Review: iMPC Pro Music App By Akai Professional

Already with the predecessor, the iMPC app, Akai made an excellent porting of its Groovebox concept on the iPad. Now the Pro version goes to the start – and would like to make everything even better …

Akai’s MPC series started in 1988 with the MPC 60 model, which had a working memory capacity of 750 kilobytes and processed 12-bit samples.

Overview

iMPC Pro is an app for playing and recording predominantly percussive musical elements like drum beats and is offered for iOS and Android.

Also see: AKAI iMPC Available on Android

The program is divided into five workspaces and offers up to 64 tracks for playing a song.

Each track can be loaded with up to 64 sounds and automatically creates a channel strip in the mixer.

The mixer’s channel mixers are equipped with three-band equalizers and three global send effects.

The timeline view shows the recorded notes and can be arranged as sequences to a song.

The iMPC Pro is equipped with more than 1400 sounds of different musical genres and can be extended by samples from different sources. The sounds are triggered with a 4×4 pad matrix on the touchscreen.

An Akai MPC element or a programmable MIDI controller is required to play the sounds dynamically.

For live use, the sequences can be individually and precisely clocked with the “Next Sequence” function and edited with special, motion-controlled effects.

Thanks to the clear operating structure of the iMPC Pro, the first drumbeats can be generated very quickly.

The included sounds sound neat and cover a wide musical spectrum, ranging from hip-hop, dubstep, dance and electro music to world music.

The latching note-repeat function can be used for breaks and fills in live mode, but also for inserting the notes.

The recorded notes can be subsequently quantized and moved and copied as required in the Timeline view.

The included sounds can be expanded in the “Program” area by means of own samples, resampling, a scratch-function paired with songs or by microphone recordings.

In addition, the interfaces “AudioPaste” and “InterApp Audio” can be used to create and insert sounds with third-party apps.

All sounds can be formed with filter and volume envelopes and roughened with a distortion or bit crusher.

For Daft-Punk-like pump effects, there is a sidechain compressor with the funny “Turbo Duck”, which acts on the entire output signal.

Mixing & Export

The Mixer section offers the effects Reverb, Delay and Chorus / Flanger. These are suitable for moderate and vivid sound processing thanks to automatable parameters. An additional effect slot allows the integration of inter-app audio-compatible effects, whose selection continues to grow.

The recorded sequences can be exported via Soundcloud and Audiocopy or as WAVFile and can be reused as drumloops or percussive underlays in music production or DJ programs.

Interaction

In addition to the interfaces that iMPC Pro offers, the app can also be integrated into other apps via Inter-AppAudio.

We were able to use the Akai App easily in connection with the virtual studio environment GarageBand to implement complex recording setups.

Conclusion

The iMPC Pro App from Akai is well done and can be used to create awesome Beats. The extensive functional equipment allows a versatile use in the studio or live mode.

Professional users can get their money’s worth with the app because it can be expanded by inter-app audio in many areas and integrated into other production environments.

Also read: Best Music Making Apps For Producers