AKAI Advance looks promising, but unfinished...

[sana48]

I've had my Advance for a month almost. I always buy things secondhand so purchasing the Advance was a bit out of character for me. I have been looking for a nice midi Keyboard for a while and was going to go with a used MPK261. I am really glad I didnt. The Advance works as advertised for me. Every plugin I pull up is auto mapped into 4 different banks and I can change and save the mappings at will. The VIP software has definitely given me a birds eye view of my plugin library and its super easy to stack samples from different plugins together. For the first time I honestly spend more time on the keyboard than the computer- browsing through every sample in every plugin is made super easy; add to that a ton of included plugins (that I didnt own) and I am quite pleased with my product. I just hope that Akai continues to provide support and updates for the Advance instead of just moving on to the next big product. The Advance has definitely changed the way I work. I rarely write reviews on products but I honestly feel like a "shout out" to Akai is warranted- from my experience. I just hope that Akai continues to provide support and updates for the Advance instead of just moving on to the next big product.

[jestermgee]

Here is my $0.2

I was the owner of the Advance for a week but I had all manner of issues mainly with Akai support.

Search their "forum" and you will note a lot of issues. Some have a good experience but it certainly requires some manual work to make things play nice.

The biggest issues I had was the very basic Live integration (to the point the transport buttons simply did not even sync their state to Live so you press Play on Advance and it lights up. Press stop on any other device and Advance still says Live is in Play mode).

Small thing but even the encoders only allow access to the first 8 Live device controls and no banking even though you have a full LCD screen with advanced feedback, it does not support an MCU/HUI type of integration which was a big disappointment.

The biggest issues I had by far though were:

- VIP wrapper software constantly having GUI freezes ans not displaying controls
- Random jumps of the encoder values (touch encoder 1 and encoder 4 data would move by 1 cent for example)
- The keyboard has a DAW Preset selection but cannot remember your selection and you have to re-select this every time
- Some VSTs do not even work with manual creation of presets

Because of a lengthy list of issues I had and feedback I provided I was invited to their VIP software Beta program (after I had returned my keyboard) and I can confirm some of the issues I had have been resolved and the idea is rather appealing but the beta test forum I was in has VERY little people offering any feedback and in fact almost everything I read in there was back in January of this year.

I simply was not filled with any confidence into the future for support of the product or software and I have deliberated over a few keyboard options but have gone with the KompleteKontrolS 61 version since VST support has just been announced simply because the overall features (chords, arp) appear better executed and I have had a lot better experience with Native Instruments.

I would actually still reconsider the Akai down the track since the product is well built, I loved the feel of the keybed personally and I did find even the VIP software allowed me to find sounds just so quickly but really it becomes just a "preset browser" for VSTs and it will not do ANYTHING at all for a user who also want to browse Live instruments, saved presets or even samples/loops.

While KompleteKontrol will also suffer from the same thing, it does have the chords and arp feature along with the light guide for playing keyswitched instruments plus it seems a lot more attention is paid to users and their suggestions... That to me is important.

If interested I have a complete review of my Advanced experience here:
http://freelancesoundlabs.com/index.php ... i-keyboard

Do your research and maybe wait for the next version of VIP before diving in. Certainly not talking down the product, it is not "bad" but it's not a complete solution either. Use it as just another tool (hopefully with less bugs)

[sana48]

I agree with you on many points. There was quite a bit of work to iron out some issues (encoders jumping etc..). I finally found all the correct settings on the Akai website for the keyboard and things are running smooth. The only gui issue I have is when loading omnisphere, but seriously, Im not sure any plugin can handle omnisphere except for omnipshere. Komplete Kontrol looks quite infant as well. I didnt see any multi mode for stacking sounds (?) and the 3rd party support appears a bit vague at this point. Im not interested in key lights and I like the analog mod wheel of the Advance. God, I just pray it continues to run smooth.

[jestermgee]

The issue I had with GUI freeze was when you were on the plugin window screen and switched back to the browser, the whole screen was blank. You had to min/max the window to make it display anything. This happened constantly for a number (of windows users) but that has been addressed in the Beta.

It will be interesting once the next version of software comes out because that really will make a big difference.