The Spank! Records Blog

Akai XR20 and MPC500 Drum Machines available now!

Looking for a self contained, analogue unit to add personalized samples, beats or production touches to your live set? How about a portable production/recording unit that syncs up perfectly with your home MPC set-up?

Versatile enough to meet the demands of both producers & DJ's, new to the store are the Akai XR20 & MPC500. These two units allow you to record, sample and arrange your compositions wherever you are, with completely self-contained memory & playback functionality to capture your music where-so-ever the inspiration may strike.

Both units can also function as a DJ sampler or beat production studio. Wired into a live mixer set-up, these drum machines can sample and playback multiple loops in real time, ideal for DJs looking to get more adventurous with live mash-ups or more complex mixing.

Working as a electronic beat sampler, you can add your own drum & percussion sounds to a live performance, choosing from either the built-in drum samples included with the product or your own samples recorded into the unit. Utilizing this feature you can add new grooves to your live DJ set by playing along in real time or sync-ing up pre-recorded loops.

Thanks Matt.
Spank!

Coming Soon! Motu Ultralite-mk3 Firewire Audio Interface.

The Motu Ultralite-mk3 is a very versatile product. Not only does it function as a high quality digital recording sound card with 10 separate inputs and 14 separate outputs, it also includes inbuilt hardware DSP-driven effects processing to inputs, outputs, and busses independent of your host computer to function as a rack mixing unit as part of a live rig.

Utilizing the CueMix FX software tailored for operation with the unit, preset mixes used for recording can be applied and saved to the sound card, with the backlit front panel used to adjust compression, parametric EQ, track levels, dry/wet mixes and reverb on the fly in a live environment. This allows you to take the sound card with you, independent of the computer and still re-create your recorded mixing levels for a live show.

Connect all of your studio gear, including microphones, guitars, synths, keyboards, drum machines, effects processors and MIDI devices and the Motu Ultralite operates just as any other USB/Firewire sound card does. The inbuilt effects unit allows you to add Classic Reverb with lengths up to 60 seconds. Further sculpt your sound with 7-band parametric EQ featuring filter types carefully modelled after British analog console EQs. Choose between two forms of compression: a conventional compressor and the Leveler, an accurate model of the legendary LA-2A optical compressor that provides vintage, musical automatic gain control. All these effects are applied at the hardware level, reducing the strain on CPU.

Arriving in store soon, be sure to check out the Motu Ultralite-mk3 Audio Interface as an addition to your home studio or live rig set-up.

Thanks.

Matt.
Spank!