Akai SynthStation49 review

The Akai SynthStation49 a 49-key USB MIDI controller into which you can squeeze a first- to third-generation iPad. You can use it with an iPad 4 with a Lightning-to-30-pin adaptor. With an iPad attached, you can control any Core MIDI-enabled app, although it’s designed around Akai’s own SynthStation app, hence the name.

You slide the iPad horizontally into a dock that can be raised and reclined to suit your needs and comfort. A fold-out flap on the back of the dock can be used to chock the dock in place, aiding stability and ensuring the dock doesn’t fall over. As long as the SynthStation49’s plugged into the mains, it’ll charge and power the iPad, so you don’t have to worry about the battery running flat.

The SynthStation49 doesn’t have built-in speakers, so you’ll need to attach it to an amp or set of studio monitors via its stereo 6.3mm outputs, or listen through headphones using its 3.5mm jack output.

It has nine drum pads, two wheels (one for modulation and one for pitch bend), a set of transport controls for playing, recording and moving through your compositions and a set of buttons for controlling the SynthStation app.

The drum pads are velocity sensitive, which means the volume of a drum sound is dependent on the velocity at which you strike a pad. This should make your beats sound more natural when you’re playing and less like the product of a programmed machine that pumps out every sound or sample at the same volume.

Here’s the Drum Edit screen for setting up your drums

We really like the drum pads, as they let us perform drum parts just as you would on a pad-based drum machine, but they only seem to have around three levels of velocity. You must gently press a pad in order to trigger a quiet sound, which isn’t going to happen if you’re playing normally. Otherwise, the pads either produced sounds at a ‘normal’ volume or ‘loud’ volume, nothing in between.

The keys are also velocity sensitive, but they seem to have limited levels of velocity too. Otherwise, they feel pretty good for an entry-level MIDI controller, although the keys are slightly too springy. We certainly enjoyed playing and composing on the SynthStation49’s keyboard.

The buttons on the SynthStation49 are for adjusting the octave, selecting instruments and navigating through your compositions in the SynthStation app.

The buttons are logically and cleanly organised in a grid pattern with plenty of space between them. Not only can you select the part you want to play, such as Poly Synth or Mono Synth 1, you can also cycle through sound presets without having to touch the iPad, making the SynthStation49 feel like a proper workstation.

You can also cycle through song patterns to find the one you want to play or edit. To record, you simply press the Play and Record buttons together and start playing. You must use the iPad’s screen to fine-tune SynthStation’s effects units, mixer and synthesisers.

Lots of virtual knobs and buttons on the synth screen

Annoyingly, you don’t get the Akai SynthStation app with the SynthStation49, you must buy it separately. It only costs a couple of pounds, but that makes its omission seem all the more miserly.

We also tested the SynthStation49 with the Core MIDI-compatible FL Studio Mobile app, and although its keyboard and drum pads worked, we couldn’t use the buttons on the right-hand side.

We also connected the SynthStation49 to our test laptop to use it as a regular MIDI keyboard with our Ableton Live 8 software. We had to adjust the latency settings, but after that it worked brilliantly. You can even MIDI-map the SynthStation’s buttons to control your DAW software how you want.

Although the SynthStation49 has sound outputs, you can only use these to output sound from an iPad. You can’t use them to output sound from your laptop or DAW software. The SynthStation works as a MIDI controller only when connected to your laptop, not as an audio interface.

The SynthStation49’s sound quality is dependent on the app you use, with the Akai SynthStation app sounding much better than FL Studio Mobile.

Sadly, the SynthStation49 does have one very annoying problem, and that’s the propensity for the iPad to disconnect from it when you’re hitting the keys or drum pads. We also found that the SynthStation app sometimes failed to start, which meant we had to turn the iPad off and on again. This ruined what is otherwise a great value and flexible MIDI controller and ultimately coloured our view of it negatively.

We like the Akai SynthStation49, but the frequent iPad disconnections and failed app starts mean that we can’t rely on it. This makes the SynthStation49 more of a fun scratchpad for your ideas rather than a serious piece of performance equipment, but it’s decent enough if you want a MIDI controller that you can also use with your iPad.