Akai

Central to Atlanta’s white-hot rap scene is producer Zaytoven, who brings a West Coast flavour to trap.

BT revitalised the sound of boy band N'Sync, composed some of the most radical soundtracks to appear in mainstream films, and has a good claim to have invented trance. And he still finds time to talk to SOS...

For a man who likes to work quickly in the studio, David Axelrod's new album has taken an awfully long time to make — 33 years, to be precise. Meanwhile, his groundbreaking '60s and '70s productions have become a crucial resource for the biggest names in hip-hop.

Abbey Road's famous Studio One has played host to innumerable big-budget orchestral recordings for film, but the final session before its refurbishment in 2001 saw it being used for a new purpose: to record the soundtrack for a video game.

Akai's new 24-track recording and mixing workstation continues the expansion of their DPS multitracker concept with technology derived from the company's renowned post-production machines.

Prior to taking over the sampling world, Akai launched a hybrid analogue/digital synth with a unique interface.

Many people consider software samplers to have consigned the hardware equivalent to history. Not Akai, who have responded by releasing their best-value hardware samplers ever, offering unprecedented levels of computer integration, and packing them with user-friendly features.

**** 4/5 stars. Pretty much every form of mainstream percussion is represented here in this velocity-switched sample-plus-ambience collection.

How can I use my external effects units with my Akai DPS16 hard disk recorder? How can I convert my mono recordings into stereo? Are there any cheap multi-band compression plug-ins? How can I reverse the effects of performing Windows XP tweaks?

Akai's MPC sampling workstations have been a studio fixture for nearly 15 years, and the MPC4000 is the most powerful one yet. But the world of sampling has changed dramatically since the MPC2000XL was released. Can an MPC still cut it in the 21st century?