When Splice acquired Spitfire Audio last year, the writing was on the wall. The boutique London sample house was about to get pushed into entirely new ecosystems. Today, that push arrives on Akai hardware. Spitfire Audio and Akai Professional have officially released two new expansions—Spitfire Audio Originals Intimate Strings MPC Edition and Spitfire Audio Originals Cinematic Pads MPC Edition.
It is an interesting collision of worlds. The MPC has historically been the domain of chopped soul samples, drum breaks, and synthesized basslines. Spitfire Audio built its reputation recording 60-piece string sections at AIR Studios for Hollywood composers. Now, Akai wants you to play those exact AIR Studios recordings on 16 rubber pads.
The Reality of Orchestral Samples on Standalone Gear
Let’s be honest about what it takes to program realistic strings. Even inside a fully loaded desktop DAW, getting a string section to breathe requires riding expression and dynamics faders constantly. It is a pain. Doing that on a standalone groovebox introduces a whole new set of friction points.
Spitfire claims these libraries are optimized for performance and expressive control. Intimate Strings brings 25 London players into the MPC, offering close and tree microphone signals. Cinematic Pads delivers 23 presets blending orchestral sources with synth textures. Both libraries include built-in reverb and macro controls for attack, release, and distortion.
The community saw this coming. Months ago, a leaked Akai promotional reel briefly showed a Spitfire Audio thumbnail before being pulled down. On the MPC subreddits, the reaction was a mix of genuine excitement and technical skepticism. Producers immediately questioned the load times and RAM footprint. Sample libraries of this pedigree are notoriously hungry. If you are running an older MPC Live or MPC On
Hardware Evolution Making This Possible
There is a reason this partnership is happening now, rather than three years ago. Akai has spent the last year aggressively upgrading the processing ceiling of its standalone hardware. The recent MPC XL and MPC Live III introduced 8-core processors and 16GB of RAM. That hardware bump changes the math.
When you have 16GB of RAM, dedicating a gigabyte to a high-quality string patch no longer cripples your project. Furthermore, the new MPCe pads with 3D-sensing technology on the XL model offer four-quadrant control per pad. If Akai and Spitfire have mapped expression and dynamics to that multi-dimensional pad pressure, this integration might actually bypass the need for a traditional mod wheel.
However, if you are just triggering static string chords at fixed velocities, you are missing the point of a Spitfire library. The value of Intimate Strings lies in the subtle bow changes and the rosin biting the string. To get that out of an MPC, you will need to utilize the Q-Link knobs heavily for real-time automation. The Spitfire Audio Originals MPC Edition format marks a significant shift in how we interact with cinematic sound design, provided you are willing to perform the automation.
Pricing and Availability
Spitfire Audio Originals Intimate Strings MPC Edition and Spitfire Audio Originals Cinematic Pads MPC Edition are available now. They require MPC OS 3.7.1 to run.
Both libraries are priced at £29 / $29 / €29 each, which aligns with the standard desktop pricing for the Originals series.
Learn more here.
