I haven’t tried the Live algorithms so i cant compare. But i would say the warping is okay for some things. Ive mostly tried it on some vocal acapellas ive put on some music. I wouldn’t use the vocals alone with the warping, but it works fine in a mix. I haven’t really tried warping whole songs or anything so don’t know how well that would work. But i have a feeling it its going to sound kinda bad.
I’ll see if i can do some testing when i get some time.
Ok ThomasO, thanks a lot! 
This is good info.
The SOS review mentioned only getting seven 4-minute stems loaded into RAM before being told “memory full”
That’s unfortunate.
Streaming from disk would really open the Force up.
I have read somewhere that it will give you the memory full message earlier if you try to load big files. But if you load several shorter samples you will get more into it.
I really love this thing even if it has some flaws. I just focus on the positive rather than the negative. And i think that is one of the reasons this box isnt more hyped. Everyone seems to focus on all the stuff it cant do. But i find that is very typical these days. hehe. And some early promises that Akai have spent a bit too long to bring out.
I’m hoping for disk streaming too. That way i could be even lazier when making songs. hehe. Or i could sample longer loops.
I get that.
I like to focus on the positives too. It’s often where the limitations are that we are our most creative.
The Force can do some amazing things. It’s because of these things that I am super interested in it. But I don’t need it for track making, I have plenty of gear that will accomplish that. I’m looking at a tool for both live performance, and the occasional promo DJ mix. This is why I am so hung up on its flaw, the lack of disk streaming.
We all have unique needs.
If I had no gear and was coming over from a DAW workflow, I’d definitely pick one up for track making and probably wait more patiently for the disk streaming update to happen.
Yeah, we all have different needs. I have put together a 4 track jam as a test, and that wasnt a big problem. But i did part up my song to shorter clips, and made drumgroups of everything. That way i only used a very small amount of sample memory. But if i was playing live and where more dependent on the possibillity of loading complete songs i would be looking at different gear.
I think it understandable that people who bought it with a particular use case in mind based on misleading or withheld information are focusing on the negative. It was hyped as a performance instrument for live artists and DJs. Clearly unless you are a finger drummer, use short loops or specialise in DJ microsets, it falls way short in that regard . If you only use it as a studio tool, sure there’s no issue with disk streaming. But I think many people, myself included, saw it as the perfect standalone device to cover the DJ and live set bases. Luckily I resisted the temptation to jump in as an early adopter and I’m glad I did. It’s not like disk streaming is new tech. The OT had it from the get go nearly a decade ago. Even the Deluge, a boutique device coded by a single individual, has it.
As I understand it, the chip inside the Force is from 2014 and I’ve read that this makes it about half as powerful as a current iPad. If you are planning a device that covers so much ground and needs to be stable in a live environment, the decision to use that chip means that the device was hobbled from the onset for that use case . Given that they are now offloading them at at least a 30 % discount on launch price a year ago, I strongly suspect that they are clearing their stock of units with the underpowered chip and a Force 2 with an upgraded chip and RAM is probably in development.
The widespread vociferous criticism is a useful indicator of what the market wants. A modicum of market research for V1 would I’m sure have revealed that disk streaming is high up the priority list for a sizeable number of performers of electronic music. Someone somewhere decided to favour the economy of the older cheaper chip and it has bitten them.
If this is indeed the case, I’d rather wait for that and continue to put miles on my Octatrack in the meantime, rather than wait for disk streaming on the V1.
The G.A.S. has now escaped the chamber.
Also, are these the same chips as in the Live/X?
Yeah, i can clearly see why those people are negative. But does it really help posting the same thing over and over again? Im not talking about this post on elektronauts. But ive seen the same people complaining over at other forums. But Akai’s marketing didnt do anyone any favors when this thing where launched. It promised everything and then some.
If you do a little bit of work, it shouldnt be that hard to use this for playing long livesets of your own music. Just prepare the samples a bit.
