Akai Miniak review part three
By Rob Sandall
| Posted in Music Technology
On the home straight for the Akai Miniak review, something quite odd has happened. Just as I was ready to wax further lyrical about this little synth – which really has impressed me throughout testing – I was informed by the powers that be at Akai that the little gem is being discontinued. I’m not able to discern whether this is to make way for something else, or if its simply the fella’s time to go, but either way it’s a bit of a shock.
I’ll plough on with the review, though, because I would suggest you keep an eye on what’s about to be a significant price drop and retroactively apply the praise. Suddenly I’m aware that I only have so long to buy one of these if I’m going to, so I’d better hurry up and decide how vital a purchase this is.
We’ve already established that there’s a comprehensive bank of sounds, which as I mentioned before are going to utterly thrill your dance/electro-inclined players and producers, and the faux-analog design of the synth means that presets can extend to some familiar tones – Jupiter, Moog etc.
But equally impressive is something we haven’t touched on yet – an all-singing, all-dancing sequencer, with real-time and step possibilities.
The latter in particular benefits from a strikingly easy setup, ARP-stylee, which means that each separate key press is stored as the next step in the sequence. When you’re happy with your results, the entire sequence is then fixed as a time- and pitch-editable sequence – it’ll transpose the entire run of notes, depending on the key you’re holding down to trigger it.
If you prefer your real-time editing, then phrases that you record and store on the Miniak can be immediately quantised to fit in with your step or BPM-specific rhythms. Any automation is also recorded in the phrase – if you’re twiddling with your filters and your LFOs to add dynamism to your riffs, then that one perfect take can be locked in. This is notable, mainly because there are a heap of new synths appearing on the market that are trumpeting this feature. For something that’s now even less money than I’d originally thought it was selling for, that’s something worth thinking about!
The stored riff can again be transposed dependent on your key presses, and simply continues to loop as you’re messing around with it. I think you’ll probably already have figured out how easy a process it’s going to be for a dance producer to create a full arrangement, as they transpose the ongoing loop to the first, fourth and fifth of the scale.
There’s also an 808-style drum sequencer – the sort of punchy, compressed sounds that some will love and some will hate – which you can trigger separately from the step sequences, so combined you’ve pretty much got a production suite sat in your synth. I mentioned last time the lack of editing software, and I’ve had a look at third party possibilities that I’m not too sure of, but then again if you put all of this keyboard’s functionality into an editable computer program you’re actually coming close to a DAW, so I think AKAI can be forgiven for simply focusing on the hardware aspects here. Think analog with a lot more, rather than digital with less.
It’s a synth that’s very playable indeed – especially if you’re using the presets rather than going through the slightly long process of editing sounds – and the sequencing options can be used confidently with a superbly slight learning curve. While it might well be being discontinued, there’s a lot of functionality here that the modern and more expensive models out there share, so with the current drop in price it’s even more of a steal. I suspect you’ll already be considering joining me in the purchase of an Akai Miniak.
Tags: buy korg microstation, buy microkorg xl, microsynth alternatives
Hi,
I asked on Akai’s official facebook page about this being discontinued and they said it was not true and that it was still very new….
Bern