Behringer Jam: an MPC-style sampling groove box?
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Is Behringer about to go after the AKAI MPC? In a newly created Facebook group dedicated to DJing and production, the company posted a render of a stand-alone sampling groove box named “Jam”.
Behringer Jam sampling groove box?
Behringer / Music Tribe has set up a new Facebook group dedicated to DJing and production. They say that it’s meant to be a meeting space to let users communicate directly with product designers, similar to the existing synth group. And this being Behringer, the company has dropped a surprise teaser to get the ball rolling.
The group picture is a render of what’s presumably an MPC-style sampling groove box named “Jam”. Of course, this comes on the same day that AKAI officially announced the MPC Live II. Coincidence? I think not.
All the features of the MPC
There’s no hard info yet, but the machine’s faceplate provides some clues about the features it might have. If you’ve ever used an MPC (or even just looked at one), you’ll feel right at home. The fact that Jam features a recording volume knob and sampler / sample edit buttons suggests that it will be capable of sampling on its own. The large display is accompanied by four soft encoders on the left.
Jam has 16 RGB pads arranged in two rows. As on many MPC models, there appear to be eight pad banks (A-H), accessible via four buttons. The MPC’s 16 levels, full level and note repeat buttons are all there. A touch slider takes the place of the fader found on many MPCs. The person who was in charge of the render at Music Tribe mistyped “NEXT SEC” (sic) while copying over button labels from the MPC. But other than that, they’ve done an excellent job at making it look like Jam will be pretty much a carbon copy of the famous AKAI groove box.
Wait, there is one somewhat original idea that caught my eye. It looks like Jam will have a 12 bit button, presumably to reduce the sample resolution to get that vintage MPC60 / SP-1200 vibe.
As of now, we have no idea how far along this project is. Behringer has been pretty busy cloning every analogue synth they could get their hands on (like the newly announced MonoPoly), but they’ve yet to release a fully digital synth or sampler. So it could very well be a while until Jam becomes available.
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3 responses to “Behringer Jam: an MPC-style sampling groove box?”
I don’t care about an MPC clone, but an affordable classic sampler with decent memory is long due, behringer or not. Korg should have long updated their Electribe line.
Great news! I hope you can turn the pads into a chromatic keyboard layout like the mc-101.. pads are cool for drums but suck for playing melodies..
12bit is the right direction, mpc is garbage, because it has no character, the old ones did.
We need samplers with a vibe/tone that differs from sampling on a pc. Also free based time-looping.