Since I’ve been using my Midiman Radium-61 MIDI controller keyboard exclusively these days, I’ve found a lot of things I with they’d designed better. A week or two ago, I was inches away from just giving up on the thing and buying a different keyboard. So I spent a lot of time reading reviews and specs about every MIDI keyboard I could find. In the end, there was at least one fatal flaw with every one of them – some feature they neglected to include or something they skimped on that an existing user was complaining about.
So I decided to take the time to write up the features of my ideal MIDI controller keyboard. If anyone ever makes one with these specs, I’ll buy it in an instant.
all settings are retained in memory even with power off
61 full-size plastic, semi-weighted keys with nice action (preferably like the Alesis QuadraSynth Plus Piano)
solid (not flimsy) pitch bend and modulation wheels
4 to 12 knobs or sliders – can be programmed to send any MIDI command
4 to 12 buttons – can be programmed to send any MIDI command
2 separate dedicated buttons for program change increment/decrement
input for sustain pedal
input for volume/controller pedal
velocity sensitive with aftertouch
selectable velocity map
interface: USB in/out to PC, MIDI in from another device
power: uses USB bus power or wall wart
price: $200 to $400