The Akai Advance. Anyone got one yet?

[Kent_in_CO]

It's getting some good initial reviews, but I'm curious how it integrates with Live. The MPK2 series' remote script left something to be desired; for example, blue-hand macro mapping was a complete fail. The VST wrapper approach is badass, but the Advance's cool factor would be diminished somewhat if it doesn't have nice seamless integration.

[TomViolenz]

Akai? Reliable script?! Does not compute!

[Kent_in_CO]

Yeah, it's a shame eh? Their hardware is pretty solid. If only they took a little more time to create good scripts for the abes.

[beats me]

In the spirit of “competition is great for everybody” I predict NI is going to quickly surpass Akai when they open up Kontrol to third party developers. If nothing else NI already has some experience with this with (discontinued) Kore.

[ajnthebay]

Ok, so I picked one up yesterday. (Note the added plugin software was alot more impresive than i expected). After installing the ableton script ran the plugin manager only to find none of my NI plugins had there presets except for massive and fm8. After watching videos on YouTube found out how to go in and download the presets for Kontact and reactor. Both kontack and reactor you will need in order to use komplete 10 instruments in place of their komplete kontrol software/plugin. So to start I went into vip loaded up an instance of reactor and then under player in reactor clicked either polyplex, monark......etc. now in vip go to file or plugin not sure which and click import plugin map. (Same process for kontact)The unfortunate thing is that this must be done for all the reactor and kontact instruments. So that includes anything that loads in kontat like Alicia keyes, session strings.....etc. otherwise the keyboard seems to work fine. I returned komplete kontrol s to get this keyboard due to the limitations. And other buggy issues with ableton. No probems with ablton yet. Very important to follow directions on akai site for ableton instalation. Its not in the downloaded folder. I"ll give another update after I get a chance to play with it more after work.

[Kent_in_CO]

Interesting...thanks for the initial insights.

[Eleggua]

Have one ordered. Should be here in 2 weeks.

[sonik777]

If nothing else NI already has some experience with this with (discontinued) Kore.

What's all this then?

I own a first gen Kore. NI
s software back then was pretty horrible so I never got into that end of things, but still use the Kore as a nice little portable hardware interface.

[gregory.bell]

For anyone who has an Advance keyboard: how's the integration with Ableton's own instruments / effects / packs?

[Monchai]

Got mine afew days back, have to do all that tedious set up work like many youtuber already suggest. My vip crashes a few times because i didnt activate Analog Lab vst(Arturia) before. but once get pass all that including imported all my own Kontakt nki, alll Nexus 2 XP and few hundreds of massive user presets. Gotta say i like it alot, been playing to explore the new musical idea from old patches. Love the keybed feel, the screen size is resonable to look at and the workflow tag/catagory filtering without having to look at the laptop screen is 90% as they advertise. So far if i want to mark favorite of any patch i cannot do it on the keyboard itself i have to go back to my laptop. I haven get my hands on much of the Multi and creatinh setlist so i cant commend on those. Also, do export plugin map of plugin that you countless hour importing them. I experienced crashes and when i clean install vip i can import back my plugin maps(save alot of time). The amount of their vst giveaway is also impressive but one of them does not organise correctly (forgot which one) i rearrange them in few min once i figure out how they misarrange by using the filter button beside the search field. Hope this could be helpful info. Oh the big rotate button does give a bit sense of a hardware synth too

[BAMBEROO]

Had mine for 1 week and Im on the verge of selling it on. Its a nice hardware keyboard, nice pads rotary transport etc no problems there The problem is simply the software is useless. Im using a top spec PC, but I am constantly experiencing software failures, not responding, not finding the hardware etc then when I do get it going, it frequently hangs on notes, even when I change patch, the last one remains still playing underneath, you have to turn off the VIP software to stop it, and its touch and go whether it will start up again and find the keyboard
I asked support on the first day I had it, how to configure the transport control in Ableton it took 6 days for them to respond with a stock "you're question will be answered soon "type response, by which time I had sorted it out myself
The game we are in is all about being creative. I read countless reviews and waited in anticipation of the Advance release, thinking it would greatly improve my work flow, it has not, in fact it has hindered my workflow, as I spend more time sorting out the software. I would not even consider using this in a live situation as frankly I couldn't trust it.
and in answer to the question how does it work with lives inbuilt instruments packs etc....it doesn't
Im sure there must be some people out there who are having no problems at all with VIP, and its a great concept, but for me as ever Akai fall short on software

[dna598]

disappointing but not unexpected

[Monchai]

I had that thought the few times it crashes, I was on the edge of return it also. But when I figure out the problems with activation on some of my vst and solved it the later instance became ok. Maybe I have just a few VSTi I guess, or maybe you can limit(keep to minimum) your vst scan in the preference and then add one at a time after using current ones and sured that if works fine. Holding down notes while changing a patch, are you not suppose to do that?