Akai Z8 Digital Sampler

Tired of inserting virtual samplers into your tracks only to see your Mac or PC grind to halt with CPU overload? If so, you'll love these feature rich hardware alternatives. Capable of 24-bit/96kHz operation, the sonic quality of these two digital samplers is second to none. Combine that with a powerful synth engine that features no less than 36 different resonant filter types and a comprehensive mod matrix and you can do some serious sound mangling. However, unlike any other digital sampler (hard or soft), the freely assignable Q-Link controls allow unprecedented real-time interaction and performance possibilities, especially live.

Overview:

The Akai Z8 is the world's first 24bit/96kHz hardware based digital sampler. Designed for professional audio production, the Z series samplers offer all the advantages of dedicated hardware plus the interface power of ak.Sys PC/Mac control and networking software.

This sampler has been developed using the undisputed skills of all our worldwide engineering teams in tandem and the result are a pair of super-samplers with the heritage of the "S" series but incorporating operational features from the unique "MPC" range and effects from the highly acclaimed "DPS16" and our stomp boxes.

At the heart of the new Z series is new custom designed LSI sampling engine which, coupled with a high performance Intel Strong Arm CPU provides ultra fast audio processing. All these features put together make for an extraordinarily versatile instrument which is perfectly suited for both studio and live applications. A new breed of digital sampler from the company that set the standard in sampling technology.

For the first time, a digital sampler now gives you immediate live hands on control. The Z8's eight Q-Link knobs can be separately assigned to allow flexible realtime performance control of a wide variety of selectable parameters including level, pan, filter cut-off and resonance, start offset, effect send, tuning and more. Control of an entire program or a sound assigned to a single keygroup is possible. Each assignable Q-Link knob can generate MIDI controller data so that all performance information can be recorded and played back from a sequencer.

The Akai Z8 offer 6-pole digital dynamic filters (3 x 2-pole filters per voice) which allow realtime control of the cut-off frequency and resonance from the Q-Link knobs or via MIDI control change messages. The new filter design not only supports all filter designs available in the powerful S5000/S6000 but allows new variations such as the triple filter consisting of three independent 2-pole filter blocks.

The brand new 24bit/96kHz 4-channel multi effects processor offers over 40 effect types. Alongside the standard reverb, chorus, flanger, phaser, auto and touch wah, rotary speaker, pitch shift, delay and more including compressors, noise gates, touch and auto wahs , you'll find some different and extremely useful effects such as the Pitch Corrector (for keeping those wandering vocals in tune).

Akai Z8 Features:

24-bit/96kHz operation (polyphony is halved when running at 96kHz)

Q-Link knobs for realtime performance control

Automation of commonly performed sampling functions such as normalise and sample assignment

36/6-pole resonant filter types with special 'Triple' mode

New 24bit/96kHz 4-channel effects processor

Quick FX for rapid sound manipulation

Capacity for up to 512Mb on board SDRAM using off-the-shelf memory

USB host/slave connection - use off-the-shelf USB keyboards for easier naming and USB drives.

ak.Sys software for computer control over USB

64-voice polyphony

Dual independent LFOs with internal and external modulation control and MIDI clock sync

Balanced analogue I/Os providing full 24bit/96kHz A/D and D/A conversion

Sample rate conversion

Choice of analogue or digital assignable multiple outputs

Sound Library compatibility with a wide range of Akai and other formats

FAT32/DOS disk format and .wav implemented as native format

.AIFF also supported using Mac ak.Sys

Removable front panel