Opinions about the Presentation of the MK 3 keyboards

Didi Berlin

If you look at the comments regarding the YouTube Presentation of the new keyboard, there are a lot of critics that show a lot of disappointment about the few new features of the MK3, especially in comparison to keyboards of other vendors.

What about these reviews? I am unsettled.

Dietrich

Kymeia

Curious who they think all those ‘other vendors’ are selling keyboards with MIDI 2, Poly Aftertouch and NKS2 support? These are not just a few new features, poly aftertouch and MIDI 2 support are really cool and almost unique additions in a controller keyboard in this price range, and the new NKS2 integration features including direct links to Kontakt and enhanced NKS2 functionality are also very welcome. These are not small changes at all.

To be honest I suspect most of the people minimising the changes are probably doing so because they wanted other things such as pads and or sliders but those would have been smaller changes compared to poly aftertouch and in my view would not really have been a great idea anyway.

mmk_music

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/95064#Comment_95064

Agreed. I honestly can’t wrap my head around why these people would want to spend all that money on a new keyboard just for pads and faders? Just buy Korg Nanopads and Nanokontrol and stick them on your MK2 lol.

Adding pads and faders onto a keyboard is NOT innovation.. adding PolyAT, MIDI 2.0, and all of the incredible functionality that will come from NKS2 and the onboard computer is.

JesterMgee

That would be because most people have unreal expectations and demands or just no clue in general.

Most of the people moaning are doing so because they seem to have somehow got the idea the thing should be filled with sliders and pads and bells and whistles that are just not needed by most people. While in some cases faders can be useful the issue is that when you load a project you have to first map those faders to what you want and then of course unless they are motorised or just touch strips they never reflect the real value of your DAW. Pads are wanted by a few users for tapping out some drums but many already have things like Maschine and Push which are great at doing this for the reason they have been designed with this in mind, they have steel plates inside to create stable platform and can take a hammering.

I get that people would like an all in one solution to "compete" with other devices such as Novation and Akai but this is not what KK is doing, if that is the PRIMARY need, go get one of those (many moan these other solutions dont have the same quality tho ... go figure).

KK has always been designed with a minimal appearance but with deep integration with your DAW and plugins and it does that FAR better than any other keyboard on the market so it does not have to compete, it is a different tool and it saves HUGE amounts of time when you want to load a sound and just start recording some controller movements, it is literally a few seconds and you are starting to track ideas, instead of load plugin, enable automation for the controls you want to control, learn those into your DAW, map to a parameter on the keyboard only to decide you want to switch plugins and have to do it all again...

I you are looking for a new keyboard with deep plugin control, simply look at the history of KK through the MK1, MK2 and the community here like me, Kymeia and loads of others who have been using these keyboards through the last 10 years with minimal to no real problems in getting things done.