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Akai Professional MPX8 SD Sample Pad Controller Reviews

Sample Player with 8 x Velocity- and Pressure-sensitive Pads, Onboard Reverb, Tuning Control, Editor Software (Mac/PC), and Both MIDI and USB Connectivity

Simplicity is the key to the Akai Professional MPX8 SD sample pad controller. This versatile, compact sample player gives you eight great-feeling velocity-sensitive and pressure-sensitive pads you can use to trigger samples and sounds. An included drag-and-drop sample editor simplifies managing your sounds, and the MPX comes with a massive library of built-in sounds to get you started. Onboard options include tuning control and reverb, and with both MIDI and USB connectivity, it's easy to integrate your Akai Professional MPX8 into the rest of your rig.

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$109.00

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Highest Rated Reviews

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It does what you need and does it well

By Sweetwater Customer on January 24, 2024

I don't understand why this little unit has gotten so many poor reviews. It's a very simple device - it plays back samples that you load in from an SD card from either the eight pads or from MIDI. And once you get your SD card and your "drum kits" set up, it does this quite well. And the price point is pretty good - there's really nothing else like this until you spend over double the price of the MPX8.

It is a bit confusing at first, and it actually works best when used with a "destructive" audio editing program like Audacity, Wavelab, Sound Forge, etc. (I'm sure you know of lots of free ones). Yes, there's software from Akai that is available, but that software is frankly confusing and doesn't actually work that well. But all you need to do is record your samples (or extract from CD or MP3 file) and copy them to the SD card - you can then create drum kits containing eight samples that it can play back. The MPX8 ONLY works with 44.1K/16-bit WAV files, mono or stereo, so you'll need to save your samples to exactly that format, which is of course exactly the audio CD standard.

For example, I programmed this unit to play the intro samples to "Uptown Funk" which I had on CD, triggered by keys on my controller keyboard. I simply used my favorite audio editing program to extract the song, and then grabbed the intro and cut it into three mono 16-bit WAV files which I then copied to the SD card from my laptop. From there I created a new drum kit and specified that the first three pads play back those three WAV files. The loaded WAVs can be assigned to any MIDI key number, and can be played back as either one-shot, held, or looped. They can also be tuned up or down by four semitones (if you need more you should do it in your audio editor), and there is also onboard reverb which is a really nice touch. Note that the manual states that you can only use mono WAV files, but there's been an update since then that allows stereo files as well.

Other reviews have complained about the time it takes to load the samples, and I have to wonder how big the WAV files are that those reviewers are trying to load? No, the loading time isn't perfectly instantaneous, but it only takes a few seconds to load an entire drum kit full of samples unless the samples are many seconds long. To reduce loading time, it's best to use only mono samples unless you really need stereo, which will cut the loading time in half of course.

There are really only two limitations to the MPX8. The main one is that there's no way to turn off velocity sensitivity and have a sample that ALWAYS plays at the same volume regardless of pad or MIDI velocity, and this is definitely an inconvenience - especially in live performance when you always want a sample triggered at the same volume. Akai, can you address this in a future update?

The second limitation is minor - the unit ONLY responds to MIDI channel 10 and you can't change this. If you want to integrate this with your keyboard controller, make sure it can create a zone that will play on MIDI channel 10 or else you'll need some kind of MIDI rechannelizer box such as the MIDI Solutions Router or Event Processor.

So the bottom line is if you need dedicated sample playback, get this and ignore the software that is available for it. You don't need the software to use the unit successfully.

Exactly what I needed on stage.

By Joe H from Belleville, NJ on June 7, 2023

I purchased this MPX8 SD to run my band's intro and samples between songs. I always disliked the silence between tracks when on stage. This unit worked flawlessly for my needs. I had this next to my drum set and you just tap the unit and it plays. The pads are touch sensitive so I made sure to give it a full and direct hit.

Setup was super easy and it the unit keeps everything organized. I even picked up a second SD card to have my others bands intro and track intros/outros on there. A simple switch of the SD cards and you're all set to go. Highly recommended and easy to use.

Audio: Gersey Deoful "Intonation of the Coven Winds"

Perfect for beginners or advanced players.

By Jim from Kansas City area on September 27, 2020 Music Background: Multi Instrumentalist with over 50 years experience.

Priced perfectly for those of us who are old school and want to delve into the world of sampling. Simple to use and program but powerful enough to enhance any performance or recording needs. Just what I was expecting plus a whole lot more.

