Akai LPD 8, a little review

So I got myself another control surface (I’ll take a photo of them all together one of these days), this time it was a Akai LPD 8.
I got it when me and Golden Rocket Pony drove 90 scandinavian miles to Bamberg, because that’s where Thomann has it’s show-house.

Anyways, the Akai LPD 8 is packed in a clear plastic, with paper for a back. You know, like the cheap headphones you bought when you where young. It comes with a CD where the manual and drivers are. I Installed the program to modify what button/knobs sends what where, but I dont think I’ll ever use it.The USB cable that comes with is long, witch is nice.

The knobs are Akai LPD 8 has 8 pads and 8 knobs. The knobs are small, but spaced so that it’s not really a problem. They do what they are supposed to. The pads are a bit numb. This wouldent do anything if you’re launching a clip or to from Ableton Live, but when you try to do a little bit of finger-drumming (especially since you watched that guy with that awesome system on youtube that you wanna get as good as) it’s a bit of a problem. I never had that problem at all with the Korg padKontrol, those pad’s are awesome.

So far very good for it’s price 510:- was what it cost when I bought it, but now the real bad thing comes in. I sometimes get ghost hits. I’ve located it to a special angle and the center of a pad. This is bad, it makes the drumming sound like hickups. I sent a question to the Akai support but haven’t received any information back if this is a known issue or a fault with my unit.

It’s pretty hard to search for this error on the Internet, all ghost tap and double tap etc just gives bogus information, I tried to find comfort in my multiracial homies back at #hexawe, but they where useless 🙂

Anyway’s I’ll probably keep it, wait for something to pop-up, maybe modify it (like there are videos of ppl doing with other akai – gear) I’ll just use my Korg padKontrol for the fingerdrumming.

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