Akai DPS16

Jun 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By Allan Metts

With so many fresh, feature-laden alternatives vying for your attention, all-in-one portable digital studios continue to grow more numerous and powerful. Akai is no stranger to the digital-audio world and certainly familiar in the recording world; Akai tape decks have been available for decades.

For the DPS16, Akai combined powerful recording and mixing capabilities in an easy-to-use package. The DPS16 offers 16 playback tracks with as many as 10 simultaneous uncompressed recording tracks. It features a robust 26-channel mixer, loads of effects, extensive editing capabilities, support for 24-bit and 96 kHz operation, and the ability to gain access to external SCSI drives (including CD-R and CD-RW drives). My review unit had a 10 GB internal hard drive, but models now ship with a 20 GB drive.

The DPS16 sports an attractive and professional-looking exterior, with lots of dedicated buttons, faders, and knobs (see Fig. 1). Measuring roughly 20 inches wide by 14 inches deep, the DPS16 packs a lot of functionality into its small footprint. A 6-inch diagonal, 320-by-240-pixel LCD offers plenty of graphic information, and a contrast control makes it easy to see. The LCD tilts to further improve visibility.

Six analog inputs have ¼-inch TRS jacks, and two more have nifty combo jacks that accept XLR or ¼-inch TRS plugs. On the back panel, an RCA jack provides stereo S/PDIF input. Master stereo outputs are available on analog and S/PDIF RCA jacks, and there are four aux sends on unbalanced ¼-inch TS jacks (see Fig. 2).

A separate monitor output routes to dedicated RCA jacks and to the ¼-inch stereo headphone jack, each with its own level control — a nice touch. The monitor signal is usually identical to the master output, but as expected, soloed channels are heard only in the monitor signal. The master signal always contains the complete mix.

Rounding out the DPS16's back panel is a 50-pin, half-pitch SCSI connector; a footswitch jack; and two MIDI ports. You can configure one of those for MIDI Out or MIDI Thru.

FIT AND TRIM

Each analog input has a trim control and overload indicator. The overload indicator makes level setting effortless. Just crank up the knob until the LED starts flashing and then back it off a bit. Inputs 1 and 2 — the ones with the XLR connectors — have switchable phantom powering, and Input 8 has a high-impedance switch for use with electric guitars.

Sixteen fader groups on the DPS16 correspond to the 16 available recording tracks. Each fader group contains a nonmotorized fader, a pan control, and Track Select and Record Select buttons. You use the Track Select buttons often, primarily when you change settings and route signals. The Record Select buttons let you arm tracks for recording; they glow red when recording is enabled.

Input Select buttons for the ten input channels are above the first ten fader groups. Those buttons are used in much the same way as the Track Select buttons. Their positioning gives the impression that each input records to the corresponding track (Input 1 to Track 1, for example). That is by default normally true, but you can configure the Input-to-Track mappings.

To the right of the fader groups are the Master fader, the Master Select button, and a host of other buttons that give access to the DPS16's features. There are also transport controls, cursor controls, and a Jog/Shuttle wheel. The LCD panel has its own set of soft buttons for access to its settings. In addition, six soft knobs called Q-Link knobs provide quick adjustment of the settings that appear onscreen.

If you get the feeling that the DPS16 has plenty of buttons to press and knobs to turn, you're right. That's what I like about this thing: when I need to gain access to a setting, I do it quickly and intuitively, and I never have to dig through pages of nested menus.

ON THE BIG SCREEN

Each DPS16 screen is accessible by its own dedicated button. You spend most of your time on the Main screen, which features peak and level meters for every track and every input (see Fig. 3). Left and right master meters are also furnished. The current location is displayed in SMPTE time code and bar:beat:tick formats, and the recorded audio material is presented in piano-roll format (horizontal bars for all 16 tracks). There are also indicators for disk activity, the available recording time, and the current Project. A Project contains a recording's audio and parameter settings.

Along the bottom of the Main screen are commonly used functions, which map to the six soft buttons below the display. There you can enable punch-ins and looping, modify sync and time-display settings, zoom the track view in and out, set the metronome, and change the meter-display characteristics (pre-versus postfader and master versus monitor signals).

The two remaining soft buttons determine the functions of the six Q-Link knobs. The screen's far right shows six virtual knobs in the same arrangement as the Q-Link knobs. Labels and values for the virtual knobs are displayed, so it's easy to see what you're doing when you grab a knob.

