Don’t buy an Akai MPC5000 until you read this: hip-hop producer Just Blaze’s rant on the MPC Akai calls “the most advanced MPC on the planet.”
“THIS THING IS COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE AND SHOULD NOT BE!” says Blaze. “Some of the bugs in this thing are ATROCIOUS.”
He goes on to detail a litany of bugs and limitations [...]

Another video of bwack’s creation - the largest sampler in history.
It’s more oddity than innovation - but this would definitely make it easier for audience to understand the relationship between what they see going on onstage and what they are hearing.

Sonic State has introduced a new series, The Art Of Sampling.
Episode 1 looks at the history of sampling:
Before digital sampling, sound manipulation was seen as a subversive and avante garde activity. Composers were ostracized for experimenting with found sound sources and a belief that music could exist outside the strict confines of the classical or [...]

“Ohm” is a series of electronic lo-fi noiseboxes/recorders made with laser cut grey cardboard.
The interface and the inner circuits are printed with a special conductive paint. By touching the printed surface the user can modify the sound in different ways.
I love the way this project is so lo fi, and how the case is the [...]

Ukrainian electroacoustic guru Younnat has come up with an interesting mechanical sampler interface, the Socket Sampler.
Younnat is a side project of Oleg Serdyuk, keyboardist of the easy listening & funky band Lyuk (Ukraine). His electronic music is different from his work with Lyuk - more eclectic and experimental.
Oleg began releasing material as Younnat in March [...]

GForce has announced that M-Tron, the first of the company’s Universal Binary instruments, the M-Tron, is ready for download.
This virtual keyboard is modelled on the famous tape-based instrument used on classic tracks like the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever and used by such keyboard luminaries as Rick Wakeman and Tony Banks. More recently bands such as [...]

NAMM 2006 Winter Show: Akai Professional introduced the MPC2500 Music Production Center.
The MPC2500 is the successor to the company’s highly acclaimed MPC2000XL. Featuring an inviting user interface, great-feeling velocity and pressure sensitive pads, twin onboard effects processors with a send for outboard effects, Q-Link controllers, plus 10 outputs and an S/PDIF digital output, the [...]

At the NAMM 2004 Summer Session, Boss introduced the RC-20XL Loop Station .
Whether for use onstage or at home, the new RC-20XL allows musicians to create multi-layered performances in real time. Loops and riffs can be stacked repeatedly until the 16 minutes of recording space is full.
The RC-20XL picks up where the RC-20 leaves off, [...]

Akai is best known for their samplers, but they have created some other innovative products. Their lineup now includes:

MPC1000 Music Production Center - this sampler production center provides an integrated desktop sampler along with 64 tracks of sequencing.
Z4/8 24-bit Samplers - the world’s first 24-bit/96,Hz dedicated hardware samplers
MPC4000 Sampler/Sequencer - this is the most powerful [...]