Really good sampler for the money

By shannon from Jasper, Texas on January 21, 2014 Music Background: sound renforcement

Our church uses this for samples that are in our songs during live programs works seamlessly with a drum pad over midi

my new sampler

By tommie steindl from wisconsin / chicago on September 27, 2013 Music Background: dj / remixer

i was beyond pleased with the service & attention to detail that you guys offered ... shipping was super fast ... product is great ... thanks so much .. i will be doing more business with sweetwater without a doubt

Fits my needs perfectly

By John from North Carolina on May 24, 2023 Music Background: Live musician

Small unit with good soubd! All you need is an amp. Custom samples can be tedious but they always are. I use mine for cowbell, and claps, camera sounds, galloping, and "In the Air Tonight". Some loop. Some are 1 shots. But I load them before the show and I'm good to go. My inputs/outputs have gotten iffy over time and it wouldn't power up last night - so I immediately bought another one! For less that 500 where you don't need a computer to run it? I'm not sure it has competition.

Versatile

By Charles Stobaugh from Decatur, IL on September 24, 2018

Awesome little sample player. Easy to use. Akai's online sample editor and sample library are great (download from the Akai website, don't use address in the manual, it didn't work), but I take .wavs straight from Audacity (switch off metadata) and download onto SD card and it works fine that way too. This is an easy solution if you don't want to spend hundreds more on a proper sampler. I use it for online radio bumps and as a secret weapon for my home recordings. This product fills its intended niche quite well. Sweetwater's customer service is the best I've encountered outside the local music shop. Kudos on all fronts.

Nice unit

By Kenny Zail from Atlanta on January 15, 2014 Music Background: DJ

This is just what I needed to add sound effects to my DJing. I just wish it had a cowbell sound. You can always use more cowbell. :)

Small but does the job!

By John St. Jean from Greenwood, DE on June 22, 2015

This unit is compact and very portable. The pads are very responsive and the 32GB flash card that I bought to add my own sounds really allows me to do a lot of different things with it. I can save many different kits (8 sounds on the pads per kit). It does not do what the more expensive and larger units do but for the price and space it is a keeper and definitely worth having as part of your setup.

It is what it is!

By Ken from Brooklyn, NY on November 17, 2013 Music Background: Pro Musician

If you are looking for a cheap, extremely portable sample-playback unit, then the MPX8 is for you. That's how they advertise it, and that's what it does.

The sound quality is excellent and the unit itself is very sturdy and heavier than I expected. Loading samples into it can be tedious - they need to have all metadata stripped or they won't load, even if they are 16/44.1 WAVs - and editing kits is a PITA. Hopefully they will improve the interface or at least open it up to 3rd-party developers who could no doubt turn this little beast into a monster.

My only real complaint is that, as of this writing, there is no way to disable velocity sensitivity on a per-sample basis. Otherwise it works as advertised and is a great value.

A very fine product indeed

By Mads Hennelund on August 23, 2013 Music Background: Musician

This is a very fine product!
Spend an hour or two on getting to know how to transfer your own samples to the thing, make kits, reformatting the unit so it is able to playback stereo wavs, and so on...
It plays back wavs perfectly I think. You can assign a pad to play a sample in 'loop' ("LP"), which is actually extremely usefull if you play electronically oriented music or anything where you need a drone sample playing over and over - or having a rytmical pattern playing back. Our drummer plays in sync with the backtrack, and in this environment the loop function on the mpx8 is awsome!

It is a bummer though, that whenever you scroll to the next kit (next song) it takes 20-30 seconds loading the net wavs. This has to be worked around in live situations...

all-in-all it is a fine plug-in product once you learn how to transfer your own wavs to the mpx8 (which isn't that hard). FINE FOR THE PRICE!

Mostly Decent Simple Sample Player

By Tommy Tranq from Silver Spring, MD on July 3, 2023 Music Background: Electronic Music

The Akai MPX8SD is a very useful sample player for live performance. I never was drawn to using it in the studio but if you wanted to load samples and record a performance live with the pads that might be cool. My use for the MPX8SD was playing back looping vocal snippets, playing them rhythmically in time with my sequencers and drum machine for my live set. I was streaming my sets on Twitch and got positive feedback explicitly for the use of the MPX8SD. Playback of samples is basic and I opted to set my pad triggering to the latching mode. This way I could hit a pad on the downbeat and it would sustain, USUALLY looping in time, until I hit the pad again. I say usually looping in time because occasionally the samples would be altered and the sample lengths would get wonky. This happened infrequently. The pads can also be set to gate or just trigger. So all bases are covered. At least once I triggered the samples from an external MIDI device and some of the successive MIDI notes were ignored. For my uses, I actually enjoyed this because it gave an uncertain element of probability to the sample playback, which I found very pleasing. For the money performance sample playback has never been easier.

