Arturia Keylab 61 MKII MIDI/USB Keyboard (Black)
Here are my impressions after using this midi keyboard for a few weeks (I'm a pro level musician/DAW user).
It's well constructed, and looks great! The keybed, whilst not fully weighted, is extremely responsive and playable - it feels like a musical instrument. It has a light, positive action, without being too spongey. Works equally well with synth and piano sounds.
Pitch and Mod wheels work fine. Also faders - which have enough resolution to send all values between 1 and 127. This ISN'T the case for the rotary encoders - they produce stepped data, which also has an odd jitter to it - unusable if you're automating filter sweeps with high resonance.
Pads are quite usable with practice, but are not quite as good as Akai's offerings, which are still top of the tree.
DAW controls and Transport all work perfectly within Cubase (once you've set up a Mackie Control remote template - details on Arturia's website).
It's not perfect, but then very few things are these days. If you're buying it for the included 'Analog Lab' software instrument, I would think twice - yes there are LOTS of nice sounds, but all parameters are hard-wired to faders/encoders and you can't reassign them. So you are stuck if Cutoff Frequency is assigned to one of those dodgy rotary encoders...
But don't panic - once in User Mode you can assign any Fader/Pad/Encoder/Button to whatever you like. It's just not possible to avoid using the encoders when using Analog Lab.
Other things that I DIDN'T especially like were -
Monophonic aftertouch on the keys is pretty heavy and unusable.
(The polyphonic aftertouch on the pads is much better.)
There are still some bugs in Arturia's MCC software - you won't be able to completely backup the settings you make in the KeyLab 61 MkII. Some of the 'names' will be missing.
Personally, I bought this for it's keybed, faders and pads, a useful 'musical interface' to use with a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). If you're looking for the same, I can recommend it.
It's well constructed, and looks great! The keybed, whilst not fully weighted, is extremely responsive and playable - it feels like a musical instrument. It has a light, positive action, without being too spongey. Works equally well with synth and piano sounds.
Pitch and Mod wheels work fine. Also faders - which have enough resolution to send all values between 1 and 127. This ISN'T the case for the rotary encoders - they produce stepped data, which also has an odd jitter to it - unusable if you're automating filter sweeps with high resonance.
Pads are quite usable with practice, but are not quite as good as Akai's offerings, which are still top of the tree.
DAW controls and Transport all work perfectly within Cubase (once you've set up a Mackie Control remote template - details on Arturia's website).
It's not perfect, but then very few things are these days. If you're buying it for the included 'Analog Lab' software instrument, I would think twice - yes there are LOTS of nice sounds, but all parameters are hard-wired to faders/encoders and you can't reassign them. So you are stuck if Cutoff Frequency is assigned to one of those dodgy rotary encoders...
But don't panic - once in User Mode you can assign any Fader/Pad/Encoder/Button to whatever you like. It's just not possible to avoid using the encoders when using Analog Lab.
Other things that I DIDN'T especially like were -
Monophonic aftertouch on the keys is pretty heavy and unusable.
(The polyphonic aftertouch on the pads is much better.)
There are still some bugs in Arturia's MCC software - you won't be able to completely backup the settings you make in the KeyLab 61 MkII. Some of the 'names' will be missing.
Personally, I bought this for it's keybed, faders and pads, a useful 'musical interface' to use with a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). If you're looking for the same, I can recommend it.
July 27, 2020
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JeeTee
