Software aside, how are people who own the S mk3 series liking or disliking it?

Vagus

Keynes is lovely, but it's big. I really don't use NKS2 stuff despite having it, because it isn't wildly different, but it's built for the future, so I good with that.

Big screen is excellent.

Ojustaboo

Faders on the iPad look great, might have to investigate as I have 12.9 one.

One thing I like about real faders rather than touch screen is, say I wanted to move the third fader, I can easily feel which is the third one and move it without having to look down at it.

Mind you I might find I get used to ipad ones very quickly, I’ll have to see what software is available for it.

Bought Arturias Keylab 61 in Jan to accompany my S88 mk3, before owning the Keylab I would have said it would be nice to have faders, after using Keylab I don’t think I would ever be happy without them. Mind you there’s a lot of midi controller faders of various descriptions, starting at very little money, so are easy for anyone to add.

For me, if I took the S88 screen, touch strip, Polyphonic aftertouch, NKS, Komplete Kontrol and Kontakt integration and the knobs, faders, buttons, build quality (metal case) from my Keylab, I would have the perfect controller.

As it is, I’m loving them both more and more each time I use them and still a week doesn’t go by without me telling my wife how I finally have a keyboard setup I’m really happy with.

Mark Oxley

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/140782#Comment_140782

I use a similar setup with my MK2 S61 keyboard and micro MK3 inside Ableton Live 12.

I have custom made Ableton midi template scripts for the keyboard and micro MK3 which works extremely well. The only real difference is the S61 MK2 screens display the mixer settings without the need for another device. Using it like this is pretty much how I hoped the S series MK3 keyboards would look and function out of the box, i.e. pads and faders built into the keyboard just like a lot of the competition has.

If I load a kontakt instrument or KK to a track the keyboard switches to it's default NI settings and then back to midi template mode if I select let's say a track with an instance of an Ableton drum rack loaded into it. Similarly, if I load an instance of Maschine 2 vst into a track the micro MK3 switches into maschine mode. Best of both worlds.

As an added bonus I still have integration with the maschine software using a MK2 keyboard.