I must say that I'm very much impressed with these machines. I have an X since December and bought an extra Live in March. If anybody who has owned one for more than a few weeks can share their experiences with this machine, I'd really appreciate it. I just don't trust the company these days, and if you look on the guitar center website, you'll see a s**t-ton of used Lives for sale - never a good sign.

Frankly, the current incarnation of Akai has a terrible reputation, which is the main thing making me hesitate to buy one of these.

My main concern is general reliability and stability. I was totally confused by the UI, but that's mainly because I didn't feel like figuring out in a store where I only had a few minutes to kill. So, I've been looking at the Live and played one in the store this weekend. I have an MPC500, which I actually love, save for the fact that it has a noisy output which basically renders it unusable for recording stuff. Also looking to get something that's portable, so the Live's ability to run on batteries is a real positive for me. I have tried buying some used older MPCs, but all of them have had problems and have had to be returned. I'm really thinking about pulling the trigger on one of these.

Guitar center mpc live