The Akai S3000XL is a sampler with 32 polyphonic voices, and 2 MB of built-in

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

. For adding sounds to the sampler, the S3000XL features a 3.5"

floppy drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

that reads

Akai Akai ( ja, 赤井, ) is a Hong Kong manufacturer of consumer electronics. It was founded as Akai Electric Company Ltd in Tokyo, Japan, in 1946. Grande Holdings in Hong Kong purchased the Akai brand, and now distributes various electronic produ ...

-formatted floppies, and a SCSI port which allows for connection to an external storage device (such as a

zip drive The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...

or external hard disk), a CD reader, or a computer for editing samples via the MESA editor. The device can also play back MIDI files, which is useful during live performances, as the Akai can take the role of the computer to trigger internal samples or external MIDI devices. The built-in 2 MB of RAM can be upgraded up to 32 using 2 16 MB SIMMs that Akai provided; other upgrades include cards such as the EB-16 effects board and the IB-304f filter board. The S3000XL has 8 outputs, and two 1/4" phone connector inputs, which meant that it could also operate as a

hard disk recorder A hard disk recorder (HDR) is a system that uses a high-capacity hard disk to record digital audio or digital video. Hard disk recording systems represent an alternative to reel-to-reel audio tape recording and video tape recorders, and provide ...

. The front panel consists of 32 buttons (eight of which are function keys), three knobs, and a four-key

directional pad A D-pad (short for directional pad or digital pad; officially referred to by Nintendo as a +Control Pad) is a flat, usually thumb-operated, often digital, four-way directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern vi ...

for navigating the 240×64 display, which is located in the upper-middle portion of the sampler. It is one of the most versatile and useful samplers produced, primarily due to the large screen and easy-to-navigate interface allowing for quick and in-depth sample editing. However, the

LCD screen A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but i ...

's backlight fades easily and the memory capacity is comparatively small by today's standards. The S2000 is a stripped down budget version of the S3000XL featuring a smaller 2×16 character LCD display and no internal SCSI connector; it was usually sold with no options installed. Regardless, it is functionally similar and accepts the S3000XL options listed below (sans internal hard disk), including the IB-208P 8-channel output board, which is exclusive to the S2000. Although Akai has discontinued production and

product support Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution Mathematics * Produ ...

for the S3000XL, many working units can still be found in

recording studios A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large eno ...

around the world.

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*Akai EB16 "SampleVerb" 4 × 50 effects board *Akai FMX008 8MB Non-Volatile Flash ROM *Akai IB304f "ProFilter" filter board *Akai MESA editor *Akai OS v2.0 *Akai SHD524 524MB 2.5" SCSI Hard Disk

References

External links

Akai S-Series

{{Akai Samplers (musical instrument) S3000XL Japanese brands 1996 introductions

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References

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