In 1984, a new division of the company was formed to focus on the manufacture and sale of electronic instruments, and was called Akai Electronic Musical Instruments Corporation, or Akai Professional.
The first product released by the new subsidiary, the S612 12-bit digital sampler, was the first in a series of (relatively) affordable samplers. It held only a single sample at a time, which was loaded into memory via a separate disk drive utilizing proprietary 2.8" floppy disks. The maximum sample time at the highest quality sampling rate (32kHz) was one second. The X-7000, a keyboard version of the S612, was introduced shortly thereafter. Unlike the single-sample S-612, however, it allowed the use of six active samples at once.
Other early products included the Akai AX80 8-voice analog synthesizer, and the Akai AX-60 and AX-73 6-voice analog synthesizers. The AX-60, borrowing many ideas from the Roland Juno-106, but with a "real" analog VCO, also allowed the performer to "split" the keyboard (using different sample sets for different ranges of keys).
Akai's portable studio, Akai MG-1214 unit
In 1985, Akai introduced the MG1212, a 12 channel, 12 track recorder.This innovative device used a special VHS-like cartridge (a MK-20), and was good for 10 minutes of continuous 12 track recording (19 cm per second) or 20 minutes at half speed (9.5 cm per second). One track (14) was permanently dedicated to recording absolute time, and another one for synchronization such as SMPTE or MTC. Each channel strip included dbx type-1 noise reduction and semi-parametric equalizers (with fixed bandwidths). The unit also had innovations like an electronic 2 bus system, a 12 stereo channel patch bay and auto punch in and out, among others. The unique transport design and noise reduction gave these units a recording quality rivaling that of more expensive 16 track machines using 1" tape. The MG-1212 was later replaced by the MG-1214, which improved the transport mechanism and overall performance. Although Akai sold a modest amount of these units, sales never took off, and the company was not able to catch up with Tascam's PortaStudio series, which were much more affordable, utilizing conventional (and cheaper) media such as cassettes and 1/4" reel tapes.
The S612 was superseded in 1986 with the introduction of a "professional" range of digital samplers, starting with the 12-bit S900 in late 1985, the 16-bit S1000 in 1988, and the S3000, which notably featured a writeable CD-ROM and hard disk recording. Additional releases of note were the Z4 and Z8 24-bit 96 kHz samplers. The S-series samplers and their library formats became defacto industry standards in the late 80s.
Akai also produced several Digital MIDI sequencers and digital synthesizers such as the MPC range (MIDI Production Center), a line of integrated samplers–drum machines and MIDI sequencers that resemble drum machines.
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