It isn’t easy! Attending such a big event as the MusikMesse. Talking to hundreds of people, making and maintaining contacts with manufacturers, developers, “mad scientists”, etc. Our two “roving” reporters are doing a good job in collecting the latest news for you. Next to the offical news they heart some rumours on the Messe “through the grapevine”.
First off. We found out that there are some rumours of Alesis buying AKAI! So we think Akai Professional been taken over by Alesis!? This would be some major news. We will definately follow this story.
Well now we are talking about Akai anyway. We expect Akai to present a MPC500 in the coming days, here at the MusikMesse. A ‘500’ being a cheaper light version of the MPC1000 of course. But not all news is new products, as we heart as well that the Akai Z8 sampler will be discontinued. The Z4 remaining as the main sampler by Akai.
These are the scoops today. We will follow these stories of course and let you know if there are any new details as soon as possible.
April 11th, update: We did research the news on the Akai take over rumours. And we found out that AKAI, makers of the legendary MPC line of samplers, was puchased out of bankruptcy late last year! The new owners also purchased Alesis and Numark out of bankruptcy in recent years, so we can expect the same kind of comeback from AKAI!
But! Numark did not takeover Akai Pro. Numark, Alesis and Akai Pro are owned by
the same adventure capitalist. The three companies have dedicated engineering teams and remain unique entities. Akai was experiencing distribution problems in the US so Jack O’Donnell (owner of Numark, Alesis, Wavefront Semiconductor, & Ion Audio) offered to assist Akai with there distribution channels and ended up buying the company. This was best thing that could have happened to Akai Pro because now the brand has the capital
to keep producing the MPC, the most influential piece of audio hardware of the past 20 years.