KVR Audio

trusampler · Post by **trusampler** » Thu May 14, 2015 1:43 am

On another note,it'd be nice to check out how the VIP software works,even without the board. Whats the chances Akai will offer a demo of the software

i kid

yomanfree · Post by **yomanfree** » Thu May 14, 2015 10:14 am

I believe it is not so bad for customer and whatever it was -from my opinion- a good plan to wait: it will allow in July/Aug. to definitly compare the NI Kontrol S (and promized new implemntation) with the advance, fact based.
Additionnally we can reasonnably think (based on last NI annuncement) that they could prepare a Kontrol S with a display (more or less like it has been the case with maschine studio).
yo

trusampler wrote:I'm gonna put this baby to bed real quick, I just got off the phone with my retailer who said these boards will not be in mass production/ready for mass shipping until around July in the U.S.

There you have it, so if you we're lucky and got an early release consider yourself extremely lucky as you got one before they we're officially mass produced.

Akai has been known for jumping the gun on products actual release times, and on this one, they definitely did this. Another case of don't say your holding if your not.IMO this was not a smart move, as you just gave NI dev's a chance to catch you with your pants down. Remember their boards are already out here!

Sweetwater, being one of the largest names in the audio sales industry,had early access to a few them,but not enough units to distribute clearly. So you can pre-order one, but chances are your not gonna be playing with it, for a couple months!

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 1:41 am

Received my Advance-61 yesterday. So far I'm really impressed. The installation went without a hitch - the VIP plugin installed, fired up, scanned all my plugs, sucked up the presets (even those that Kore couldn't, like Omni 2 and u-he synths), and was ready to play in about 20 minutes.

After a couple recent upgrades that just completely shit the bed (Rapture Pro, e.g.), it was great to see a professionally done rollout.

Preset surfing is quick and easy. I believe the underlying technology is based on Big Tick's Zen - in any case, it All. Just. Worked. The only important exceptions are that I haven't found a way to get at the presets within Kore (unsurprisingly), and have had no luck importing 3rd-party banks for the synths I've tried.

The unit is relatively lightweight (certainly compared to my MPK) The keys are semi-weighted. Feels nice to me. The knobs are big and chunky, easy to grab, and the pads are fine. I would've preferred it to be slightly wider, move the Pitch/Mod wheels down next to the keys, and have room for 16 pads. But 8 is okay. The screen is easy to navigate and read.

Although one can choose a DAW in the kbd browser, it's not clear if that does anything yet. Transport functions do nothing in Bitwig, for example, unless I'm missing something. AFAIK, no remote scripts yet, except for Live, and no API for users to write their own. As announced, no support yet for FX plugs, but I suppose those won't be too far behind.

All in all, it's great. Since I powered it on, I've barely looked at my computer screen. Hoping for FX soon, more DAW control (transport + track volume/pan would be enough), and some sound design stuff would be great (no reason I can see that the software couldn't store variations and morph them, à la Kore). But am having tons of fun with it just the way it is.

trusampler · Post by **trusampler** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 1:54 am

great news, what retailer had them in stock? 61 key

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 2:04 am

trusampler wrote:great news, what retailer had them in stock? 61 key

Got my 61-key at Sweetwater - preordered a couple of months ago or so.

stikygum · Post by **stikygum** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 6:06 am

gnosis123 wrote:
trusampler wrote:great news, what retailer had them in stock? 61 key
Got my 61-key at Sweetwater - preordered a couple of months ago or so.

I'm guessing you're in the states and not Paris then. Interesting as I thought I heard that the 49 Advance would be available first with the 61 and 25 to follow.

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 11:57 am

stikygum wrote:
gnosis123 wrote:
trusampler wrote:great news, what retailer had them in stock? 61 key
Got my 61-key at Sweetwater - preordered a couple of months ago or so.
I'm guessing you're in the states and not Paris then. Interesting as I thought I heard that the 49 Advance would be available first with the 61 and 25 to follow.

Yes, in the U.S. temporarily. I think the 25s are also in now. Wasn't interested in the 49, so didn't ask...

yomanfree · Post by **yomanfree** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 5:36 pm

Hi Gnosis and thanks a lot for your info
I keep an eye on this keyboard since 2 months, and not a lot info exists.
Do you know how it works (and capabilities) without PC connection ? Can you control some hardware using midi out and use the arp?
(I hope too that Akai will propose the DAW control soon ...)

Thanks a lot
Yo

gnosis123 wrote:Received my Advance-61 yesterday. So far I'm really impressed. The installation went without a hitch - the VIP plugin installed, fired up, scanned all my plugs, sucked up the presets (even those that Kore couldn't, like Omni 2 and u-he synths), and was ready to play in about 20 minutes.

After a couple recent upgrades that just completely shit the bed (Rapture Pro, e.g.), it was great to see a professionally done rollout.

Preset surfing is quick and easy. I believe the underlying technology is based on Big Tick's Zen - in any case, it All. Just. Worked. The only important exceptions are that I haven't found a way to get at the presets within Kore (unsurprisingly), and have had no luck importing 3rd-party banks for the synths I've tried.

The unit is relatively lightweight (certainly compared to my MPK) The keys are semi-weighted. Feels nice to me. The knobs are big and chunky, easy to grab, and the pads are fine. I would've preferred it to be slightly wider, move the Pitch/Mod wheels down next to the keys, and have room for 16 pads. But 8 is okay. The screen is easy to navigate and read.

Although one can choose a DAW in the kbd browser, it's not clear if that does anything yet. Transport functions do nothing in Bitwig, for example, unless I'm missing something. AFAIK, no remote scripts yet, except for Live, and no API for users to write their own. As announced, no support yet for FX plugs, but I suppose those won't be too far behind.

