There are a lot of features for the money. It came with 24 bit onboard effects processor, wav;aiff files import, 8outs, and 64mb of memory. This is only a few features that I was pleased with. Some features that need some work are the time stretch (forever and a day to finish), small lcd screen, and the sequencer.

Price paid

$600

The ease of use is not hard. I figured out the basics using the "Getting Started" manual, which was simple to understand. The user interface, like I said before, could have been bigger. This would have allowed for less button pushing to scroll through options.

I have never used this machine at a live gig. I have read that it is not to dependable live, because of the Os bugs, freezing up, so forth. I have not had a problem with it yet.

The sound quality is great. There is a feature that allows to lower the bit of the sound from 16 to 8 bit. I don't know if it is a true bit degradation. I came across an effects called turntable that brings up the bottom end of my base kicks and makes them thump hard. I was very impressed with the effectsboard. Both hip hop and techno can be created from this machine. The onboard sounds are geared more towards electronic music, but it gave me a chance to practice manipulating sounds and so forth without permantly changing the rom sound.

Akai really stepped there game up c/ 2.0 set it off. Its virtually a portable 2500. Only 1 thing: NO MTC!!!! WTF? What is Akai thinking? But for that matter, last time I checked the specs, the 2500 does not support MTC either. Only the 2000XL and the 4000 (not sure about the 2000). MTC allows you to use your MPC as a DAW controller for PT. So, if you prefer sequencing your drums with your mpc as the master (why do we continue to use these terms?) sequencer and PT as slave (why do we continue to use these terms? ), FORGETABOUTIT!

Price paid

900

Easy,easy.

well built! much more durable than and easier to get set up than the_______! you know who you are!

Excellent Sound Quality. Im not sure why, but IMO its better than the MPC2000XL I have. Well, had. Sold it after using the 1k for a minute.

Reason is unique in that it makes patching things together in various ways very, very intuitive and encourages inventive thinking. I've found many times while using this program, I'll be at work and I think of a great way I could make an incredible sound happen, by routing a synth through some modules in a certain way, or getting a synth envelope to control a drum's pitch in the drum module or something, and Reason makes that all super-easy. The next best thing is Reaktor, which offers much more in the way of modular possibilities, but much less in terms of sequencing. When trying to use Cubase and Live after using Reason, I often get frustrated with not being able to route things the way I want. The feature that Reason really lacks is how it addresses audio files. You can't record audio in or put audio tracks through effects, unless you want to bring the audio through sampling-style, through the loop sampler, drum machine, or one of the keyboard samplers. You can do it, and I've made songs with vocoded lyrics (did I mention the vocoder is amazing?), samples of people talking dropped in, and cut-up guitar. But working with audio in Reason is hard, and it's never going to get easier, because of a strict agreement that propellerheads has with Steinberg: Steinberg releases Reason, and Propellerheads stays away from audio tracks. You can always drag reason in as a rewire slave, but I always find that to be a big pain in the butt. I know a lot of people who use Reason just for generating amazing sounds, and then record them and manipulate them in Cubase or Live. This is what I do a lot of the time as well. Overall Reason has a very interesting and unique feature set, perfect for making almsot any kind of electronic music, but not so great for making music that requires lots of audio tracks.

Price paid

$400

Reason is a total cinch to use. Once you figure out the basics of how it works, it's easy to learn more and more about it, and the process of learning how to use Reason is basically just learning about how electronic music works. If you've ever used a midi-controlled synth, a midi sequencer, a drum machine and some effects pedals before, Reason will be no problem, and if you start your electronic music adventure with Reason (as I did), you can walk up to pretty much any old piece of hardware and figure it out almost immediately. Sequencing out tracks is simple, using the envelopes (with which you can control anything except for the song tempo, which is unadjustable for some reason), is super-simple, and it all makes a lot of sense. Unlike Cubase.

Not the best synth sounds. The SubTractor subtractive analog-style synth can make sounds that are as interesting, crazy, abrasive, smooth, dreamy, and whatever else as you can imagine, but none of it has the warmth and thickness of Arturia's line of vst softsynths, like the minimoog, moog modular or arp 2600. I think this is mainly because it only supports one oscillator per voice, so there's no unison, and the synth outputs in mono, so there's no stereo separation. The Malstrom has stereo output, but again no unison, and the unison effect box doesn't come close to reproducing the sound of real unison. That said, the NN-XT sampler, on the other hand, has a great sound. The reverb is solid and can be very smooth and expansive, atmospheric etc. The Scream 4 distortion box also offers really high-quality distortion effects, and the little family of mastering units is useful. Also worth mentioning is the vocoder, which in my opinion rivals Native Instruments Vokator in terms of sound.

