Akai just revealed its most powerful standalone groovebox, the MPC XL. For the uninitiated, the MPC has been around since the 1980s and pretty much defined hip hop from that era. The line has continuously iterated to keep up with the times and the XL looks to be the baddest of them all.
First of all, it offers four times the processing power of previous MPCs, wich is enough to load up to 32 virtual instruments at the same time. This is assisted by a full 16GB of RAM, which is a whole lot in this era of AI tomfoolery. The XL can handle 16 audio tracks together. In my experience with previous units, this is more than enough for a full song.
It runs on a proprietary OS and features a 10-inch OLED touchscreen for making adjustments.Ther are also dozens of knobs and buttons to play with, including 16 knobs that integrate with the display for real-time feedback.
The XL features a step sequencer, but this is an MPC. The real star attraction are those 16 drum pads. These pads can be set to trigger samples and hits,but can also be programmed to initiate effects and do all kinds of other stuff. Each pad has four quadrants, one for each corner, and they are all fully adjustable.