Good Value in an entry level sample pad

By R Marks from silicon valley on March 21, 2014 Music Background: amateur musician/composer/sound guy

Lightweight build and feel but very nice response from sample pads. Impressive free sample downloads. Unimpressive kit editing software. WILL utilize user's stereo .wav samples (manual says mono only) but they must be pre-trimmed before you load them. 1/4" outputs may be impedance balanced, but do NOT provide inverted signal on ring of TRS connector (package says balanced output, manual says use TS connector). Noise floor (hum) using provided usb power supply is not terrific. Overall very useful for adding percussion to home recordings or samples to live performance. Might be troublesome adding quiet nature sounds to a film score due to S/N.

good starter

By andrew inman from seneca, PA on November 27, 2020

It's not a bad unit. However, I got serious and invested in a Maschine instead. I did have trouble with the unit reading the sd card. It never wanted to work even if I formatted it the way the directions said. Still, the sounds were usable inside the hardware. I would recommend this for someone who just wants something simple to have fun with. It definitely is not for anyone serious about producing though.

Cheap, No Computer

By Mike on December 9, 2013 Music Background: Producer

It seems like everything I would want in theory, but quickly I realized how many limitations there are. This product seems like some kind of way for akai to re purpose old sampler parts or something. Samples take a long time to load, files are very limited, and most importantly it will not sync loops or run batteries. BUT, for one shot samples or loops that do not need to be really synchronized it's great. The pads are very tactile and crisp and I can see how this would be useful for some basic drum jams or as a sound board for DJing or live PA. Stuff like effects, vocal one shots, ambient drones. It's nice to get away from the computer.

Nice Pad Not What I Needed

By Sweetwater Customer on August 17, 2018 Music Background: jazz and commercial music trombone player

I'll start out by saying I'm a complete novice. I went into purchasing the MPX8 not really knowing what I wanted or needed out of a sample pad. My original thought, was that the MPX8 had a built in sound library, so that would be easy for creating beats in Logic, but I was wrong. Once I got the pad connected to my computer I was limited to the sounds in Logic. Once I was able to figure out how to use the pad to my advantage I started to enjoy working with it. Personally I felt a little limited with the 8 pads which is why I'm upgrading to the Akai MPD218 (16 pads).

I could see the benefits to the MPX8. If you had a few samples or loops that you wanted for a live show, but since the load time takes so long and I don't plan on ever using this live, I want a better/cheaper studio sample pad, which I'm hoping to get with the MPD218.

Part of my 2.5 star rating comes from ignorance on my part. It's a good pad, but there are better pads out there that will do what I need better and for the same price.

Boo

By Rowlandiv from Atl ga on January 29, 2014 Music Background: Gearhead

Was a great idea but the load time is Slooooooow. Shame cuz I was super spiked when I got it

Troublesome

By Sweetwater Customer on August 1, 2021

Impossible to use outside.
Display is considerably too dim.

The USB power connection is easily disrupted if jiggled and that's what happens when you hit/play a pad.

I am on the hunt for a different sample player.

Skips notes

By John Bass from Columbia Tn. on September 16, 2019 Music Background: Studio owner Arctic Sound Studios

I don't usually give bad reports BUT It will be useful when they get it fixed. It skips to many notes. waiting for a update to get the bugg out. Sorry
I bought it to be triggered from my Drum machine or sequencer. It wont go over 2 measures without dropping notes on a simple drum beat.

Believe the Bad Reviews

By Jeff Peterson from Sioux City, IA on January 31, 2024

Bottom line, the unit only takes wav files at a very crappy 16-bit compression. Even as a consumer product, you will have so much compression noise, that if your audio requires clarity, you will be overwhelmed with poor noisy audio. This is an embarrassment for Akai, and oddly enough they've removed any support for the product from their website.

Hot Garbage

By Sweetwater Customer on January 29, 2024

Worst piece of gear I've ever purchased in my life. I'd return it or sell it but my conscience wouldn't be able to live knowing that I subject anyone else to this atrocity.

Suuuuuuuper glitchy, load samples insanely slow (and has to load your entire custom sample library every time you switch kits even if the samples aren't in that kit), file conversion software cuts off parts of your samples, have heard portions of other samples within a separate sample…and the list goes on and on and on.

