120 Years of Electronic Music
Electronic Musical Instrument 1870 - 1990
Akai Electronics 1984
Akai Electronic Musical Instruments, a division of the Japanese audio and video consumer electronics company Akai Electric Company, Ltd, entered the electronic musical instrument world in 1984 with the first in a series of affordable samplers the S612, an 8bit digital sampler module. The s612 was superceded in 1986 by the 16 bit range of professional s900-s3000 available as rackmounted modules or as keyboard versions.The current model the S3000 includes a built in CD ROM drive, hard-disk audio recording, Q-list programming, a SMPTE reader/generator, expanded sample editing and Assignable Program Modulation (ASM) for adding analog synth style processing to sampled sounds and digital outputs. Akai also produced several Digital MIDI Sequencers/ Synthesisers such as the MPC range (MIDI Production Center) an integrated sampler/drum machine/MIDI sequencer and the MPC3000 a 32-voice polyphonyic, 16-bit sequencer/synthesiser.
Akai Electronic Instruments
The Akai S612 sampler (1985)
The Akai S900 sampler (1986)
The Akai MPC60 Digital Sampler/Drum Machine and MIDI Sequencer (1987)
The Akai EVI1000 Digital Wind Instrument (1987)
The Akai S1000 sampler (1988)
The Akai S1100 sampler (1990)
The Akai CD3000 Digital Sampler (1993)
The Akai MPC3000 Digital MIDI Sequencer/Synth/Sampler (1994)
images: © 1996-98 Akai Corporation
Sources:
Akai Music Corporate Home Page
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