Akai Force Tutorial: Song Mastering and Export Process

Had a quite a few requests for a video on this subject, but I'm always a bit reluctant to do tutorials on mixing and mastering as I am strictly an amateur and worry about giving bad advice. So in this video I show you how I generally go about preparing a track for export, including gain staging, mastering effects chain, and applying a fade out and silence to the end of the track, with a focus on the available tools and process, rather than a deep dive on mastering techniques. For that stuff I highly recommend Dan Worrall's channel: / @danworrall
If you find my videos useful and would like to support the channel, you can join my Patreon which also gives you access to lots of project files to download: / maxipokmusic

[@iqnill]

Give the "Tube drive" a try on the master out. It can really be tuned quite well to add a touch warmth to the mix.

[@MaxipokMusic]

I’ll try that out, thanks for the tip!

[@Eaonsound]

Yes , but only a small dose off tube drive…

[@Rxke]

'Hi welcome back, I hope you're doing very well.' And I hit the like button as if I'm one of Pavlov's dogs...

[@MaxipokMusic]

Ha, thank you! I don’t know how that became my default opening, it just sort of happened and it pops out every time now 😀

[@vertigev]

Excited to watch this!

[@drop7vogue]

I really like this tune! It's in my head since I've watch this video for the first time 😅 is it possible to listen it somewhere?

[@Headsnack]

When I click "Export" it doesn't give me the option of where I can export it to. It just starts the mix down process. I know it worked because I chose to save the beat as an audio preview. I just can't select (& now find) where the mixed down Wav is saved to. Any insight is appreciated.

[@Noise-Conductor]

Nice video going into the Force dark-side of music production. I hope #akai will add more mastering FX's & features to make it easier & giving us 1 less reason to use a computer!

[@MaxipokMusic]

Thanks! Yep a LUFS meter and maybe a multiband compressor would really help with staying inside Force for the whole process…

[@barkeranimationsuk152]

Another great video! Your tutorials have really helped me learn the ins and outs of this wonderful machine so many thanks! I think I've found a potential bug, if you record into the arranger with "Excluded from launch row" selected in Track Settings then the track will not be exported via Audio Mixdown. You need to change it back to "Included" in order for the export to work successfully.

[@MaxipokMusic]

Thank you! That’s an interesting bug, not heard that one described before. I’ve only used the ‘excluded’ setting a few times, and that would have been a few versions ago, so maybe it appeared in v3.2 🤔

[@TheNextExit]

everyone needs a tc electronics clarity meter. it helps a lot.

[@craz1974]

Great video Maxipok! I just wondered why you used the Maximizer as oppossed to the Air Limiter? I love doing everything in the Force, no PC needed. This was really helpful!

[@MaxipokMusic]

Thanks! It’s just force of habit really, when I first started using the Force I went through the various effects and liked the ‘mastering light’ preset of the Maximiser as a starting point, and stuck with it. No ‘technical’ reason for choosing it over the limiter!

[@craz1974]

@@MaxipokMusic That makes sense since the Air Limiter was only added in a later release I believe. The manual states some differences between the two. Mainly some different default values and the existence of the Knee settings in the Maximizer and some range differences

[@fredrikw1447]

You’ve got it wrong. If your track is above -14 LUFS Spotify will just lower the level, NOT compress it further or anything. It will still have the same dynamic range etc etc.

[@bungusmonkage]

Brilliant video as usual, there is some bad info though, the -3 -6 in to the master channel is irrelevant, non of the FX in the Force have calibrated inputs, so input level is unimportant, master houses ask for that(they don't need to) for interfacing with a carefully calibrated chain, normally external hardware, the rest was all great info ;)

[@MaxipokMusic]

I don’t know much about the technicalities of the Force FX routing levels, but I think mixing to -6db is fairly standard and it certainly won’t make a mix sound worse, so I wouldn’t class it as bad info. Falls under the ‘on the safe side’ umbrella in my book, but I appreciate the comment and thanks for watching!

[@Rxke]

Might be unnecessary, but at least it is good habit-forming.

[@dade4581]

Hi. I like Your Akai Force Tutorials. You are doing a good job and it is very helpful - thanks for this. I have another question. I recently bought a used akai force and noticed that the display area on the left side gets very hot. But on the right it's cool. In my opinion this is not normal. Is it the same on your device?

[@MaxipokMusic]

Thanks, I’m glad you like the videos! My unit doesn’t get hot, but in the Force Facebook group it is mentioned quite frequently. I don’t know if there was a revision during the production run, but it just seems that some do get hot and some don’t. Never seen a report of a Force failing because of heat though, in fact the only hardware issues I’ve seen is with the audio board when people forget to switch phantom power off when they unplug an XLR mic.

[@erdemergaz6987]

Thank you for the helpful videos 🙋🏻‍♂ I have a question.. Can I record the output of my iMac on Akai Force via USB?

[@MaxipokMusic]

No problem! Nope, as far as I know that isn’t possible. I believe Force can only accept an audio interface as a usb input, but I’m not Mac literate so I don’t know if there is a way of configuring a Mac to look like an interface to the Force…