[Solved] Akai MPD 226 - How to use multiple Banks

[diekehle]

Heyho,

this is my first post in this forum. So hello nice meeting all of you.

I am a long time user of reason 5 and currently i bought Reason 9.5 because of the new VST feature. Before i just used one keyboard controller to use all the instruments. Back in the days i produced beats on the Akai MPC 2000. I loved the pads and thought i should buy something that helps me playing drums in reason a bit better.

So i bought and hooked it up. Works great because of the preset for reason. My main problem is that the Kong or the NN-XT for example only got 16 Mono outs and only 16 Sounds. I want to use whole drumsets like from the Boss DR 550 and they contain more than 16 sounds. So i setup 2 Devices (Kong or NN-XT, doesn't matter in this case) and put in the drumset sounds. Then i map the notes on my Akai MPD 226. So for Bank 1 (Devices 1) i use the notes from 0 - 15 at Channel A1, for Bank 2 (Device 2) notes from 16 - 31 at Channel A2, and so on. Than i setup the Midi Channels an here is where the Problems start to begin. Via the Master Section i can configure the routings of the Midi Channels. After some trial and error i finally found the channels. I set them up an rout them to their devices. A1 goes to the in of device 1, A2 to device 2. When i switch banks it will play the corresponding sounds on the devices. But now it comes when i choose another device a Thor for example it will play the Thor sounds and also the drums. I only want to setup the Akai MPD 226 only to play the drums. Before i used just one Bank, i had locked the device to the Kong and it played only Kong Sounds even when i choosed another device. No i can lock it only to one of the devices, i also tried to make a combinator out of it, doesn't work either.

I also played around with other midi channels. I used the ports A or B (From the Akai) and other midi channels like B1. Here i got a different result. Now it will play the sound only on the 2 devices but i won't record it. It gets midi signals but they won't record them.

I got really confused regarding the mapping. So my question is is there a way to use multiple banks on a midi controller and have them mapped on more then 2 devices? Or do you guys have another idea how to achive something like this?

[diekehle]

Ok i found a good solution. So you map all the pads on your device (Akai MPD226) chromaticly starting at Zero. Every pad is routed through Midi Channel A1. The Midi Chanel A1 is send to the Combinators in which contains two NN-XT you can use more if you want. In the NN-XT rack, place the samples chromaticly starting at the first key = 0 til 15. For Bank 2 you just place the samples starting at key 16 - 31. You can now lock your Akai MPD 226 to the combinator and it works great. You can also put in more devices in the combinator but should always place your samples in logical way so that samples are not placed on the same notes.

Hope it helps.