AIR Music Tech has turned seven instruments from the standalone Akai Pro MPC and Force grooveboxes into standalone VST, AU & AAX plugins
Last year, Akai Pro boosted the MPC and Force grooveboxes enormously with its firmware updates. 2021 was definitely an excellent year for Akai users. Above all, due to a large number of new, high-quality virtual instruments, the products have gained great added value.
Developer of these instruments is however not Akai Pro but the German company AIR Music Tech, a software company belonging to the inMusic Group. Products like the Vaccum Pro or Hybrid 3 synthesizers are some of the company’s highlights. Today they released the instruments from the Akai MPC software as seven standalone VST plugins.
AIR Music Tech Akai MPC Plugins
The release consists of 7 virtual instruments featuring various synthesizers and other sound generators.
AIR Hype is a multi-engine Synthesizer with FM, wavetable, virtual analog synthesis, and sampled content. The user interface concept is here the highlight. Instead of hundreds of parameters like in other multi-engine synths, Hype only gives you a limited number of “macro” parameters that you can shape the sounds a lot.
To refine your sounds, Hype includes versatile effects processors including modulation, distortion, band EQ, reverb, delay, compressor, pumper, and limiter. The plugin ships with over 1500 presets categorized for easy browsing with which you can be creative immediately.
AIR Electric is a physical-modeled electric piano emulation that gives you dedicated pickup, envelope, bell, and noise parameter sections proving you a huge amount of flexibility. Plus, it has built-in effects including tremolo, distortion, chorus, delay, and spring reverb.
Solina is AIR’s take on the iconic ARP Solina string ensemble from 1974. It’s not an emulation but a sample-based instrument with advanced sound design options. You can split, layer, pan, and balance the sampled content of the original contrabass, cello, violin, viola, trumpet, and horn making new sounds quickly possible.
It also comes with an LFO for vibrato effects and a range of different built-in effects to boost your sounds.
More Plugins
AIR Meletron is a virtual instrument that captures the iconic sound of the legendary tape sample keyboard Mellotron. It’s not a synthetic but an sample-based emulation that includes 6 tape sets of the original choir, flute, and strings. You can choose between dirty or cleaned versions of these original tapes to get a vintage or more modern sound.
Mellotron also comes with additional tone-shaping parameters (formant, age, and sample start), quality built-in effects, and 30 factory presets.
There is also an ARP Odyssey emulation made in collaboration with WayOutWare, the makers of the great timeWARP2600 and Kick Axe Synthesizer plugins. AIR Odyssey is an authentic emulation with all the beloved features of the original: circuit-modeled dual oscillator and filter, LFO, sample and hold, ring-mod, and more
Unlike the original, AIR’s version of the Odyssey is polyphonic with up to 4 voices, comes with a vintage-inspired moveable head tape delay, and has built-in presets.
Bassline & TubeSynth
Further, AIR Bassline is an emulation of the classic mono synths like Roland SH-101, TB-303, and others. It features a flexible oscillator with continuously variable waveshape, sub and fifth oscillators, lowpass & high pass filters as well as built-in effects. The latter includes four AIR effects and two distortion algorithms to get characterful analog-flavored sounds.
Lastly, we have AIR TubeSynth, a feature-rich polyphonic Synthesizer based on the Vacuum Pro analog-modeling technology. It has three thick oscillators with advanced shaping options, a filter with pre-and-post distortion. two multi-wave LFOs, envelopes, and built-in effects. It includes 300 presets that covers a wide range of sounds including leads, plucks, pad, bass, organ, fx, and more.
The plugins are cross-compatible with the Akai Pro hardware grooveboxes (MPC, Force) giving you the option to share your presets with the hardware and software.
Availability
The new AIR Music Tech plugins are available now from the official website and official retailers. They run as a 64-bit only VST, AU and AAX plugin on macOS and Windows. They are available for the following prices, and available with better deals at retailers:
- Hype: 99,99€ intro (reg. 124,99€) ($79 at ADSR)
- Solina: 79,99€ intro (reg. 99,99€) ($59 at ADSR)
- Odyssey: 99,99€ intro (reg. 124,99€) ($79 at ADSR)
- Mellotron: 79,99€ intro (reg. 99,99€) ($59 at ADSR)
- Electric: 39,99€ intro (reg. 49,99€) ($29 at ADSR)
- TubeSynth: 39,99€ intro (reg. 49,99€) ($29 at ADSR)
- Bassline: 39,99€ intro (reg. 49,99€) ($29 at ADSR)
More information here: AIR Music Tech
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How can you trust a company who has not even updated their old plugins to Big Sur.
Glad inMusic Brands can “revive” this side of AIR Music Tech. Apart from a discount code we just received (for MPC users, including those who have the apps, I guess), I don’t know what the crossgrade option is for those of us who have some of the previous plugins like Vacuum Pro (TubeSynth), Vacuum (spelled “Vacuum” in the Bassline description), Way Out Ware TIMEWARP (Odyssey), or Velvet (Electric). Those felt pretty much abandoned as there hasn’t been a significant upgrade in years and it’s taken us quite a while to even get to install them on M1 Macs.
Perhaps more importantly: when will we get native support for Apple Silicon in the Creative FX Collection? These “new” synths don’t feel that compelling considering the myriad of options out there. In a way, the FX are the most unique part of AIEP3.