a month later.
If there is one feature I would like to see in a drum machine, it’s a seamless integration with pro-tools (or whatever you use.) How about I make the beat in the drum machine, and automatically see the individual tracks in protools without recording them, or have the drum machine render each track as a .wav file? This isn’t an impossible feature request is it? :)

By: fergus waveforms

fergus waveforms — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:03:58 +0000

any word on the Beat Thang?!

By: Matt Picone

Matt Picone — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:48:08 +0000

I am happy to wait for what will be a wonderful product.

By: Vehical Driver

Vehical Driver — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 08:03:10 +0000

The trouble with the modern MPCs is that they are still very good at what they do, they suck just enough to be annoying. While we all hate Akai with a passion (aka Newmark), we are all stuck with Akai’s products until someone comes up with something better. JJOS makes the new MPCs work very well, new MPCs are still solidly built compared to compatible Korg/Roland grooveboxes (although nowhere near the standard of quality of old Akai gear), and so we begrudgingly buy another flawed Akai product.

The dream of all MPC owners is someone else releases an MPC-killer product. People had high hopes for the Linndrum II, and now a lot of those people will just probably upgrade to the MPC 5000 or something.

By: IT CROWDED

IT CROWDED — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:06:07 +0000

Also the JJOS is a fantastic product

Akai should be embarrassed they got scooped on that

By: IT CROWDED

IT CROWDED — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 09:04:03 +0000

ZAnder the party line is that LINN MPCs are the only MPCs however I do have to admit that the MPC2000 and 2000xl are both good, that the MPC500 has only a problem with battery life and no active input through (minor problems now).

Also the MPC60 and 3000 have the problem of no track mute which really is the greatest improvisation feature in the MPC