Reason just doesn't crash, unless you really mess with it, like if you feed back the mixer into itself in some crazy way, I forget how I've done it, but by really trying, I can make it crash somehow. But in regular use, it's easy to forget to save, because it's super-stable. Mostly because it's all completely proprietary, so there's no VSTs or DXis or RTAS plugins to mess with it. It's also really good on your CPU - you can write a big, thick song without crackling out your chip.

I've used it all, you name it, and i always comeback to to FL. everything is there and its all automated.

one of the reasons i always come back to FL is the interface. when i started using it i knew nothing about using computers (i wasn't even online). i was a hardcore hardware junkie. within a few weeks i was actually composing songs. no other program is as user friendly as this. (the automation did take me a while to figure out)

The sound quality is as good as you put into it. i very rarely use the stock sounds, so its great.

i have never had a problem with the stability of this progam.

The features are great. I really enjoy the different racks, and ReDrum is the best thing out to program drums since the MPC series... NO joke! The sound library is pretty nice as well. And for all you hip hop producers out there that sample, it gets no better than Reason. Get you a copy of ReCycle 2.1 and you'll be flying with your samples in no time.

Price paid

$350

This is the easiest program I've ever used when it comes to beatmaking. It is the easiest thing to work around in my own setup. It seems kinda overwheling at first, but once you play around with it, read some tutorials, and ask around for help, it becomes second nature. Just like anything else, it takes practice but once you get around the learning curve it's cake. You tend to learn new things everytime you use the program. In my opinion, it's easier to use than FL.

Some of the best sound quality I've heard from any software synth application. For better more intune mastering you'll want to rewire to another host though, like ProTools or Sonar. I'm lookin forward to gettin the 3.0 upgrade which I hear has a nice mastering suite.

It's never crashed for me, with Propellerhead software it's really not a question of durability. As long as you have a good running PC, you should have no worries. Quality is top-of-the-line.

Pretty standard. OK.

Price paid

750.00

The only thing that's a pain about the MPC is keeping track of stuff by naming everything. the MPC is as easy to use as any drum machine and i like how the sequences are separated into tracks.

Quality is lousy. i had to bring it in to the shop a couple of times already. once for the box not accepting additional memory and once because the buttons were triggering other buttons.

I'm coming from an SP which is 8bit.. so this MPC sounds twice as strong. sometimes it's on the muddy side.. but overall good sound.

It pretty much does have everything you need in a DAW. I wish it accomidated live loop building better- like Ableton Live. I know that's not Cubase's job- still it seems possible to intigrate. If you can call it a 'feature', I am really disappointed there are no window Docking options (I always called them 'panes'). The other reviewer said exactly what i was thinking. After working with Ableton Live and thier much better pane-based interface I thought for sure everyone would hop aboard. Not yet apparently. moving windows around is not ideal.

Price paid

$199 (upgrade)

There is a learning curve- even for users of earlier versions of Cubase. The manual is good enough- though some topics were discussed only briefly when I felt I needed a bit more discussion to fully grasp the topic. The interface makes sense and includes many shortcut buttons (not menu items) that perform common tasks and view toggling.

The included plug-ins are very good. Many accomidate electronica nicely. The sound IS better than Cubase 5.

It's no doubt a high quality product. It's using the Nuendo engine which is supposed to be well engineered. The sliders and level indicators all move smoothly and in synch with the music. the latency is reduced which is great for playing 'through' Cubase's effects. I can actually solo along now with plug ins effecting my sound in real time.

I love the faders and knobs, you don't even need to buy a seperate interface for your recording program if you didn't want to. The only thing I didn't like is the one setting for all the channels dynamics & eq (but that is what sequencing programs are for).

Price paid

1800

There isn't too much missing from the board I recently bought another board but find myself using the motif's sequencer. I can't understand how people say that it isn't easy to use. Quantize is off the chain it is so easy to set until it's not funny. I think if people read the book to see how to use the basic parameters of the board then they would love it to death.

This thing is a tank built tough real tough. The only thing is the buttons begin to wear after a while (I fixed my own board so I am not complaining).

This board is loaded with sounds. They aren't then like those of the triton and boards similar. If you use the program to tweak each sound you can get some real creative instruments.