Akai S612

The S612 was first available around 1982 with a price tag of £1200. It represented the first fully featured affordable sampling unit! (that still was a lot of money). It comprised a 2U 19 inch rack and the disc drive had its own 2U unit known as the MD260.

Features included

All that may not sound much by today's standards but then it was quite something. The alternatives were either those monster machines like the Fairlight or the smaller microprocessor personal computer based machines using say the Apple IIe. A popular one of the time being the Greengate system.

So was it OK?

Yes it was, it was almost a full blown unit (no ASDRs), you could loop, auto-loop, reverse and then store the sample to disk. Ahh those disks..indeed the 2.8" QD - each side would take just the one sample. They were quite hard to get a hold of and relatively expensive - mind you all this type of gear was at that time.

So if you do find a S612 make sure you have lots of QD disks with it, sure the unit can do sample dumps over MIDI but do you really want to wait that long? I think not.
Back in '86 I asked AKAI for the MIDI sys-ex codes so I could poke about with the sounds and settings of the S612. They were very obliging saying the S612 has the same codes as the S700 and sent me a copy of the code.
 

Sonic qualities? Yes fine but remember that going too far from the original sample would result in a deterioration of quality, multi-sampling not quite ready yet. The low pass filter was really a bit of a disappointment, sure the cutoff frequency could be adjusted but all it did was cut of the highs making the sample sound dull. I was hoping the filter would respond to at least velocity sensitivity but I usually set it to have no effect.
 

Do I want one?

The features offered by this unit by today's standards has really made it of value only to historians. It does work well - MIDI is good, it's easy to make and edit your own samples - a thoroughly good unit. Cost? well not much really, you must get the S612 AND the disc drive MD260 PLUS at least 40 QD disks.
 
 






AKAI X7000

This was the S700 rack unit with a keyboard scenario, think of the X7000 as six S612 in one box.

Things to know


Now we have multi-sampling! The X7000 supported keyboard splits so we could have a patch of say, samples 1,2,3,4,5 6,7 and 8 spread across the keys as we wished. Plus the X7000 could store patches so that selecting patch #2 would bring up say, samples 3,6,13,14,15 and 16 again spread across the keys.

As you can tell this made the unit much more useful and in other words the biz.
Remember that if you wanted to load up all 16 sounds it would take 8 QD discs plus a fair bit of button pressing to make sure that all the samples ended up in their correct locations.

Do I want one?

Well it was a very good machine in its day, it works well and does the job. Fiddling with those QD disks can get confusing - I've never gigged it only taken it to an audition but because I didn't have the right sounds loaded it really wasn't worth the effort. (I didn't get the gig). Again really only for historians.
 
 






AKAI S01 Sampler


The first thing to bear in mind with this device is don't expect too much. It begs the question why produce such a sampler at all?

I haven't included a picture because they are everywhere.

Things you need to know


 

So what's it like?

Wot no filters?
Yes sad but true - no filters at all (except for the digital anti-aliasing filter).

 
Wot only one output?
Yes it's true. These is only the one audio output. These is an audio socket on the front panel and one on the rear but they are the same thing.

There is a headphone socket on the front which is wired for stereo but it is a mono signal.
 
Sample rate & time
The sampling rate is fixed, no changing this. The memory allocation is flexible so you could have one sample taking up all 15 seconds or you could fill the sampler with 10 samples say 1.5 seconds each.

 
Editing Samples
What happened here? Usually AKAI made their editing really easy but the start, end and loop cursors are very frustrating to use.

All is well until the loop button is pressed then the numeric representation of the sample gets totally confusing. Moving the start point forwards seems to move it backwards. Moving the end cursor seems to do something different - hence it is very easy to loose track in your mind where you are in the sample.

The only way to clear this confusion was to use the extra software package called PRO-EX for the ATARI ST computer to control the start, end and loop points.
PRO-EX is only available for the Hi res mode on the ST - the software works but once again is limiting. Well done to the chap who wrote it but for me... later.
 

Disks and storage
The unit uses normal disks which can hold about 20 seconds worth of sound. It's all too easy to end up with lots of disks not knowing what disk has on it, so we are back to keeping pieces of paper referring to disks, sounds and sample number.

Is it worthless?

Well no it depends upon the job you wish to use the sampler. I believe AKAI sold the unit as a DJ type sampler where he could load in jingles or sound shots then at the press of a button play the sample, all quick and accessible - in fact ideal.
The DJ can prepare the sounds on floppy disk in advance, take it to the gig, slap the disk in and all done.

But what it offers the muso is much less. I found that as the sound was played further away from the original it became un-musical. True this happens in all samplers but it was very restricting in this unit.
Why buy one then? - because it's quick to set up on stage, it's robust, lower monetary value to take gigging as the price has fallen making it a reasonable buy secondhand.
I used one on stage for a while not for musical sounds but for sound effects. It's good as a basic sampled drum box.


 

I have a lot of respect for AKAI - they really have pioneered the sampler concept - they are the ones others were measured by. My experience is dependant upon I bought the basic models simply because at the time they were all a huge amount of money.