All hail japanese Supergeeks!

After already being really, really naughty with the customers who bought MPC 2000s in the late 90s Akai lead the introduction of the MPC 2500 pretty much to a fantastic desaster again. Anyone recalls? The MPC 2000 was so buggy when released that it represented more of an option to a hardware then a finished product. It took months until it was really useable but the cult around the MPC Line (originating back to the superb Roger Linn's MPC 60 to 3000 models) was so strong that it had almost no influence on reviewers in audio magazines. So it seems history is repeating again - hey wait, don't fall asleep! this time the story ends up much more interesting...

The purchase of the shiny new black polished MPC 2500 soon brought headache and anger management problems to some users who bought the machine right after release: Twice a week the MPC would freeze while generating folders or destroy older work by overwriting existing data. Patterns and sounds with long filenames could be saved but when the machine was asked to reload them the filenames had already been shortened, therefore those programs where corrpupted too. But that wasn't all the pain: The menu of the MPC 2500 XL would erraticly jump inbetween menu-points and the keys & jogwheel would start to feel old within a few days of hardcore editing. When asked about refunds or repairs the shop where you bought the MPC would point to Akai service which in return would simply not answer your emails. The regularly updated new MPC 2500 OSs solved some of the problems but the erratic file-managment persisited. In one word: Horrfying.

But this time the minutious effort of the Akai engineers to drive the new MPC 2500 users into sheer madness has been destroyed by some humane japanese code warrioirs with reverse engineering abilities. Hey, its just a computer with a harddisk after all, so it can be hacked. The so called JJ OS is the effort of a japanese programer group called Japenese Jenius that already hacked the cute little MPC 1000 and gained extreme cult status in the electronic music world within short time. In an age where modifications and extreme circuit bending activities are a popular sport it is not so surprsing that someone modifies an existing OS of a hardware. Nevertheless its amazing that a private person can fulfill the task of what a complete development facility seems to be incapable of. Shame on you Mr. and Mrs. Akai. You can do better then that. Yes, we know that Akai has been sold to Numark and there has been changes. But so what? Are you people selling hardware or not? If the MPC is not finished why don't you simply make the OS open source and give the people an SDK at their disposition?

However. The JJ OS for the 2500er is based on the hack of the MPC 1000 OS, therefore some features of the 2500er are wiped out when you install it. But since you gain some other very valuable hot features which nobody thought would be implemented any day soon it is pretty much worthwile to try it out. A CD-burning option is anounced for 2007.

One question remains: Why did Akai ever fire Roger Linn?

bob humid, digging deep for bobsonic