Electronic Music 411 - akai mfc42 review

Snagged this beauty on yahoo auctions the other day and I thought I'd:

a) gloat

and b) review it (which is really an excuse for more gloating)

I've never owned a 'proper' analogue filter before, apart from the one in my dear, departed juno, and I'm really impressed by the way the akai sounds. I've had a lot of experience with their digital filters in my mpc, which are useful and fun, but not really that filter-y. This unit on the other had, is the business. For your money, you get a mono filter that is switchable between 2- 4- and 8-pole, and a stereo filter that switches between 2- and 4-pole. Both of them are resonant and both can function as LP, BP, HP or notch. If you engage all 8 poles on the mono filter, the stereo filter is disabled, similarly if you engage 4 poles on the stereo filter, the mono is gone. Sadly, other than running cables out to a mixer and back in again, there's no way to route the filters serially. I suppose this is because akai designed it to be used with an mpc with multiple outs.

On top of the filters, there is akai's "groove modulator", which is a single envelope and lfo. they can't both be used at the same time (why akai? why?), and they can be routed to cutoff and resonance. the envelope is a standard ADSR, and the lfo has triangle, saw, pulse and S&H. both the envelope trigger and the lfo lock up nice and tight to midi clock (if you want) with 6 note divisions and triplets (for all 6!). Incidently, the envelope and lfo can't go to both filters at once (again akai? wtf?). on the plus side, with a bit of tweaking the groove modulator does allow for some serious hands-on audio damage.

so, how does it sound? fat and warm - just like a good filter should. the LP is dope, smooth, creamy and if you want, very, very crunchy. HP is crisp, and with a low cutoff, gives you pounds of xtra bass. BP has lots of character, I'd say it's not so clean, even with the resonance down low, but it does seem to have a fair few sweet spots along the dial. the notch is a little more subtle, but again, with modulation, there's lots of fun to be had.

surprisingly, for me, the best features of this box, are at the end of the signal chain - not the rather half-arsed distortion tho. the mfc comes with a "phase shifter", presumably akai-speak for phaser. anyway, whatever you want to call it - it's flat-out great. i don't know why it sounds so good, but it seems to ooze character, it's quite warm, gritty and it pisses on all my flange/phase vsts from on high. and it's only got 2 knobs: rate and depth. rounding off the package is a very nice little eq, great for taming the filters a little, and putting some bass back where it's needed.

if you see one of these - buy it. i can't compare it with the "greats" like the filterbank or waldorf 4-pole, but for my money it's a gold plated porn-award winner.

it's also built like two tanks - one inside the other.