A small feature, which would make a big difference for me on Force, would be for the flashing active clip pads to retain their original colour rather than going green.
That’s because I use the colours to code the key of the clip.
Ableton Push2 does that. No traction with Akai though. Also does the same on APC40mk2. 
Certainly with sample editing I prefer to use the q-link knobs to zoom. That’s the Force touch screen in general, I think - it’s great for simple tasks like the XY pad or fader adjustments, but can be frustrating with more fiddly things like pinch gesture or, lord help me, editing notes in sequences. It doesn’t help that a lot of these tasks are things we’re now used to from phones and tablets, where they work much better.
Re. slow browsing, I haven’t hit this problem yet on the Force - but on the MPC One I got the Jupiter Rising expansion for free, and I ended up splitting it into sub-packs for drums / bass / pads etc, becasue the full set was slow and sluggish to load and browse. I always have auto-auditon off, but previewing samples on the Force certainly isn’t an instant job (the OT / Digitakt feel much snappier). However, I do wonder if and SSD makes a difference here - I’ve installed one, but haven’t got round to moving much content there yet. I’ll try it out and see.
I picked this up too, and I certainly think for £30 it’s a good addition. It did reboot the Force within the first hour of checking it out (or at least it rebooted while I was using OPX4), which wasn’t a great start, but it has behaved since.
It seems excellent for evolving pads (as well as the usual FM suspects), but one thing that really interests me about it are the envelopes and their behaviours - with a sustained note playing, you can effectively use these as a kind of modular environment to set up generative / self-playing patches. This is a real break from the Force’s otherwise fairly conservative approaches - you can go all-out freeform with the Macro LFOs, but the OPX4 envelopes let you marry this approach to the sequencing and tempo more easily.
If they could find a way to connect this kind of approach to the sampling engine, things would really take off. I’ve been getting back into the Octatrack over the last week, and for all the Force’s additional polyphony, layering and effects options, the OT still blows it away for fast and creative mangling, which is a shame. Akai really need to undo a couple of shirt buttons.
Yes indeed, I think the macros assignment seems more long winded than it need be, it would be nice to have a faster way. It does seem pretty comprehensive though, but still not in the same league as OT.
I’ll 2nd @darenager sentiment here.
I think Force is a great companion piece to OT. It excels in all of the sampling/real time things Force doesn’t do.
Regarding Force as a “modular environment”, it’s deeper than I the instrument can handle in a sense.
How deep have you guys gotten into macros and envelope followers?
How are you using your Elektron gear with it?
I’ve worked out a few basic templates for each machine that get me started.
Here’s one of them, I call it the “Dinner Set” template.
OT is tempo master, and acts as a looper/mangler/effects box on two of Force Sends. It also sequences the BADP from the video.
Force is a control surface, tone generator, effects unit, and audio mixer while launching specific patterns from OT via row launches.
While I don’t go into it in that video, there is extensive MIDI control of Octatrack from Force. The macros are powerful enough that I can literally start the whole system with a snap of my fingers.
SCG
Not too deep yet, beyond mapping a few things in tests, but yeah the envelope followers are really great to have, and seem very flexible too. I also like the idea of using pads for macros, but the way you get them into play seems a bit of an afterthought, I think I’d like it if matrix view could be fully customised. But for sure the sheer number of things macros can do and the amount of controls and options is a rabbit hole, deep.
I don’t really have much use for envelope followers (limited by my own imagination, I expect), but I do like to make use of the pad macros. Although to be honest I probably set up at least ten times as many as I end up using.
The LFOs were the real draw for me in the macro section, but not being able to sync them to the clock is a real shame. You can do a bit of maths to convert BPM to Hz, but it’s not reliable in the same way. It really blocks use of the sample & hold waveform, for example, and it’s another case where switching to the OT shows how it should be done.
Re. the modular environment angle, I haven’t had much time to really explore OPX4, but I strongly suspect I’ll mainly focus on doing such things 95% inside the instrument, with maybe some FX and macro control support from the rest of the Force (and of course perhaps two or three instances of the plugin going on).
It’s also entirely possible I’ll go back to the Digitone and rediscover the joys of that (again). It’s just so convenient having the ability to record audio tracks on the Force that I find myself wanting to make it work as an all-in-one solution - but the risk is that it starts to feel like a jack of all trades.
I tried mapping one to the CV out and was able to get a decent range and the response I was looking for, handy way to get another CV envelope if you have some CV gear.
Ah, that is a great idea, as I’ve not been very inspired by the Force’s CV options (I really want clocks and LFOs rather than regular sequencers - the A4 is my yardstick here, though I suppose the new probability features on the Force might spice the gate options up a bit). I’ll give it a try!
I’ve been using envelope follower macros for automation and button pushes.
Mutes for OT, Rec buttons, routing tracks to different outputs, changing FX states, and sort of like conditional automation.
The OT is amazing for this because so many parameters s can be accessed via MIDI.
Seems kind of strange that (AFAIK) midi CC setups can’t be saved independently like a program in Force, I guess saving projects as a template is the way to do it but seems like a long way around the block.
Does anyone have any recommendations for a decent performance audio interface for the Force, at least 4 ins and 4 outs, the Roland MX1 works pretty well but only in external mode which loses a lot of the features, like monitoring the analog inputs (USB inputs can be though).
You can’t monitor your analog inputs on MX-1 when connected to Force? You mean through your MX-1’s headphones?
I mean through the Force, I can record from them but for some reason not monitor them.
You can save a ‘track’ preset from one project - this includes the ‘track’ knob/macro CC assignments (midi IO and channel settings too) then load that in another project.
But I don’t think I’ve seen a way to save the ‘project 1’ or ‘project 2’ knob assignments (or any of the other pages / pad fx / cross faders etc etc) aside from via saving the project as a template.
I would also like to be able to do this!
On each track in your Force mixer (i/o page), you need to turn on monitor. I can hear all 18 channels on my MX-1 via Force.
Ahh, thanks mate, appreciate it 
you getting any crackles with your force/mx-1, I’m still getting crackles with the mpc one /mx-1 combo, any special settings you’ve made?
No crackles here, you have to set MX1 to external mode though, done that?
thought I had, will make sure next time, thanks…
To check hold gain button while powering up, the press tone button, set to Ext, then press start/stop to save and exit, then connect to MPC, I never had crackles doing it that way on MPC One.