Akai recently revealed its most powerful standalone Groovebox yet. For the uninitiated, MPC has been around since the 1980s and largely defined hip hop from that era. The line has been constantly updated to keep up with the times and the XL looks the worst of them all.
First, it offers four times more processing power than previous MPCs, which is enough to load 32 virtual devices at the same time. It has a full 16 GB RAM, which is plenty. The XL can handle up to 16 audio tracks simultaneously. In my experience with previous units, this is more than enough for a full song.
It runs on a proprietary OS and has a 10-inch OLED touchscreen for making adjustments. There are also dozens of knobs and buttons to play with, including 16 knobs that integrate with the display for real-time feedback.
The XL has a step sequencer, but it’s an MPC. The real star attraction are those 16 drum pads. These pads can be set to trigger samples and hits, but can also be programmed to trigger effects and do all sorts of other things. Each pad has four quadrants, one for each corner, and they are all fully adjustable.
Looking for even more granular controls? It has two assignable touch-strips and plenty of short-cut keys. It has built-in microphone preamps, phono inputs for sampling, instrument inputs, and many other connectivity options. It is a true flagship in every sense of the word. This is also very, very big.
The MPC may have started out as a hip hop machine, but newer models are versatile for any genre of music. Lastly, it comes with an extensive collection of plugins, samples, and effects. These also include some plugins created by.
The software can handle things like stem separation, time-stretching, and more. The workflow is heavily inspired by modern DAWs, with full arrangement view available on that OLED.
The MPC XL is a standalone unit, so it doesn’t require a computer or anything like that. However, the power requirements here do not allow batteries. This thing pretty much has to be plugged in. It is available now and is priced at $2,900. This, like Roland’s recent releases, is a serious machine with a serious price.
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