The Q-Link knobs control EQ and effects parameters. Four auxiliary and effects sends and a 3-band parametric EQ are available to each track and input. To change a setting, bring up the appropriate knobs page using the soft buttons, press a Track Select or Input Select button to indicate where you want to make the change, and then turn the knob. That scheme isn't as easy as having dedicated knobs for every track and input, but it's close.

MIX 'N' MATCH

Another commonly used screen is the Mixer. Like the Main screen, the Mixer features peak and level meters and position indicators. The same virtual knobs appear here too, but the rest of the screen provides access to the settings for the tracks and inputs. (The functionality of the Mixer is the same whether you're dealing with a track or an input, so I'll use the more general term channel.)

Using the soft buttons in the Mixer screen, you can select two views of the channel settings. One view lets you see a selected parameter's value for all channels, and the other view shows a given channel's settings. You can change values using the Track Select or Input Select buttons, the cursor controls, and the Jog/Shuttle wheel. Like the channel strip in an analog mixer, each channel has settings for level, pan, and EQ, and four controls that determine the amount of signal routed to the four sends. The screen provides control for some of the same parameters as those controlled by the Q-Link knobs and track faders. No matter how you change a setting, the correct value is displayed onscreen.

When you change EQ settings for a given channel, the DPS16 shows a frequency graph of the adjustments you make. In this case, a picture is definitely worth a thousand words. A graph of high- and low-EQ shelving — and the width, frequency, and amount of mid-level EQ — is much more informative than a graph showing only Hertz and decibel values.

The Mixer screen has other settings as well. You can disable a channel or send its signal to the ping-pong bus. You can treat the aux sends as two stereo or four mono signals, and you can configure each send as prefader, postfader, or insert. A send can be prefader in one channel and postfader in another, but if you configure a send as an insert, that send is unavailable in the other channels.

PATCHWORK

The DPS16 includes comprehensive signal-routing capabilities that you can configure with the Quick Patch screen (see Fig. 4). In this screen you can make any of the ten inputs available for recording or send them directly to the mixer when you play live or mix down live signals (such as sequenced MIDI instruments) in tandem with previously recorded tracks.

The Quick Patch screen also lets you take advantage of the ping-pong bus, a stereo audio bus separate from the master and monitor signals. Use the ping-pong bus to mix down several channels to one pair of tracks — including effects, if you like.

In the Quick Patch screen, inputs that route directly to the mixer are connected with thick black lines. The remaining inputs, send signals, or the ping-pong bus can be patched to any track for recording. Making a patch is as simple as pressing a Record Select button while holding down a Track Select button. When you do that, the Quick Patch screen shows a connection between the source you selected and the track you patched to. The Quick Patch screen is intuitive and easy to use.

You can patch outputs as well. Each of the ten outputs — left and right for the master, monitor, and digital outputs, and aux-send outputs 1 through 4 — can carry 1 of 26 signals. You can send the right master signal to the left master output or use the four aux sends as dedicated outputs for four selected tracks. The digital output always carries the same signal as the analog master outputs; otherwise, you can completely reconfigure the output routing, a capability that provides a lot of flexibility.

A NEW RECORD

I have described numerous buttons and screens, but you're still wondering how to record, right? Recording is easy, but first you should create a new Project. That establishes your sample rate and bit resolution and lets you associate a name with the audio you're about to record. Assigning a name to your Project lets you recall it intact after you move on to other Projects.

A quick word regarding sample rate and bit resolution: the higher they are, the less audio you can record and play back simultaneously. At 16 bits and as high as 48 kHz, you can have ten recording tracks and 16 playback tracks, but at 24 bits and 96 kHz, you only get six recording and playback tracks. You also get fewer sends and fewer channels with EQ at the higher audio rates.

When you're ready to record, set your levels using the Input Trim controls and overload indicators, and then make sure you're patched up correctly in the Quick Patch screen. Then press the Record Select buttons to arm the tracks you want to record, hold down the Record button, and press Play.

If you're not satisfied with a take, you have 250 virtual tracks at your disposal, and each can have a unique name. You can store successive takes as virtual tracks and assign only the best to physical tracks for playback. You also have 250 Undo levels, but to keep things simple and to conserve disk space, I set the maximum Undo level at 1.

