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The MPC is the sampling drum machine of choice in the hip hop community – everyone from Dr Dre to Prefuse 73 are rocking beats with the MPC, live and in the studio.

It's also a pretty handy sequencer, and can be hooked up as a master or a slave to other MIDI equipment.

Many producers swear by the combination of the MPC's pads for programming, and its special swing quantise for getting the perfect grooves.

The 2500 is the follow-up to the 2000xl. On paper it seems to offer a lot more features – multiple analogue outs, digi in/out, multiple filter types, more memory, more hands on control, effects, dsp functions, connectivity and expandability.

The new MPC looks great – it's jet black, with red lights and a yellow/green screen that tilts for easier viewing.

The body is built of metal, and the side panels are plastic, the rubber feet are quite small and it sits quite flush to the table. It weighs in at six kilos and is totally silent in use.

Features

The layout is changed from the 2000xl – the sliders are on the left, the pads are now in the middle and the shuttle controls and scrub wheel are on the right.

As standard it ships with 16MB RAM, which equates to 136 seconds of mono sampling. There's also a built-in compact flash card reader thrown in.

You can opt to fit a 2.5-inch laptop style hard drive internally for added storage and there's space for a CDR-W drive. There's also a USB port for connecting directly to your PC or Mac.

No drivers are needed with Windows 2000/XP or OS 9.1/X, and it shows up as a removable drive.

You do need to have a compact flash card or HD installed to transfer files; you can't operate the MPC while transferring, and you need to disconnect from the computer to recommence programming.

Navigation continues in the old tradition, using a main window for the essential sequence info, and a mode button for accessing the other functions like recording, trimming, editing and mixing.

You can become very efficient with an MPC after spending a day with one. There's not a daunting amount of windows to memorise, but you'll need the manual to find all of them.

The core sequencing power remains the same, with 64 tracks per sequence, but oddly enough Akai have reduced the maximum amount of events down from 300,000 (on the 2000xl) to 100,000.

Polyphony is identical at 32 voices and MIDI ports are the standard – two in (merged) and four out, addressing 64 channels in total.

If you are looking to upgrade from the 2000xl then it's worth knowing that you can only take your seq, pgm, wav and snd files.
You can't take your 'all' song files. If you're coming from the 1000, however, you get maximum compatibility.

Hands on

If the MPC is all about the pads, then how do they compare to the 2000's? Well, they're very smooth, the resistance is harder in the middle area and very flexi on the edges – more like the 1000's pads.