Hello everyone! I recently bought the Akai LPD8 Laptop Pad for use as a drum machine in FL Studio. It seems like a solid piece of hardware, but I'm very new to audio hardware. First, I got it plugged in and working with the provided hardware; I assigned notes to each of the 8 pads, and got FL Studio to play those notes on the piano roll for synths, etc.

But my real question is: How can I simply get the LPD8 to function as a drum machine? What kind of software/plugins do I need, and how do I set it up? Thank you very much!

just get a drum plugin (or whatever plugins/synth has drums too, really) and map the correct notes on the LPD8. most of them map their instruments to notes in the 2 lower octaves, usually following the General MIDI standard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI#Percussive

some plugins to get you started:

http://www.kvraudio.com/q.php?search=1&tg[]=109

hope this helps.

cheers,
Aldo