Akai, the makers of the legendary MPC lineup of beat-making machines, has just announced their new flagship Keyboard controller series called Advance. The New
Akai Pro Advance Series Keyboards
will come in 25-key, 49-key, and 61-key variants and includes high-quality features such as the semi-weighted keybed, official MPC RGB backlit Pads, control knobs, rubberized mod & pitch wheels, and a high resolution full-color screen to view and change parameters.
The Akai Advance 25, Advance 49, and Advance 61 are full out MIDI controllers so they should be able to work with nearly any software out there that requires keyboard control. We recently reviewed the
Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol Keyboards
which were designed to work flawlessly with NI’s own Komplete software suite and I can already see the parallels between these two keyboard controller lineups. While the Komplete Keyboards work the best within the Komplete environment, it seems that the
will work well with lots of other software. We’ll try to get one of these in the lab for the full out review treatment so stay tuned! Check out the
website in the meantime.
What are your thoughts on the new Advance Akai Pro keyboards? Do you like the NI Keyboards better than these or are you likely to invest in the Akai Controllers? Let us know in the comments section below!