There are comprehensive punch-in capabilities as well. You can start and stop recording during playback (for manual punch-ins) using the transport controls or any standard footswitch. At the punch point, the signal you hear switches from the track source to the live input, as expected. Automatic punch-ins and looping are supported also, and rehearsal mode lets you practice your punches without committing anything to disk.

A typical recording session usually requires quick moves from one part of a recording to another. The DPS16 provides 100 Locate points with titles, 26 “quick” Locate points, and a few special locations used in editing and punch-ins.

To mark a spot in your recording, you can use the Record Select buttons to enter time directly in SMPTE time code or in bar:beat:tick format, or you can enter Locate points on the fly. (Numbers are silk-screened beneath the Record Select buttons for entering data.) You can also use the Jog/Shuttle wheel to move in big or small steps. Furthermore, the Play, Fast Forward, and Rewind buttons let you get to points within your recording.

To be precise with your Locate-point placement, open the Waveform screen. There you can zoom in on your audio data and move through it sample by sample. When the Waveform screen is open, the Jog/Shuttle wheel serves as a scrubbing tool to help you find the exact point you're seeking.

Once you find the right spot, mark it with the Memory button. Then you can name it and add it to a list of locations or store it with an Input Select or Track Select button. You can return to marked locations using the Goto button. Locations can be specified during playback, but the process requires two button presses. When you need to mark many points in a hurry, a single button-press option would be easier.

Two special points labeled In and Out are used for punch-ins, looping, and editing. Those points have their own dedicated buttons, and they define the range that will be edited, looped, or recorded over. I especially like the three playback buttons that work with the In and Out points. One plays the time range defined by the In and Out points, and one starts playback a few seconds ahead of the In point and stops when it gets there. The third button plays from one to ten seconds, beginning with the Out point, to help you establish the editing or recording range you want. Using those three buttons, I found it easy to get my punch and editing points just right.

THE EDITING SUITE

The DPS16 has plenty of editing capabilities, which you invoke from an Edit screen. You can cut, copy, insert, overwrite, delete, stretch, and move audio as needed. Multiple tracks can be processed simultaneously. You can copy or move audio from track to track by using buttons to draw connections between source and destination tracks. The DPS16 covers all my basic editing needs.

The time-stretching algorithms are particularly impressive. The stretched or compressed audio isn't always free of artifacts, but as long as I don't try to stretch things too far, I usually obtain satisfactory results. Several stretching presets are offered, with names that convey the intended source material, such as Male Vox A and Lfreq Rhythm B.

You can also use the DPS16's real-time effects processing to alter and enhance your tracks as you record or afterward. You can assign any of 52 effects to one of the four sends. Only one effect can be used in a send at a time, but many channels can use that send if none of them configure it as an insert effect. You can connect your own effects to the DPS16 using the four aux-send jacks. There are no aux returns, however, so you have to use the channel inputs to route an externally processed signal back to the mix.

Each effect type has a dedicated page with the effect's diagram and editable parameters. The variety of effects offers a huge array of parameters, so the explanatory diagrams come in handy. For each effect, the settings you're most likely to modify are made available using the Q-Link knobs, letting you easily change values from the Main and Mixer screens.

The DPS16 features most effect types found in a modern multi-effects unit: reverbs, choruses, flangers, phasers, and delays are all present. A couple of surprises are included as well, such as a rotary-speaker simulator with MIDI speed control and real-time vocal-pitch correction.

Overall, the effects' quality is excellent. The reverbs are smooth, and the choruses are silky. The distortion effect is better than I've heard in other all-in-one studios but not as good as a dedicated guitar processor. The pitch corrector is fun, though it doesn't perform miracles with my lousy singing voice.

SAVE THAT SCENE

The mixer and effects settings can be saved to one of 16 Mixer Scenes, which you can recall with a few keystrokes. Mixer Scenes are useful for putting the mixer into a known state before you start working on a particular part of your Project, but you probably won't find them useful for quick mixer changes during mixdown. For those, save mixer snapshots and controller movements to an external MIDI sequencer or use Akai's MESA II software.

Although the DPS16 supports snapshot and real-time transmission of its mixer controls through MIDI, not all the mixer and effects settings can be sent directly from the unit. In fact, you're limited to only level and pan controls for each mixer channel.

If you want to automate other settings, such as EQ or send levels, and you have a Windows-based PC, you're in luck. Akai offers MESA II as a free download for its samplers and recorders. MESA II provides virtual channel strips for all 26 mixer channels. It's quite helpful to see all the DPS16 mixer controls on one screen.