Christopher Laird Simmons

Christopher Simmons

Christopher Laird Simmons has been a working journalist since his first magazine sale in 1984. He has since written for wide variety of print and online publications covering lifestyle, tech and entertainment. He is an award-winning author, designer, photographer, and musician. He is a member of ASCAP and PRSA. He is the founder and CEO of Neotrope®, based in Temecula, CA, USA.

6 Comments

  1. Avatar photo MPC Lover
    Jun 11, 2009 @ 6:58 PM PDT

    The only thing missing is the multiple MIDI ins and outs, which all MPCs have. And the slider doesn’t appear preset to support the decay effect so cool with the MPC3000 on the hihat. But, I’m going to check this out locally at AudioMidi once they have them.

  2. Avatar photo A.V.Ace
    Jun 12, 2009 @ 5:48 AM PDT

    I’m not gonna lie. I saw this coming. Not too long ago I thought of getting a gen4 miko as I’ll be traveling a lot. But then I thought I’d need a pad controller. Then the bump MP shows up on the gen 5. I also figured that open labs would make an MPC like version and here it is. And like the author, I was skeptical of the price. 3g’s is killer for this piece. It’s a good starting point. Soon I too will be calling an Open Labs sales rep! To DBEAT ‘yall!!

  3. Avatar photo Avene
    Jul 8, 2009 @ 2:47 PM PDT

    Wow, that does look kind of crazy. This is the first I’ve seen of this. It’s funny, I remember sending a suggestion to Open Labs over a year ago that they put drum pads on their current keyboard range.

  4. Avatar photo neil soares
    Jul 24, 2009 @ 1:36 AM PDT

    Dbeat what a product. Cant belive Djing could go to this level with Dbeat.I been using Abelton for 4 years now Djing and producing Electronic sound.Was always on hunt for a good controller but could find all the feature what Open Lab Dbeat Pro can give.

    Need one soon cant wait to play on it

  5. Avatar photo A.V.Ace
    Jul 29, 2009 @ 7:30 AM PDT

    In response to MPC Lover’s comment, the fact that you can run so many soft synths eliminates the need for MIDI outs. Plus if you really need them, you can buy a MIDI interface with at least 4 outs

  6. Avatar photo grow
    Oct 16, 2009 @ 1:21 PM PDT

    No quad core? Seems more like a dj tool than a production unit. I have a core i7 3.3 ghz intel with 6 gigs of ram and i push that baby to the limit. I don’t see how this could be a winner in the studio environment (maybe for beginners or musicians who create hip hop or other genres that have minimal track counts) but at that price you could build a beast and get the components a la cart (and be honest is software that hard to “liberate?”

    But as a dj tool this looks like the coolest thing ever! I have been waiting for but again as Ableton has announced their partership with serato the cool aspects of this will soon be replaced as well. Lets see what they do next to stay ahead of the bunch. I don’t mean to sound like a grinch as this is the kind of innovation that really gets me excited about the future of gear but as a musician who isn’t on mtv drinkin cristal and sportin bling I don’t have the option of buying every cool toy that comes out.