Akai S-612

The Akai S612 sampler isn’t the most lovely, doesn’t have the quickest sample loading, takes the fickle ‘Quick Disk’ media format (and that’s only if you have the MD280 external drive), and takes up a bit of space in the old rack setup. At 12-bit (4kHz-32kHz) sampling, there is very fast degradation as you walk on down the octaves to increase sample time.

Akai was in the gear race like everyone and wanted to get something out quickly. In late 1984 through 1985, it was Akai’s flagship and one of the first reasonably-priced, production digital samplers to hit the market. As the race intensified with other companies coming up with new technology practically every month, Akai soon made way for the venerable S900 to replace the obsolete S612.

So why would anyone even bother with such a beast? Because Akai wisely employed a fantastic LFO modulation system and filter as well as two slider-controlled start-stop splicing actions. The looping with alternating playback could be activated on the fly and the sound itself, while underwhelming to those seeking digital perfection, by accident wore a gritty and artificial character all of its own.

Overall, it’s a fun, quirky unit.

“This is obviously a period piece and has value as a novelty collector’s item. I can remember sitting with Daniel Miller in the mid-80s fiddling with it and feeling both bemused and excited by how quickly we could truncate and loop a sound to create immediate unusual effects, the kind we hadn’t heard before when using a sample as a source. It’s low-fi quality gave it an other-worldly quality. One could see how inspiring a unit like this could be to anyone working within the hip hop field. Very much loop-driven, you could quickly get some dirty grimy rhythms going from just a couple of simple samples. Unfortunately the disc drive wouldn’t work when I fired it up recently but, if you can get it fixed, the discs which I have thrown in include quite a few factory supplied samples as well as some home made sounds.”