Native Instruments and Akai are in a fight for sales with their latest Advance and Komplete Kontrol keyboards with many users drawing direct comparisons between the 2 products. Both companies offer the same selection of keyboards with NI just announcing a new 88 key version in their range and both choices are around the same cost. The other thing these both offer is advanced integration with your DAW and control over your plugins. But which is the keyboard for you? Well if you are like me you are hard pressed to decide until you actually get hands on with both so I have done exactly this and can compare both offerings for you...

MIDI keyboards and controllers are like wild flowers, found everywhere and in a variety of flavours. So to make something that actually stands out in the crowd takes some forward thinking and this is what Akai have attempted to achieve with the Advanced range of keyboard controllers. 

 The MPD32 is a MIDI controller based on the very popular MPC drum machine created by Akai. The 4x4 drum pads look and feel very similar but there is no audio capabilities with this device. It is purely a MIDI controller.

In addition to the 16 rubber drum pads the MPD has 8 faders, 8 buttons, 8 endless rotary encoders, transport controls, controller bank switches, 32 preset locations, foot control inputs and a MIDI clock.

The MPD32 can operate as a Control Surface in Ableton (and possibly other applications) allowing the top faders to auto-map to the first 8 tracks and the below buttons can control the ARM function of these 8 tracks. Additionally, the 8 encoders will auto-map to the first 8 MIDI assigned controls in a rack or macro controls without learning. The pads themselves will automatically map to the pads shown in Abletons drum rack and will follow you through as you click through the rack.