Akai Professional XR20 | Beat Production Station Drum Machine with 12 Trigger Pads, Note Repeat, and 700 Sounds

this akai is the best product iv bought in a while. this came in two days with prime amazon, its potable, and it has very good/high quality sounds. this is best machine to buy for anyone, not just beginners. this machine is the biggest distraction from me getting any of my work done, so i had to put it under my bed. on top of all that, it is easy to work and everything is on youtube.you cant beat this price, i payed 189+ tax and it came out to 200 dollars.you may need to buy the 1/4 to 3.5mm cordGET THIS MACHINE

I've spent a few months with this machine before writing a review. Initially I wasn't wow'd - its a drum machine with a sample set geared towards hip hop and dance music. As I spent more time with it I soon realized it holds much more potential once you start really making your own sound sets.If you're familiar with the Alesis SR-16 or the new SR-18 line this hardware is very similar in layout and design. The chassis is metal with a molded plastic top and has good fit and finish. The pads are on par with the MPC line (not quite the same response as those on the MPC 4000). That said there are some response issues that limit this machine and have kept me from giving it 5 stars. Notes will often register twice with a single hit with a pad sticking. The biggest problem is that the amount of variance you can expect from a soft or hard pad hit seems almost non-existent. Realizing this as a hardware limitation you can work around it with post-production work on the sequence.The sound set is what marks this drum machine and Akai got it right. There are numerous single shots from everything you'd expect (kick,snare,toms,hats etc) from a variety of sources that all have some sort of processing. This goes well beyond the typical 606/808/909 samples and really defines it's own sound. Sounds can be processed through the internal FX section for different reverb. This goes from warm studio to dubby space echoes. The factory loops are mainly hip-hop oriented but the sound sets are geared for much more.That's where spending some time with the machine has really payed off. You can create your own 16 pad drum kit out of the samples provided including a bank of 16 pads for 1 shots and a 16 pad synth section. You can alter the pitch and volume for each pads individually (synth section is limited to changes affecting all pads) allowing you to make some truly unique kits. I've created a kit made up of all kicks and toms pitched at various levels and sequenced an 808'y walking bass line, loaded it up with closed hi-hats and ran it from my DAW for some crazy industrial rolls and used it for ambient loops with the synth section and de-tuned 1 shots. You can go way outside of the box if you want to with it.I haven't used the battery power on this so can't testify to that. However; nice to have as backup in case your power cord gets knocked at a performance.This isn't going to replace the Korg Elecrtribe as an all in 1 music scratch pad. However; this is much more than just a drum machine and fits nicely in the little brother category of a "groovebox". If programmed wisely you can get a ton of tone for the buck and in the studio its a recording monster. Love it!

I received exactly what I ordered and I'm happy with the product. The only thing is I had to order it twice because the first one I got didn't work, but in the end I got what I wanted and it's a wonderful little machine!

A bit of an old instrument which is great as a companion. I also use this to control vía midi other synths with these dank hiphop beats/samples/sounds.

Thats about it ... Nice !Unfortunately the sampled sounds are no where near up to my level of sound quality; maybe yours but not mine ... hoewever with some finagling you can do things with it its fine.I got it for the standard in/out MIDI drum pads which I have not tried yet but hope I can set this up cause I dont want to use my synths as drum keys !The sound volume is very low too ...Its worth the money ... I dont know about sound sampling yet tho ...Again I got it mostly for the standard MIDI ports.

I thought this would work as a midi but from what I understand in my use it only lets me import finished beats from the drum machine into every program I've tried. If someone reads this and knows how assign sounds from a program to the pads so I can hear them back live id please like to know. Have had a handful of people try to help me with this and it just doesn't seem to work that way. Was under the impression it did when I bought it but obviously got excited and didn't do enough research. Also I feel like the features it offers are limited, one example is there are options when you try to modify sounds like strings which doesn't allow you to adjust the various pad volumes like putting a pad at vol 63 and f pad at 46, it's just all pads controlled by one volume setting which is limiting for dynamics. Speaking of the pads, you can assign different sounds to the pads which is nice, with the exception of when you go into the string feature- so if you choose orchestra it is a blanketed choice that doesn't let you put orchestra on the d pad and flute on the e( not sure if that makes sense, but neither does a lot of what this drum machine doesn't let you do).

Not good at all...just hard sounds not suitable for anything but hip-hop

This is exactly what I wanted. It arrived on time by the seller(earlier than expected) and is in good condition. Akai Xr20 is a good tool for starters, may take a bit to startup and get use to but once you do its a cakewalk from there.