The first and perhaps biggest difference is you don’t get the Light Guides. NI has listened and the A49 on test here is streeting at £149 – a full £300-odd less! The A25 price is half its old siblings at £109, while the largest A61 is just £189, £400 less than the S61. I’ve since looked at the Akai Advance series which did its own successful take on giving you less computer-screen time and, more recently, Novation’s SL MkIII – another type of controller entirely and one that breaks down control barriers with both hardware and software.Ĭan NI keep up then? The A range is a cut-down version of the S-Series which has been criticised for its pricing – indeed, Googling the current S49 shows it to be around £469. However, four years is a long time in the world of control – an area that’s been hotting up. With excellent screens and controls, the S-Series almost seems to suck the software from your computer and place it in the hardware, making you turn less towards your computer screen and more to what you’re actually playing you’re less technician, more musician. Yes, that’s been done before – but never this way. They work with NI’s plug-ins and third-party ones, acting as an interface that automatically maps its controls to the software’s most important attributes. Is it really over four years since I reviewed the Komplete Kontrol S-Series Mk1 keyboards? This was a revolutionary series of controllers that really did start to blur the lines between hardware and software.

System requirements: Mac OS 10.12 or Windows 10 or higher.

Full integration with Maschine, Logic Pro X, GarageBand, and Live.1 TRS pedal input, for sustain or expression.Includes Maschine Essentials, Monark, The Gentleman, Reaktor Prism, Scarbee Mark I, and Kontakt/Reaktor/Guitar Rig Players.Custom NI keybed with 25, 49, or 61 notes (49 on test).Controller keyboard with pre-mapped control for KOMPLETE and NKS plug-ins, plus full VST support.Price £149 Contact Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol A49 key features:

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