Provided you don't misplace them at a vital moment, they should do the job admirably. Instead, Akai have fitted two 3.5mm sockets and included a couple of short conversion leads to translate them into regular five-pin females. They aren't standard, though, because the unit isn't deep enough. The rear panel is super-minimal, but finds room for an on/off switch and a single set of MIDI ports. With just a single USB cable connected, you can play the Studio easily from your knee, for that computer-free feeling. These include the aforementioned Scroll and Q-Link encoders, as well as arrow keys, the data encoder and six soft keys. The screen (360 x 96 pixels) is blue and bright, and it responds fairly snappily to the various means provided for updating values. Unlike that of the Renaissance, the screen can't be tilted to suit different working angles, so a stand of some kind for the entire controller would be a useful accessory. Button action is disconcertingly squishy, but is accompanied by a reassuring click. Most buttons include coloured LED-type strips, which helps. To accommodate the functionality of the much larger Renaissance, the buttons have had to shrink down and huddle together, but with practice you should hit the correct one more often than not. There's hardly any wasted space on the low-profile, brushed-aluminium panel, but the matrix of backlit drum pads grabs the lion's share, leaving a multitude of buttons jostling for what's left. Of course, mapping your favourite VST plug-ins to a mere four Q-Link controls is never going to match the Renaissance's opulence, but it's not as bad as you might think: a quick spin of the Scroll encoder conveniently selects which of the four vertical rows of parameters are live and the main data encoder is larger and can be turned reliably with a fingertip. In one sense, this threatens to become a triumph of style over common sense, because the five stunted encoders are never particularly grippable, even though their action is smooth enough. Like a supermodel fed on a diet of cress and cocaine, it practically vanishes when viewed side-on. Weighing in at around 900g and measuring 284 x 257 x 22mm, the MPC Studio is strikingly flat. The MPC Studio is sleek, silver and slender, its reduced girth putting it neatly into the laptop-bag zone. That next-generation hardware/software MPC has a built-in audio interface and broadcasts on multiple MIDI channels, but for those already happy with their sound card, or for whom portability is paramount, there's now a second, less expensive controller for the same MPC host software. It doesn't seem more than five minutes since I was exploring the hefty chunk of real-estate that is Akai's MPC Renaissance. Akai's slimline follow-up to their Renaissance hybrid MPC aims to claim some territory from a certain competing machine.
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