The CPU might be weaker than a modern Ipad, but i havent had any problems so far. I had a track going last night. About 14-16 tracks with samples. I had about 20 insert effects in total. Cpu usage was 13%. They launched the new MPC One. That has the same cpu. I still havent seen alot of people complaining about running out of cpu power on these, but alot of people are complaining about it being old.
I’m pretty shure that disk streaming is problematic because of the cpu in this thing. I would guess it is more about how to implement it. Since it is so open, it would be hard to get disk streaming on all samples all the time. And how much latency will be accepted. 8 stereo audio tracks wouldn be that hard. But if you have 20 tracks of keygroups with 4 x 88 samples pr keygroup, and all should stream at the same time it would be hard on most hardware i guess. And i think Akai dont know how to solve all these things in the best way.
I hate to say it, but, well, sometimes. Yes.
It may not help the vibe of a forum, but if it is done constructively it can make change happen.
Case in point, MIDI sequencing on A4 and AR.
Most widely complained about missing feature here. Countless threads.
Elektron was listening and made it happen, and I’m sure it wasn’t an easy task.
No company wants the first web searches for their product to direct to complaints about missing features.
There are many other examples, but this one seemed fitting for Elektronauts.
Yes, the entire Akai standalone & DENONDJ ecosystem revolves around this same exact system-on-a-chip. They all use the same board.
But I must state again that I have no idea whatsoever why someone would want to be DJing on a force instead of using the new standalone DenonDJ media players, for example…
Yall are aware of the recent DenonDJ offerings? Now they even introduced a new battery-powered 2 deck DJing system:
https://www.denondj.com/prime-go
I’d pick something like this over the force for DJing any day of the week, and twice on syndays. Costs about the same too IIRC
The extra four to six tracks for loops and what not.
The overlap between production and DJing. (DJ controllers/players being the more single use appliance)
That said, I love what Denon is doing and giving Pioneer a run for their money.
If you need extra loops on top of tracks, y not use some other sampler along with? These all support ableton link these days.
InMusic is well aware of the current merging of DJing and playing live, and the way they show it off in their promos is via connecting Akai devices with DenonDJ devices, syncing the two via the link port.
Pioneer has the same strategy with their media players and toraiz gear. Both use link port for syncing.
Right now I have a DDJ-1000.
The 3rd and 4th track are nice, but I want more, and I prefer a single interface.
The Force is appealing to me.
The OT is the way to go here. Not a perfect setup for DJing but it’d be better then anything Akai can provide. I’m saying this as a MPC Live owner. If you push this machine too hard you will get nasty noise glitches and drop outs. Been there done that with the Live. I’m sure is the same way with the Force. If you want a sequencer to run your midi rig or if you plan on using programs of simple short samples then have at it, but for clips, long samples and loops I’ll go with the OT all day everyday.
This is good info. Thanks!
Yep, might as well stick with it. It does/can perform these functions I need well.
It’s love hate but at least with this go around with OT I’m more clear headed than before.
I own both as a compliment to each other. I quickly realized the MPC limitation once I started using the MPC outside of its classic duties especially with the audio record mode which is separate from the normal sample recording. The audio recorder in theory is cool because it records audio the length of you sequence then you can edit the sample in many ways, kind of like a daw but there’s noticeable latency and like I said glitching if you have too many other tracks going on. I’m sure the Force will have similar issues if they are using the same chips.
How many tracks of audio and samples did you run when you started getting glitches? And how many effects?
No doubt. The Akai standalones differ greatly from many other existing instruments in this regard, you can max out the resources of the unit just like with a computer. With most other hardware, you have more limitations, but within those limitations, you are free to abuse the system as much as you want and still will be able to retain glitch-free performance.
This is also why I’d rather use dedicated DJ media players for DJing. Sure enough, I cannot spam parametric eqs / filters and fx willynilly on the decks, but at least everything will always work glitch-free (unless the firmware is buggy).
