Akai Professional LPD8 USB MIDI Pad Controller

It’s a typical Akai product. Durable, responsive, compatible, and comes with loads of bonus software. The pads are a little stiff. I gotta smack em purdy hard but they just need to be broken in. It’s compact and looks dope. Doesn’t feel too light and cheap or too heavy and out dated. Very durable. Connects via usb. Plug and play all day. If you travel bring it with you on the plane and plug it up to your laptop and you’re back at it. If you’re looking to run it as your main drum pad tho in a home studio setup drop the additional $100 and buy the studio MPD. This is definitely for travel purposes

Amazing Price Extreme High Quality --this has a full back and side cap piece, there are no seams or gaps. The materials are amazing quality built to extreme detail. Works plug n play with everything I've hooked up to it. Linux, Android, Roland S1 Synth, Korg Volca Beats Synth. HARD TO BEAT.

This is a pretty nice drum machine. It wasn't immediately apparent how to effectively play it. I suggest 2 fingers per pad. It takes a solid hit to activate the pads. Single finger drumming with light taps is impossible. They misfire quite a lot. But if you use two fingers per pad and hit directly downwards with intent, you will not misfire that often. It's quite responsive if you have the right power. Not recommended for kids unless they understand this well. Otherwise, the build quality is great and everything feels professional. It just requires more thoughtful force than you would think. Hope that makes sense. I suggest the MPD218 if you have a little extra money, but this one could be nice for travel. Or an additional set of simple controls. It's actually really nice for just queuing up patches.

I got this for editing photos in Darktable on Windows. It works well straight out of the box with no external setup required. I plugged it in and was able to assign each control to a shortcut either by clicking the shortcut button, hovering over the function, and then operating the pad/knob or by opening darktable settings, double clicking the function, and pressing the pad. As other reviewers note the pads require some force to activate. More than I would expect if they were actual buttons, but less than I expected having read the other comments. They feel more like the amount of force you would expect to use when pressing a rubberized power button than a keyboard key. But knowing that I'm not using it for the expected purpose going in, I'm content with them. I have the buttons set to rate at 1, 3, or 5 stars, to go to the next or previous photo (you have to set this separately both light table and dark room tabs), switch between light table and dark room, and monochrome. The knobs were the real draw for me and they work great. I have them set for exposure, contrast (filmic rgb), saturation, local contrast, shadows, highlights, and white balance. For white balance, I changed the speed to 100 in the shortcut settings. I'll probably adjust settings and maybe change the shortcuts as I use it more, but with just the initial set up it's already working well. I'm sure it will be a fun finger drum too, but I haven't tried it for that yet.

I have a bunch of MIDI controllers, including some rather high-end ones (Ableton Push2, I'm looking at you!) The playability, sensitivity, and reliability of these pads are -- and I'm not exaggerating -- the best of the lot! How Akai does this at such an inexpensive price point is really remarkable. The utility for configuring the controls is also quite useful, although many people will be able to use this right out of the box. Seriously peeps, when I'm sitting in the middle of my Push2, Arturia Minilab3 and Keylab mkii, and Novation LaunchKey it's my LPD8 that I go to for doing my drum loops. Crazy! The control knobs are icing on the cake. I'd give this thing 10 stars if I could!

Compact and portable joy. Pads can take a beating.

This is a solid and useful piece of gear. Feet have a nice grip. Knobs and pads feel good. Size is perfect. My only real complaint is with the programability. The program editor and innate design holds back a lot of customization. I was using a NI Maschine and that could be setup to do just about anything, regardless if the controls are for buttons, pads, or knobs. AKAI's customization is very limited in its scope. For example, I would love to be able to have half the pads trigger keys and others control MIDI CC, but you can only choose one or the other. The worst, thing, I think, is the fact that the LPD8 can only store 4 presets. Really? I also have the AKAI MPK Mini Play Mk3 (which I love to death) and that can store 8 presets, one for each pad! Come on...the LPD8 has the same number of pads and so it COULD trigger 8 unique presets like the MPK Mini Play, if the software allowed it. Speaking of software, contrary to other reviews, I have had no issues using the LPD8 or the Program Editor app with my Mac mini, running Sonoma 14.2. Just make sure you're using the Program Editor for the mk2 version of the controller, if you bought the new model. On a side note, I bought my LPD8 from Amazon Warehouse. No obvious signs of previous use, so it was essentially brand new. However, it didn't come with the original box, or any box, if I remember correctly. Just the tray that the LPD8 sits in, along with the USB cable and paper literature. All this wrapped in plastic. No issues, though, since this was part of a larger box with other items. Overall, I am happy. I can work around my gripes. The ability to assign custom colors to the pads is pretty nice.

I've had issues with inexpensive Akai gear in the past, so I bought this LPD8 with a bit of trepidation. But after several months of use, I am super pleased with its performance. Though the software available to program it is quite basic and not well documented, it isn't really hard to figure out. The controls are consistent and operate smoothly. Construction quality is very good overall. The small size fits very nicely above the keys on a StudioLogic SL73 and allows me to toggle patches and channels on and off and adjust synth params while I perform with Mainstage. The only missing feature that would make this unit perfect is Bluetooth MIDI and a rechargable battery inside, so that it could be operated without a cable.

Increíble, los materiales son de buena calidad, muy portátil y plug & play

Super schnelle Lieferung, super Qüalität, funktioniert super.

Ótima qualidade!

noce

I’m giving it 5 stars because the Akai software bundle it comes with is next level awesome for the price. However the unit itself does not have sensitive pads - 3 stars. The average is 4 stars. I have added electrical tape by opening it up from the YouTube hack, and it is now sensitive, but the pads can still get stuck occasionally. The knobs are excellent, and midi learn in MPC, Cubase, Reaper and others worked seamlessly. The unit is native in Cubase. Definitely a great cheap midi pad for people on a budget, and the software bundle is good enough to justify buying the unit. MPC Beats is awesome the VST packs are awesome all well worth $80.