Akai Professional has previewed a new keyboard sampler in two teaser videos shared on the company’s Instagram account. Sample Key appears to be a keyboard-equipped counterpart to the MPC Sample, released in March this year, but Akai has yet to share any details on specs, price or release date.
The Sample Key has a two-octave, 25-key mini keyboard in place of the MPC Sample’s 4x4 grid of pads, with pitch and mod wheels, a built-in speaker and a central display surrounded by knobs and buttons. In the video, Akai’s Dan Gill explains that Sample Key can sample on individual keys and create automatic key splits, but that’s about all we know so far when it comes to the sampling features.
What sets Sample Key apart is the firmware. Akai has said that it will be “embracing the AI and vibe-coding community” by opening up the instrument's firmware for users to modify, giving them the ability to design new features, add new sound engines, and effectively turn it into a different instrument; Gill says that the Sample Key “can be whatever you want”. Akai hasn’t yet clarified whether the source code for Sample Key’s stock firmware will be published, or whether modding will be limited to tools Akai provides.
In the first video, two of Gill’s colleagues discuss their own mods for Sample Key; one has used Claude to transform the sampler into a chord machine, with the keys acting as a strum plate and the pitch wheel selecting the chord type, while another has loaded up a version of Native Instruments’ Massive soft synth on the device.
In a second video, posted today, multiple Sample Keys are lined up next to each other, each loaded with a different custom vibe-coded synthesizer, covering virtual analogue, FM and wavetable synthesis. Several MPC Sample units are also shown running the same synths, as Akai confirms that its firmware will be opened up in the same way.
Akai’s teasers arrive as the music tech world is engulfed by a wave of custom firmware, much of it vibe-coded. Since September, independent developers have been modifying or replacing the firmware on existing instruments using AI coding tools. The M-Vave FM-1 – a budget FM synth – has been the focal point, but the trend has spread well beyond the FM-1 to devices from Elektron, Roland and even Akai itself.
The timing of Akai’s teaser is worth noting, as it arrived a day after Behringer unveiled Kick, a prototype sampler and groovebox that looks suspiciously similar to Akai’s MPC One. (Though Akai hasn’t referenced Behringer’s Kick, it’s hard not to read the Sample Key teaser as a response.)
A sampler, step sequencer and looper equipped with 16 RGB pads, a large touchscreen, four assignable knobs and a jog wheel, Kick also features an “AI camera” for gestural control, along with USB, MIDI and CV/gate connectivity on the rear. The price could reportedly be as low as $150, seriously undercutting the $799 MPC One Gen 2.
Like Sample Key, Kick is designed to be reprogrammed by its users, but Behringer has potentially gone further by making its firmware open source, allowing users to build their own custom OS for the hardware that suits their own workflow. Music Tribe, Behringer’s parent company, has already published its own code for Kick on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 license, which permits anyone to use, modify and share it, provided that anyone who distributes a modified version releases it under the same terms.
Whether Akai's Sample Key will be opened up to the same degree remains to be seen, but with two major manufacturers embracing the custom firmware boom in the space of two days, it looks like community firmware is about to go mainstream.
