i got it with out the cd's so I never had the stock sounds,BUT! with my other samples its good.You can hit the pads hard or soft for how strong you want the sound to come out,or just hit the full level button and all sound will be hard no matter how to touch it.

its got all the sliders,knobs,and stuff but the best thing about it is the presets........its already set up for cubase,battery,live,reason,ect....you can control all the top softwear programs with the turn of a knob.

its pretty basic just hit the pads(duhh)....but i still dont know how to set up the play,stop,rec,and stuff....but I control that with the softwear anyway.

its strong...im heavy handed and all the pads still work(knock on wood)!

i got it for cheap ....but if I paid full price,I think I would still get it.

dont know,never called.

I got it,so the thrill is gone....but I still use it alot....its perfect for durm patterns and chopping samples.

hiphop r&b producer

Rap,R&B,Soul,

Midi not sound.

Came with USB cable cd's and unit. Ienjoy the responsive rubberized pads and the LCD is very bright.

Just plug and play. Pretty simple to get used to.

Very high quality pads,Metal chassis, built like a tank.

worth it for the most part

haven't dealt with akai for this yet.

good looking, Very important piece of gear for me.

Active Musician

Dubstep, Grime, Hip Hop, House, DNB

There are no on-board sounds, so this category is almost worthless.

5 faders, 8 knobs. Built-in presets for popular sequencers. Pretty cool. Only thing it's missing is an on/off switch, so you have to unplug it to turn it off.

Very intuitive. No learning curve. I mean, it's a box with 16 pads on it, what's to learn?

Built like a tank. I don't like the Akai style of buttons, but the knobs, pads, and the screen are indestructible. It's heavy and feels generally solid.

Definitely worth it. Comparable to Korg's padKONTROL.

Haven't needed any so far.

Sexy as can be. Looks great on my desk.

Hobbyist

General Electronic

just like the mpc2000xl great soundz

coulda came with a pitch control but still outstanding

plug and play greatttt

seems pretty durable im using it in iraq and its still going strong

i got mine brand new on ebay for cheaper so i cant say

online support very helpful

Great

song writer small time producing

Urban

N/A

Currently the UniQuest Editor is not intel mac compatable, end of march we should see an update to this. 16 pads with switchable modes from 16 levels per pad and full level at the touch of a button. 8 assignable knobs, 6 sliders. MMC keys. 8 sliders would have been just amazing, but really its not an issue.

Pluged it in, Reason 3 found it straight away "AFTER I READ THE MANUAL ON HOW TO LOAD THE DEVICE SETTINGS INTO THE OS" (lol at another review I saw on the site). Cubase 4 no issues (MMC a little tricky but achievable). All in all, standard all round midi goodness. basic as they come and almost the perfect layout.

I've been waiting for a product like this for a long time.

Everything could always be cheaper.

Uniquest have their yahoo forum group. AKAI are always a pleasure to deal with.

It's a very well built, stylish unit. Looks like a pro piece of equipment.

Producer

Electronic house / Tec House

well soud doesnt come out of the mpd..u gotta connect it with the usb to your computer..ofcourse

well it came with the usb, the cds...and the mpd lol...so its acceptable

its maadd easy to use. Didnt take much for me to use it with fl studio.

The product is amazing. It is well done. Looks prety hard and doesnt seem to break easily.

great price for this amazing product.

didnt need support

looks great

Hip Hop producer

Hip HOP

No sounds come out of this. It comes with a program with sounds. eh....

A short USB cord that doest even reach the top of my desk. Had to go out and buy a longer one.

Been working on it straight for a whole week and still doesnt work with Reason. Its as if the comp doesnt even know its there. I did everything the manual says. There are two ways to install it also, to make things more complicated and im not sure if i should do one first, by itself or both tegether. Its is so unclear.

Only had it for a week but i pushed the pad to see how hard you would have to hit it to reach its capacity velocity and it doesnt feel to too tough.

If it would actually just work i think it would be excellent. I was so sold on the marketing.

gotta check for the phone number in the morning......im done trying to figure it out myself.

It LOOKS good.

Beat Maker

Rock, alternative, Hip Hop

Very good for the price. I was looking for something like this and was glad i bought one.

Good for the options you have. Can work easly with all the controlls it supplies. The sampler also feels good when you play.

Easy to use

made good; nice look; durable for the price

good forr the price

yup all good

good for set up for the price

it's a midi controller

I bought this over the korg pad control because of its rotary encoders, faders and the transport control and the fact that it didn't have an xy pad. It would have been nice if you could change the transport controls to output a standard midi signal rather than the mmc signal, this would have ensured compatibility with more apps eg I use samplitude and live and it doesn't work with either another thing that would have been nice is if you could set some pads to play at "full level" and others to be velocity and pressure sensitive. and an on/off switch could be useful, I'm not sure how long the screens last on these things (i guess things have improved since the s2000), however, it seems a waste to have the screen on when I'm not using it. the only way to turn it off is by unplugging the usb cable overall, a nice feature set

everything was easy to use thanks to the nice screen, had all of the features figured within a few hours and no driver needed

after reading how solid people thought it was, i was def a bit underwhelmed. It's heavy enough that it wont move thanks to the metal base, but the top of the unit is plastic and the whole thing sound a little hollow when you hit it. The faders feel a bit cheap, but really nothing major to complain about. The pads are good. But the rotary encoders, well one of them at least doesn't transmit data when you turn it, but when it's not being touched, it transmits which makes it difficult when 'learning' midi assignment in most soft apps. For instance if I go to assign knob 'k1', I turn k1, then I have to be quick to confirm this assignment before k4 replaces it. This is the only real problem with the unit, but it has completely soured my experience with the unit. After reading that this kind of problem with the encoders is pretty common, I fear it may be likely that i get a replacement with the same problem. Fingers crossed. It would be nice if someone would step up and make some decent pad controllers, rather than this consumer grad s^&t that all of the pad manufacturers have put out

I would expect something better for the money, but I'd be prepared to pay more for something truly rock solid

we'll have to find out about that

yeah, the screen is nice, I'd rather have plastic that looks like plastic and is proud of it rather than plastic trying to look like metal

musician

hip hop, experimental

There are preset templates for BFD, Reason, Guru, Battery etc...just dial up by twisting knob then press down on the preset and all the programming is automatically done. Comes with cd-rom; must install before hooking up the mpd 24; there is also a control template to put into Reason so that you can select MPD 24 from midi keyboard controller in reasons midi setup.

When hooked up to reason or nuendo with your favorite VSTI's; the performance is astounding! Records Velocity automatically, you can set up the transport controls to control reason or nuendos transport controllers (stop, rewind, ff, play, record)

Solid build; good quality faders and knobs and the pads are second to none! The case is sturdy and the blue screen is easy on the eyes.