AKAI Professional EWM1 - Origineel vervangend mondstuk voor de EWI-serie van Akai Professional

The packaging was a bit dusty/old, but the mouth piece looked pristine. It worked well too.

product is good and sounds good. The feel of the mouthpiece is as the original, however the quality is not the same as the one that comes with the instrument.

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 FilesAkaiEWI 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 :-)

El otro comprador probablemente no leyó el manual, ya que ahí se detalla la secuencia de botones a presionar para encender la unidad. No descarto que la pila podría venir mal programada, ya he sabido de gente que reporta problemas similares pero por fortuna existen tutoriales en línea que te ayudan a reiniciar el cíclo de la batería. También hay que considerar que existen otros modelos de EWI y que si la opción con batería recargable no es lo que buscas, puedes buscar una version con baterías regulares... eso sin mencionar que puedes usar el EWI con bus power si lo conectas con el cable USB. El EWI ha sufrido pocas alteraciones en su diseño a lo largo de su vida como producto (existe desde los 80) y es que la verdad es muy durable. Está hecho de aluminio y plástico rígido, sin partes móviles y con refacciones fáciles de encontrar y remplazar (ya sea la batería, la boquilla o etc).

昔EWI3000を持っていたが接続コードを紛失してもう20年ほど吹いていなかった最近またEWIを吹いてみたくなって5000を購入、音源内蔵でスタンドアローンで使用出来るのは非常に使い勝手がよく練習もはかどる内蔵音源は生楽器の再現度が高いとは言えないが、吹奏楽器としてのニュアンスは充分に表現出来るし音も気持ちの良い音が揃っているアゴでビブラートをかける場合の感度はEWI3000より良くなっている印象を持った先日ライブでもサックスの持ち替えで使用、ワイヤレスで音を出してみたところ実用の範囲内ではあるが遅延はやはり気になった遅延の感じはアルトサックスをバリトンサックスに持ち替えた時の感覚に近いかな

tout à fait conforme à l'original ; parfait. Merci.