Run away!!! Run away!!!

Useless sample player - ok midi controller

By Bryan Robertson from Mishawaka, IN on September 28, 2022

It would be great if the software to load samples on the SD card actually worked, but it's so glitchy. You'll never get your sounds loaded on to this.

So Slow

By Glenn from New York on August 7, 2022 Music Background: Professional engineer and musician for 40 years.

It's so slow as to be unusable. Everything about this device is a drag, from slow load times to lousy sample management to the nasty greyish blue screen. I could tolerate all of that if it took batteries (it doesn't). I was truly disappointed with this thing because the specs read so well. It's the worst piece of gear I've ever owned. It's truly bad gear, so if you collect bad gear, this is very much for you. No updates either since the stereo update. There is no support for this thing. I wrote to Akai nicely about it with support questions and never heard back from them, not even with a form letter.

NOT PROFESSIONAL. should be called JOKE SAMPLER.

By joseph vicars on November 26, 2020 Music Background: Full time Professional Musician and Recording Artist

A while back I bought( 2) Akai MPX 16 "professional" samplers. Over the 2 decades, I have been a full-time musician I have used many different samplers at my shows to trigger drum beats, horn parts vocal bits, fx, etc. I have owned a Rolandfar sp 303, the sp 404, and sp 505, I have used Ableton/launchpad set up, Kaoss pad, and probably more that I am forgetting. So when I saw the Akai MPX 16 I thought it would be my perfect solution between price and function, but it is far from that.
To begin with, when you power it on, it immediately begins loading the first bank, which is super annoying since I never use the crappy presets in the internal bank 1. So, I wait for it to fully power up , then i have to instantly turn the dial to one of the banks I previously loaded( which is a pain in the *** on its own) . However, if I don't go exactly to the number I want, it begins to autoload a different preset. Super annoying, particularly when the display is hard to read and you are trying to perform live.
So, if i do it right, it begins to load my samples from the SD card. I use pretty large wav files for my samples, so it takes several MINUTES to load a bank IF it even loads at all. And sometimes it wont even complete that task and I have to restart it. That happens regularly.
Pertaining to the large files I use, another problem is that each bank can only hold an extremely small about of sample info. It limits me to about 3 pads to use per bank. So, if I need to quickly switch to another bank to use more than the 3 pads, then I have to turn the dial exactly to the right spot, and it takes MINUTES to load. That is, even if it does actually load. Useless in a live song. The song is over by the time it loads if it does.
The device constantly re-arranges the samples when a bank is chosen which slows it down even further if it even loads at all.

I could keep going on. I will if you like.
What I am getting at is that this device is far from "professional". It should say Joke sampler instead. I tried to email Akai about this but their contact service on the website erased my message as I sent it.
I am upset that I am stuck with two of these. DO NOT BUY IF YOU EXPECT A PROFESSIONAL SAMPLER.

skips notes

By John Bass from Columbia Tn on June 8, 2019 Music Background: Recording Studio owner since 1983

The MPX seems to not have a fast enough processor to trigger drum samples.
even if you are triggering with the onboard pads. it misses notes
It would be fine for a radio station or podcast, to trigger sound effect But for music/ drums samples no way. drums

Absolute Garbage!

By Sweetwater Customer on April 13, 2019

Avoid at all costs. Akai are no longer supporting the editor to allow it to work with new iOS updates and the software in the unit is beyond glitchy. This would be the perfect solution if Akai put some resources behind it - even if they had to double the price to make it reliable and easy to use.

Disappointment

By Sweetwater Customer from United States on July 30, 2014

Had a lot of potential. But unfortunately the internal memory is extremely low and takes way to long to load your own samples. Not at all conducive to live shows when switching from song to song. Upwards to 2 mins to load user samples every time you switch banks. Hopefully they fix this with MPX16. Could be really awesome...

No no. Thing is MONO.

By T from NYC on September 20, 2013 Music Background: Circus

(NOTE: The MPX8 can now use stereo samples with the free Firmware v1.1.01 update.)

Where does it say that in the specs or the description?
The frakin thing only takes mono samples.
Could have been a game changer for me and the 20 other people touring around with octatracks just cause the mpc can't handle or than 12 minutes of audio. Mono. Who makes something mono. Not to mention this is their only stand alone sampler being made. And it's mono. And the midi implementation is terrible. Won't change kits with a program change message. Gods. Frakin thing. Was so close to answering a ton of my problems.

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