All in all, it's great. Since I powered it on, I've barely looked at my computer screen. Hoping for FX soon, more DAW control (transport + track volume/pan would be enough), and some sound design stuff would be great (no reason I can see that the software couldn't store variations and morph them, à la Kore). But am having tons of fun with it just the way it is.

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 8:10 pm

yomanfree wrote:Hi Gnosis and thanks a lot for your info
I keep an eye on this keyboard since 2 months, and not a lot info exists.
Do you know how it works (and capabilities) without PC connection ? Can you control some hardware using midi out and use the arp?

Manuals for the keyboard and VIP are downloadable on the product page of the Akai site. More videos seem to be coming now, too.

To your questions: yes, you can do both.

yomanfree · Post by **yomanfree** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 9:41 pm

Yes I already read it (I know that it is supposed to do). But have you tried to check that it works ?

(DAW control is supposed to work too: "We've created presets for several popular DAWs so you can use Advance 49 with your projects in the most logical and intuitive way possible. You can use Advance 49's MIDI Mode to control your DAW (see the Modes section for more information).". In the mode section, we can see bitwig )
Thanks
Yo

gnosis123 wrote:
yomanfree wrote:Hi Gnosis and thanks a lot for your info
I keep an eye on this keyboard since 2 months, and not a lot info exists.
Do you know how it works (and capabilities) without PC connection ? Can you control some hardware using midi out and use the arp?
Manuals for the keyboard and VIP are downloadable on the product page of the Akai site. More videos seem to be coming now, too.

To your questions: yes, you can do both.

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 10:04 pm

yomanfree wrote:Yes I already read it (I know that it is supposed to do). But have you tried to check that it works ?

Midi CCs and the Arp output show up in Midi Monitor, so you should be good to go.

yomanfree wrote:(DAW control is supposed to work too

Yeah, that doesn't seem to be there yet. The transport buttons work for Live, but not for Bitwig (and probably the others) yet. I would bet that will be there in the next update (maybe with a few more plugin maps). The only bug I've found so far is that when you load the default Kontakt preset, it crashes VIP on OS X 10.8.5.

Big Tick · Post by **Big Tick** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 2:14 pm

gnosis123 wrote:Preset surfing is quick and easy. I believe the underlying technology is based on Big Tick's Zen - in any case, it All. Just. Worked.

have had no luck importing 3rd-party banks for the synths I've tried.

If the plugin supports banks (like Rhino) you can load the plugin in VIP, load your 3rd-party bank in the plugin, then right-click menu on the import button and select 'import bank'. Or, if the bank comes as a fxb, you can try to drop the fxb file directly into VIP. Otherwise you will have to enable 'autoimport' in the same menu, then go through all the presets of the 3rd party bank.

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 2:49 pm

Big Tick wrote:If the plugin supports banks (like Rhino) you can load the plugin in VIP, load your 3rd-party bank in the plugin, then right-click menu on the import button and select 'import bank'. Or, if the bank comes as a fxb, you can try to drop the fxb file directly into VIP. Otherwise you will have to enable 'autoimport' in the same menu, then go through all the presets of the 3rd party bank.

Yes, since I wrote that post, I've followed this method and it mostly works (couldn't try it for Rhino, since 1.0 doesn't include a plugin map for it; hope that is coming). For some plugs, even auto import doesn't seem to work (e.g., Chromaphone), but I assume that's an anomaly that will get fixed. Am filing bugs on those.

One other plugin, a very important one for me, doesn't work with the above methods, namely Kore. Since it is a plugin host, the 'kore sounds' seem not to be exposed to VIP - is there a way to get at them? That would be absolutely killer.

Big Tick · Post by **Big Tick** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:23 pm

When auto import doesn't work, 99% of the time it is because the plugin doesn't notify the host (in this case VIP) that a new patch has been selected. So this is typically a plugin bug and you'll need to file it with AAS in the case of Chromaphone.

What if you load Kore in VIP, then click once on the import button ? does it import the current Kore Sound into VIP ?

For Rhino, you don't necessarily need the plugin map. Just enable Rhino in the VIP plugin manager, and it should automatically import Rhino's factory patches using the above method. They just won't come up tagged, and you'll probably want to modify the controls mapping.

gnosis123 · Post by **gnosis123** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:42 pm

Big Tick wrote:When auto import doesn't work, 99% of the time it is because the plugin doesn't notify the host (in this case VIP) that a new patch has been selected. So this is typically a plugin bug and you'll need to file it with AAS in the case of Chromaphone.

Okay.

What if you load Kore in VIP, then click once on the import button ? does it import the current Kore Sound into VIP ?

Tried this before and it didn't work, but now I see that it depends on the plugin loaded in Kore. Saving one preset at a time works with some plugs, not others. Oddly, while doing this I noticed that using any NI plugs with VIP -- aside from Kore and Reaktor -- causes VIP to immediately blow chow (whether the plugs are in VIP or Kore-within-VIP). This didn't happen at first (at least not with Massive and Absynth), so not sure what's going on.

Anyway, I can save Koresounds that use, e.g., Alchemy. They are all named 'Default', but contain the correct Koresound. And Auto import works, if I allow duplicate patches. 'Import Bank', unfortunately, gives me 128 copies, all named 'Default', of whatever preset I had loaded in Kore.

So it looks like one can curate a small set of Kore sounds by adding them one at a time or using Auto Import, then renaming them. Won't do it for all my 50k Koresounds, but maybe the top 50...

Akai advance release date?