MK3 - Decided to Return

My S88 mk3 hardware is superb in my opinion (apart from the position of the on off switch). I do think it should have come with a power supply as most S88 mk3 users need one.

But I’m a home user playing for my own pleasure.

I had problems updating the firmware and got there in the end.

I used to have a PX870 Casio piano in our spare room, and for music, S61 mk1 and Maschine mk3 in my main room by my PC etc.

I decided to sell my piano and get an 88 note NI mk2, but then the mk3 was released so I got that instead. I also got the Arturia Keylab mk2 61 note as I wanted both a 88 note weighted piano style keyboard and a synth/organ keyboard.

All this happened in January, I think having a new Keylab took my mind off of some of the S88 problems like not being able to use it for a day as needed to order a power supply from Amazon. Had it been my only keyboard I wouldn’t have been as laid back and patient as I have been.

But, if I had a studio and was using the studio full time (or hrs each day after work) , I agree with the op that the problems would have taken me away from my music creation for quite a while (a few days or so) and this would have been totally unacceptable.

They released it too early, seen companies do this so many times, it never goes well and often takes months, if not years to regain customer confidence.

In my situation I can wait for the improvements without it affecting me very much and providing they do end up giving us what they’ve said, I will happily keep my S88 and am hopeful that within another 6 months, it will start to turn into what it should have been at launch.

The two dangers I could see possibly happening but hopefully won’t, are the bods/bean counters running NI, look at all the bad reviews and simply decide enough is enough, forget the hardware keyboards, let’s just concentrate on software and expansions, or, look at the customer complaints and decide it’s not worth the money having a software team this big (however big that is, haven’t a clue) and decide to lay half of the team off or move them to other projects. This then has the knock on effect of what’s been promised taking longer and longer to materialise if at all, so the complaints get worse and round in circles we go.

But I’m hopeful that this time next year people will be saying how good their mk3 keyboards ended up being.

If NI ever intended the mk3 keyboards to be maschine compatible they would have designed it with physical controls to do just that. There was clearly a decision made that took that option away from us maschine users. I doubt there's much that can be done via firmware updates that could turn this around should NI even decide to do so.

The screen might look impressive but where's it's functionality? The mk2 screen has more functionality, especially in maschine. Software and hardware bugs aside I'm very disappointed in the mk3. I tried 1 in my local music store and found it's playability equal to my MK2 in terms of the keybeds feel. Polyphonic after touch has been around for a long time and never really took off as a performance feature so the addition of that in the mk3 I suspect is not really going to sway musicians to buy it on that alone.

Promising basic and new features and potential compatibility with existing NI software some time in the future doesn't cut it with me. Everything should have been working properly out of the box.

There's no denying that the mk3 keyboards are solid and well made units. The screen looks amazing and the keys feel great to play on. But at the price point they could and should of offered a lot more. So much wasted space that could have had some faders or maybe even some pads. The screen is really wasting so much space too, most of it dedicated to a picture of the currently loaded instrument.

As a comparison I own a Beringer Deepmind 12 synth. It's screen is similar in size to that of 1 screen on a mk2 keyboard. Sure, It looks like it escaped off a synth from the 90's using an old fashioned LCD dot matrix display, but, it shows just about every parameter you would ever need in terms of user feedback. I would rather have a basic looking display with excellent functionality over a lovely looking display that has very limited functionality any day.

As someone who has bad eyesight (convinced if I had an eye test 7 days in a row, each day I would be given a different lens prescription), the one thing I really don’t like on my new Keylab mk2 is the LCD display and would love it if they had a big screen like the S series mk2 or mk 3.

They could display some more useful info on the initial instrument page on the mk3 (or make this an option in the mk3 settings), but for me, with my eyesight, I’m happy with the amount of info on some of the further screens, for example the CS80 from Arturia (screen capture from NI YouTube vid)

I appreciate others might prefer different things or far more info at a smaller size (in a perfect world we could have a choice of what/how information is displayed)

Maschine support goes way deeper then the 5 "Maschine buttons" they removed.

Even With the current button setup on the Kontrol MK3 you should have the ability to do Library/Browser Control, Mixer Control, Plug-in control, Note Editing via Piano Roll, Sample Editing, Playback, Recording, Looping, and Play Assist, just like the Kontrol MK2 is able to do in Masch SW.

Then, as you mentioned there were the 5 Removed "Maschine Buttons" that added even more functionality on top of what I stated above. Currently Kontrol MK3 is more useful to 3rd party DAWs then to NI's own music making software. K-MK3 has Zero integration other than Generic MIDI similar to any other MIDI keyboard. Sad...

I've heard their reasoning hundreds of times, but the amount of backlash from their user base tells me, there logic is flawed.

Glad you decided to return to the community. I'm looking forward to seeing what NI has to offer in 2024.