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#38270 - 02/08/00 05:06 AM NEW AKAI DPS16 HARD DISK RECORDER.
Korgasm Offline
Member

Registered: 12/16/99
Posts: 270
Loc: Australia
I saw a picture of this on the net a couple of days ago and it looks impressive! For a start it has 16 faders instead of 12 like the VS1680 and D16 and it looks very solidly built- it might become the AKAI MG1212 of the 2000's??????

Yes I'm certainly going to have trouble choosing between this, the VS1880 and the D16!

Any other info would be much appreciated.

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#38271 - 02/08/00 03:09 PM Re: NEW AKAI DPS16 HARD DISK RECORDER.
discolube Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 02/08/00
Posts: 5
Loc: Lincoln, NE USA
A word of caution... Be very careful with Akai. I have the DPS12. I bought it with the JAZ drive as the recording medium. There was a problem with the JAZ drives and they never worked like they were supposed to. Akai offered a deal where they would swap out the JAZ for an internal 2 gig hard drive. They did not publish this fact and put a time limit on it. The JAZ drive I had was not bad at first but got worse as I recorded. Eventually, the unit would have failed. I barely got in on the swap. Akai never contacted those who had purchased the problem units. 2 gig hard drives are much cheaper than JAZ drives. I was not compensated. I was treated horribly by Akai customer service. (They were incredibly rude and treated me as though they could care less about my satisfaction meant nothing after purchasing several things from the company.) I have spent quite a lot of money on music gear over the years. The only trouble I have had with gear breaking down is with my DPS12 and with the CD ROM dirve on my Akai CD3000XL. Needless to say, I will never again buy Akai. In my experience, customer service is severely lacking with this company. My DPS12 works well for what I do with it, but for the trouble I have experienced and the way I was treated by their customer service department, I would not buy an Akai product regardless of what was promised by their advertisements. Make your own decision but at least wait until the units have been out for a while and tested by the masses.

mike

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#38272 - 02/08/00 04:50 PM Re: NEW AKAI DPS16 HARD DISK RECORDER.
Korgasm Offline
Member

Registered: 12/16/99
Posts: 270
Loc: Australia
Mike-
Sorry to hear about your bad luck!
Jaz drives have always been known to be unreliable for audio. Have you heard of the new ORB drives (2.2 gig a cartridge). These appear to be very stable when working with audio and I am considering buying one. Keyboard magazine gave it a 'key buy award'.

The DPS12 was Akai's 1st offering as a portable hard disk recorder/mixer and of course, the 1st product acts as a benchmark as to what to improve in the new models.

The DPS12 got very mixed reviews from the magazines- Keyboard and Sound on Sound really liked it but Electronic Musician and The Mix weren't as thrilled by it.

The DPS16 will have a built in 10GIG hard drive also!

I understand your frustration at your gear 'from the same manufacturer' breaking down and this is unacceptable. I had a couple of my Alesis bits break down also, but I complained very bitterly.

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#38273 - 02/09/00 09:12 AM Re: NEW AKAI DPS16 HARD DISK RECORDER.
discolube Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 02/08/00
Posts: 5
Loc: Lincoln, NE USA
korgasm,
Yeah, anyone can have streaky luck with any manufacturer. I have had other gear that maybe didn't live up to what it was supposed to do. I understand that development is sometimes an ongoing process. My beef with Akai was that they knew about the problem, didn't tell the people who bought it, offered a fix but only if you chanced upon the info or had trouble, limited the time of the offering of the fix in spite of knowing that eventually every unit would fail, "fixed" the problem by swapping a cheaper unit for a more expensive one (2Gig HD for a JAZ + 1 cartridge) - the expensive one being paid for in the original purchase price, and then being completely rude when I talked to the support folks. Add to my dismay that I had already purchased additional JAZ disks because, silly me, I nedded more than one gig of space and thought I would have the JAZ drive that I bought for more than just the 1st 9 months I owned the unit. It was incredible, they passed me around and around, one guy even lied flat out and told me I wasn't having the problem I was having. I understand if Iomega goofed on thier end. It is my understanding they couldn't deliver on the HD access speed they promised. Fine. Fix the problem and take care of your customers. Akai didn't do that IMHO. And they, in effect, ridiculed me for being dumb enough to buy thier product in the first place. Sorry for the rant... Very bad taste in my mouth from Akai... As far as the ORB goes, I don't need it now. The 2 GIG drive works fine. I back it up to alternative media, erase it and move on to the next project. My whole deal with Akai is how I was treated. I still can't believe they can treat paying customers like that and expect to stay in business. Do they really expect to be able to pass off non-working merchanidise top the public and hope the majority that buy don't actually try to use it? I believe I have seen several things on the net about the buggy nature of the new S series samplers as well. What happened to this company? They used to have such a great reputation. Ooops, ranting again... must stop.
thanks,
Mike

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#38274 - 02/09/00 04:47 PM Re: NEW AKAI DPS16 HARD DISK RECORDER.
Korgasm Offline
Member

Registered: 12/16/99
Posts: 270
Loc: Australia
No Mike- You are not ranting! I've read too much about the bugs in the new S series and wouldn't be caught dead buying them (not because I have used them but I find it shit that a company will bring something out incomplete!!!!).

I myself will keenly check out the DPS16 when it comes out- hopefully AKAI will read these postings and sack the pricks that you dealt with. Cheers.

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