Is now here. Waiting for the first people to try it how those pads feel like! They seem to be now MPE pads to some degree, in the video it also looks like they are a bit more squishy, too?
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In this video (at 11:30), the reviewer says that the sensitivity of the Akai pads has finally increased and is now roughly on par with Push 3. As I understand it, the sensitivity is on par with the best products that have been on the market for a long time: Maschine mk3, Xjam, Launchpad pro mk3, and Push 3. There is nothing groundbreaking in terms of sensitivity.
We are waiting for confirmation from Robert’s review! )
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Since I probably will not do a review (because of price) I can say that the pads on the MPC Live 1 (so the very first one) were already good and when tweaked more than sensitive enough. The pads onboard the Push 3 were also great. Not better than Maschine mk3. So my guess is the pads will be more than fine, but not necessarily better than what’s been around for years.
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There’s MPE capabilities on the Live III pads. I do wonder if that’ll make things weird wrt general sensitivity/responsiveness for finger drumming.
I wonder if they really expose it as MPE, though. To me it looks like they thing about X and Y control per pad and they have built in some additional features to MPC software to work with that.
In MPC, there is no dedicated, generic X-Axis, you’d just use a per pitch bend for it. Of course you could work with the synth to treat it not as a pitch bend but modulate something else, but by default you’d always get X-Axis → Pitch bend.
Ideally, you control how much of this is used. From going to on-off switch (fixed velo) to having velocity, having pressure / aftertouch, having Y axis enabled as MPE Timbre (CC #74) and then having X-Axis enabled where you need to configure what it controls, too. Even if X assumes pitch, there are various ways to interpret it. The LinnStrument is very configurable with this, btw. But you see - this gets complicated quickly.
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All I can say is that both MPE and aftertouch never have worked well for me when playing drums. It feels unnecessary for an instrument that is all about percussive hits.
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Yes, I think this style of MPE is really meant for melodic playing. It fits a LinnStrument better than a 4x4 pad controller for drumming.
But, I can imagine that having X-Y on a drum pad and introducing more variance to the sound beyond velocity could be nice. I would keep this subtle, but like with a real percussion instrument / drum, the sound does change a little depending on where you hit. AD2 has even some MIDI-CC to control this “positional” for Snare and Ride. Maybe also makes sense to some degree with the HiHat.
But when I’m watching what people do with the 4 corners, a few of the things seem a bit too wild to me - like you do this with a new toy, but not sure if you would continue to do this after excitement faded. At some point, I wonder why you wouldn’t just use a 8x8 pad controller then, or something with a few more pads (like FGPD-50)
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Doesn’t speak to the question you had, but perhaps of some interest: A Bad Gear review of the Live III. Dude’s always insanely funny, and the meme game doesn’t get stronger. 
-David
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I’ve got a Live 3 this December. In terms of the height of the pads they are similar to Maschine and a bit of a departure from the normal MPC style. I’ve only had a relatively quick play around with them but I certainly get less double triggering compared to the MPC Live 2 that it is replacing, sensitivity wise if feels close to the Maschine MK3 but early days
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