AKAI Professional EWI5000 - Wireless, Battery-Powered MIDI Controller Electronic Wind Instrument With On-Board Sound Library

Before I start I’d like to say I’m an amateur woodwind tooter (musician would be pushing it!) & until I had faffed around with Garritan’s Aria software I knew very, very little about midi/PC music-making so my review if aimed at like-minded folk.The EWI USB instrument is solidly built, but not unexpectedly it feels a little odd when compared to acoustic woodwind instruments. Other than the trickiness of mastering the octave rollers, it is fairly easy to play… that’s once you’ve faffed around with getting Garritan Aria to recognise the EWI USB & produce instrumental sounds as opposed to a weird buzz.Being eager to try out my new acquisition I read only the quick start guide included and not the full manual on the CD – big mistake.The Garritan Aria supplied with the EWI USB is designed to run on Win XP or Vista, but there’s a update for Win 7 on the Garritan website: I have Win 10 on my main PC plus an old netbook running XP. Just to get an idea of what should happen, I installed Aria on my XP netbook, loaded up an instrument file & tried out the on-screen keyboard… all I got was a buzz! Every instrument I tried buzzed. In case you too have this issue it was solved by going into tools > preferences & setting output to ‘Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth (out). I attached the EWI… nothing. Again, this was solved by going into tools > preferences & setting the input to EWI USB (in) & audio device to Microsoft Sound Mapper - output. All was well I repeated the installation process on my Win 10 machine (c/w B&O speakers), ran the update, opened an instrument file, but the software couldn’t find the .audio files & nor could any .audio files be found in the Akai programme folder  Having looked on the c: drive of the XP machine to see how everything was supposed to be installed I decided to copy the folder ‘Samples’, which contained the .audio files & pasted it into the Win 10 installation here: C:\Program Files\Akai\EWI USB. Everything worked using the on-screen keyboard, but not with the EWI. However, setting all the preferences (under Tools) as described above the EWI USB worked beautifully.This all might sound straightforward enough, but as I’m a complete novice at using PCs to make music, it took me quite a while to figure out what was wrong in the tool/prefs settings, etc. I really thought I’d bought a £300 white elephant or paperweight!A few additional points:1. Always make sure you attached the EWI USB before you fire up Aria or else the instrument isn’t recognised.2. Contrary to some of the answers to my query about the EWI USB having an ear/headphone jack for private practise it does not; however, you can use the same jack on the PC to play through ‘phones.3. The supplied neck strap is a little hard & rough so treat yourself to a decent one for more comfort: I have the Neotech 1902162 Saxophone Strap available from Amazon.4. There’s no case – the most suitable is on bassbags.co.uk (designed for the EWI 4000 & 5000, but USB will fit)I am giving 5-stars, but would like to have been able to knock off, say, half a star because of the faffing about with Garritan Aria & the fact that it’s still being supplied to run under Win XP/Vista; surely they could update this at least on their website if not on the CD.All in all, I’m really pleased with the EWI USB& look forward to hours of private tooting.Update: The ‘Clarinet Oboe Soprano Saxophone EWI Electronic Torch Sax Gig Bag’ from Amazon bag turned out to be way too large & it cost me £10-odd to return to the seller :-(Update (14.06.2017): In an effort to reduce the number of cables (USB & wired earphones for quiet practice) trailing from me/the EWI USB to my PC I have paired my EWI USB/HP Pav laptop combo with the ‘All Cart Wireless In-ear Headphones Bluetooth Earphone Sports Stereo Headset’ (£11-odd Amazon UK) and ‘MPOW Wireless Bluetooth 4.1 Transmitter and Receiver with 3.5mm Jack’ (£21). Even though I say so myself this set-up is fantastic – one cable, great sound; happy neighbours, happy tooter :-)Update (06.11.2019): found the perfect case here on Amazon - "1680D Clarinet Bag Case Straight Type Thicken Padded 15mm Foam with Adjustable Shoulder Strap Pocket" - absolutely bang on for length & has pocket for bits & pieces. Great for my one-piece metal clarinet too :-)

This is the first review I am writing on Amazon but I have to as this is such an amazing item.I am somewhat of an amateur Wind instrument player having had 2 saxophones, a trumpet and some harps in my life. The most frustrating thing about these instruments is that they are... LOUD.With the AWI5000 this problem is gone and in addition I have an all(instruments)-in-one package with the ability to choose my instrument by pressing some buttons. The instruments are mostly of good, stage acceptable quality - maybe only the saxophones are a bit on the weak side as some reviews also mention. It would have been a good idea - as many potential owners are fond of saxophones - to reduce the number of instruments available to lets say 50 instead of 100 and have better saxophone samples.Another thing slightly frustrating is that with the wireless connections sometimes you get short dropouts, specially if you got other wireless data from computers etc. "polluting" the air.But what I find really great is that the people at AKAI Professional have taken great care to make an instrument which is really build for the professional player offering lots of customization, a tool to create your own sounds and plenty of expression features including the bite sensor, pressure sensors and lots of buttons to adapt the sensitivity of this instrument.The EWI5000 has a superb build quality and feels like it will last a long time. I certainly hope so because it makes me play a good hour each day and I would be extremely sorry if this item broke - and the way it is designed and build really shows that a company dealing with music professionals has made this.I can now play in complete silence with good headphones - or over my little Roland amplifier via Wireless (or wired). The rechargeable battery lets you use it for many hours, I would say at least 5 hours play. This is great too.So I give this 5 stars but if Amazon had more stars available I would give at least 8 ;)Pros:- Great build quality- Lots of good instruments on the 3 GB memory- Wireless, wired, midi, headphones- Plenty of expression options including bite, pressure sensitive buttons, customization options- Good looking, professional design, great build quality- A great alternative for tenants like me who love to play at any time of the day or in the night - basically when inspiration calls- Price. I find this wind instrument has a very acceptable price tag. I would be surprised if the company makes a huge benefit. Seems they just like to produce this - and it's not just about money. For the same price I get a just more or less decent saxophone I now own a much more versatile instrumentCons:not many but...- the saxophone sounds could be better, I would prefer only 50 instruments but better saxophone sounds- sometimes on wireless, sounds drops happen, you should turn of other wireless devices and stand near the receiver- an option to preload a complete sound bank into memory would be nice, in practice to play in good quality, you need to play each sound of a bank so it gets loaded into memory to get perfectly flawless outputHope my review helps - and thank you AKAI Professional for this great wind instrument!PS:I am - sorry - a smoker and using my lungs with the EWI5000 for a good hour a day seems to make my lungs stronger and my feel more healthy. A nice side effect of my owning this EWI5000 germ. And yes, I am not really so sorry to smoke, because I love tobacco ;)

This is a nice piece of kit and is much more suitable for my needs than buying a loud acoustic instrument. I use a Mac with OSX Catalina and this was a complete nightmare to set up. The version of the Mac software on the disc with this is too old to use but luckily you can download a Catalina compatible version directly from Akai. The file is 1.2 GB and despite trying with 2 computers on different internet connections it just restarts the download at 1.08GB and never completes. I tried it with my DAW without the software - it worked but the breath sensor wasn't very natural. (I guess it was a sample velocity issue?). I tried a 3rd party app to configure it and that seemed a bit better. Eventually I found that you could download the software from the Akai.jp (Japanese) site. This proved to me that the file on the .com website was corrupt (It looks like it has too many file extensions when you see the name). When the software was installed the instrument really comes to life (even of the sounds aren't the best!). I am planning to try other sound sources with it again next. I don't play any wind instruments but my recollection of playing the recorder at school has given me the basics. I think this is going to be great fun to learn.