Historical Timeline of the Akai MPC

Interestingly current mpc line is basically a port of the Akai MPC2 computer DAW to linux arm running in the framebuffer instead of x11/wayland.

Akai Force is running on same cpu which prompted hackers to adapt the Force firmware image to the MPC Live or One, run ssh on both firmwares, etc. https://niklasnisbeth.gitlab.io/mpc-internals/ https://github.com/TheKikGen/MPC-LiveXplore

While it is just easier to just buy and install the MPC Live software on a regular computer you have me wondering if one could adapt the firmware to upgrade and boot on a more powerful cpu than the Rockchip RK3288 / 2GB these devices currently have or just extract the mpc daw and run it on linux on arm.

An event worth mentionning in any MPC time line is the long fall out between Roger Linn and InMusic/Numark/AKAI and the fact that InMusic/Numark never felt like honoring AKAI's financial agreement with Roger Linn.

I am torn about the new MPCs. The linux based ARM system makes it really easy to develop new features, and support things like running arbitrary plugins (though ones that Akai deploys only), but the midi timing of the device is bad. The MPC 4000 was an incredibly focused device which excelled at two things - being a sequencer and being a sampler. I like using the new MPC, but I dont like the results as much.

Timeline should probably start with Linn 9000.

The new MPCs are full DAWs now, but any MPC user will feel right at home on one. I was quite pleasantly surprised.

The timeline is missing MPC Key 61