HOW TO: Load samples from AKAI S900 to computer

Save any samples to an AKAI floppy disk and proceed as described here to transfer the image of the disk to your computer. Remember: If you run OS 4 on the AKAI you must turn off SAMPLE COMPRESSION from the DISK menu, or you won't be able to access sample data later.

You should end up with a .IMG file on your computer.

Change extension of that file to .RAW and load it on Wavelab. You will be prompted to provide some information about data format. Behave as follows:

Mono, 44.100 Hz, 16 bit, Little endian.

If you use a different sample editor you may need to experiment a little with configurations, but shouldn't be too difficult to get the same results.

Now you have the floppy image data loaded as sample. The very first part usually will be some noise, as it's the interpretation of programs, disk format and other data different from samples. But the rest are your samples, one after the other. Simply cut and save them as 16bit MONO .WAV files.


This is the easiest and fastest way to transfer samples to a PC. I've been trying with MIDI dump but it seems like it works only in the other direction, PC->AKAI, as I will explain in a future post.