Ask me anything: Kontrol S-Series MK3

I get you. But I also have a Roland Fantom, and an old Korg Triton, both of which have touch screens. They just get snoggled up, slippery, and nasty looking by being touched (even when I've washed my hands!), so I have subconsciously shifted to using knobs and buttons for most operations and only using the touch screens when I need to do something that would be difficult or impossible to do with the discrete controls on those instruments. The Triton works with fingers OR a stylus, so that can also help reduce the goo. The Fantom won't respond to a stylus. But at least it lets you use cursor buttons to move to and fro in any preset lists. The Korg also has a jog-wheel for that purpose. Both are better than having a touch screen getting all slobbered up by all the touching.

Oh, and God forbid if you ever have to use somebody ELSE's slobbered up touch screen! At least keyboards are too big to take into the restroom with you, so they "might" be slightly more sanitary than the screens on the average smart phone! 🤢

One time, many years ago, I was on a jury in a personal injury case. The jury kind of became besties during the time of the trial. One of my fellow jurors handed me her phone and said "say hi". When I was done, I handed her phone back to her, and I noticed that the face of it was all smeared up with her makeup and other "substances". I liked my fellow jurors; it was a tough case and some of us bonded over it. But as soon as we all parted ways that day, I went back into a nearby coffee shop to get some napkins to wash my face with! Bleagh!

At least nobody puts their face on music instrument touch screens. I hope!

Me too; on this we agree!

Not sure my questions went through. I have some questions on midi controlling 3rd party hardware/software, not DAWs. 

Day 1 launch, If I read right, If used as a generic midi controller, I understand the mk3 will only send midi on USB C, unless that is physically unplugged from the device and the mk3 is powered by the wall and a midi cable is plugged in? There is no option on the mk3 to select the midi output instead of USB? or Can we leave both Midi Din and USB plugged in and switch without unplugging something?

On Day 1 midi controller template is limited to 1 device with two pages and 16 knobs, is that correct? But that will be expanded down the road to allow device profiles and additional parameter pages? Will that be able to be setup from the mk3 device or only on the computer? 

Generally are we able to change midi channel for either USB or Midi Din and knob cc assignments and/or knob names from the mk3 when used as a generic midi controller, or only from software?

I see a + button in your screenshots for the Kontrol software, are we able to setup instrument layers, or is that only for adding effects? Same question, will kontakt can layer instruments, and is this able to be done from the mk3 with all configurations for midi channel etc from the mk3?

Was there ever any discussion of a small version of these with no keyboard? That would actually be my preference, as I enjoy the screen/knobs for the browsing and control experience but don’t need the attached keyboard (or drum pads of Maschine) placing me in an odd no man’s land in the product line. Was this researched and not enough people were interested?

Can you clarify this:

"The new keyboard supports VST3 ParameterInfo. This means that any (correctly implemented) VST3 exposes a limited amount (less than NKS2, but still good) of enriched parameter metadata, which we're then able to translate into relevant UI (e.g. a toggle is a toggle). As such, even non NKS VST3 products will look better on this keyboard, as we're trying to make things as open and as fluid as possible."

Does this mean that when we open non-NKS VST3 instruments inside of KK3, we can automatically see parameter info on the keyboard?

I don’t know. I can see the point of a 37 key version for instance but the absence of light guides would defeat the purpose a bit in many user cases