John Wright investigates the strange case of the Akai sampler that never was

Decisions, decisions. It's never easy choosing the right equipment, but when you're faced with a range like Akai's 3000-series samplers, the task becomes even more difficult. It took me three months to decide on an S2800; I liked the S3000, but couldn't stand the wait while I saved up the necessary wodge. Or at least, I thought I had decided. Just as I was about to part with the readies, a CD3000 arrived on my doorstep for review. "Well," I thought, "it can't do any harm just to have a look..."

Rather than spend tedious paragraphs rewriting what was said about the S2800 and S3000 when they first came out, I should, at this point, refer anyone who seeks a more in-depth account of those two machines back to the review in the March issue of MT. Suffice to say that the CD3000 shares all the family traits that have made the 3000-series machines worthy successors to the 1000-series: 32 voices, resonant filters (yippee!), program mixing, digital effects, Help pages, sectional editing, digital rescaling and wonder-of-wonders, assignable program modulation. It also comes fitted with 2meg of RAM, SCSI and eight individual outputs as standard, and Akai even throw in five free CD-ROMS to start your collection.

Strictly speaking, the CD3000 cannot be described as a sampler, for the simple reason that it doesn't actually sample. At least, not in the traditional sense of taking an audio signal in, putting it through an A/D converter and committing it to memory. Instead, the CD3000 can play normal CDs in its CD-ROM drive (as well as CD-ROMs), letting you 'sample' digitally from the actual disc. To this end, the 'Rec 2' display page - which is used in the other machines to set the optimum record level - has been changed to incorporate a set of 'normal' CD player transport controls; you can select Play, Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward and Stop just as you would on a tape machine. It's essentially the same as having a CD player hooked up to the sample inputs of an S3000 - except you don't have to mess around with record level setting since the signal is at optimum digital level anyway. No mess, no fuss.

There are certain other small differences on the CD3000, but these mainly concern the disc directory functions. Obviously, parameters are now provided to let you access the various sub-divisions and directories on the CD-ROM. The speed of access and loading is, as one might expect, incredibly fast - and because the samples on CD-ROMs are already arranged into keygroups and programs, you feel inclined to experiment more with new sounds - which can only be a good thing.

Apart from the slight changes to the operating architecture, the process of playing back samples on the machine is identical to the rest of Akai's new machines. Anyone lucky enough to already own an S2800 or S3000, but who needs more in the way of outputs, polyphony and memory, might well consider the CD3000 a worthy addition to their rack, since it offers all the processing power and facilities of the other units, without the expense of a wasted set of sample inputs. You simply sample on the S2800/S3000 and then dump the data to the S3000 over SCSI (or even on floppy disk).

But the most likely purchasers of the CD3000 have to be those people using CDs and CD-ROMs as their sole source of sampled sound - a group who, I suspect, form a substantial part of the sampling population. The CD3000 costs only slightly more than the S2800, and for the extra you're getting the flexibility of eight individual outputs and an on-board SCSI interface.

Altogether a pretty impressive package. Which is exactly why, after having the CD3000 in my studio for review, I have decided not to buy an S2800. But I'm not going to buy a CD3000 either, surprisingly enough. I'm opting for the S3000, because I do need sample inputs, and the CD3000 has shown me how essential individual outputs are in a studio operating without multitrack tape.

But these are just my own personal requirements - doubtless every other prospective sampler owner will demand something different. Which is exactly why Akai are onto a winner with this range of machines.

THE LAST WORD

Ease of use	Selective reading of the manual helps
Originality	An interesting development in sampling
Value for money	Probably better than the rest of the range
Star Quality	A highly desirable piece of kit
Price	£2499 inc VAT
More from	Akai UK, (Contact Details)