Keyboard Recommendations

ey, was wondering what your opinions/recommendations are on good qwerty keyboards for tracking purposes.

I use a black colored keyboard that is cool to look at over day, but hard to track with late at night as I have to squint my eyes to see what key I’m actually pressing. Also I believe there must be some ideal weight in the keys when tracking all day :slight_smile: And mine is rather ‘heavy’ now.

Maybe there are even customizable keyboards where you can order one with a certain color set-up, highlighting much used keyboard combo’s? (I think I have seen some keyboards like this , especially for cubase).

So recommendations / brands would be much appreciated. A necessity is that it has all the keys, including numpad section, are present.

cheers,

Rico

This may be psychological, but could a different/better feel keyboard produce more & better music? :slight_smile:

A Guru Motha Fakkah like you needeth not look at his keys while he tracks, for he has grasped true enlightenment of the QWERTY.

you are wrong, qwerty posting lots on this forum grants you guru status, enlightment of the tracking is achieved switching the internet off.

I have yet to master my messageboard addictions.

http://www.daskeyboard.com/

I like the apple keyboards alot too.

Velocity would be nice to have… :lol:

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

If you have the change, of course… ^^

i was hoping to set up one of those IBM keyboards with the extra buttons on the top to work with renoise, but i couldn’t get it to work. i even went as far as trying to hack the settings in regedit (ELiTE!!!) but it was all for naught.

I use a Logitech G15 keyboard, quite happy with it, got illuminated keys when you track/play in the dark :D
But most importantly it doesn’t have problems with ghost-keys or whatever the term is nowdays.
E.g. try a chord with QET, most cheap keyboards will miss one of those keypresses because they share the same electronic connection.
Just wish I could use the G1-> buttons for selecting tracks etc. but don’t think it’s possible.

I use this for my desktop. The keys feel like a very yielding laptop QWERTY. It’s very thin and very comfortable, especially when I spend hours tracking.

The only thing I’d improve, is that it’s not back lit. Other than that, I dig it.

Doctor Al: What keyboard is that (brand, model)? Looks fantastastic.

I need a new keyboard too. Spilt water over my old one and the one I have been donated is absolutely horrible to use!

I use a Saitek Eclipse II, which has nice silent keys, a wrist rest and is very useful for doings in the darkness:

I use a black Cherry MX 3000 keyboard (tactile keyswitches), but unfortunately I can only press three or four keys at once before the keyboard stops recognising any more key presses. I remember seeing a review of another tactile keyboard that had a different kind of mapping, and you could press as many keys simultaneously as you wanted - does anybody know what it is?

The previously mentioned Das Keyboard does just that.

No but I know it’s called N-Key Rollover so look for a keyboard which states it has that.

OK a bit of reading and the DasKeyboard offers 12-key rollover. Basically up to 12 different keys can be pressed at once. But I did find this full n-key rollover keyboard.

http://www.steelseries.com/int/products/ke…/7g/information

They also go a 6g which has 8-key rollover.

May get the 7g myself although I really didn’t want to spend that much on a keyboard…

OK I’m starting to think quite a lot of people lie about this n-key rolloever thing. If you read the description of This keyboard you will see it says “All the keys typed simulteneously are recognized on the PS/2. (Limited to 6 keys typed simulteneously for the USB due to the specifications of USB.)”

Now I see a lot of other keyboards based on the Cherry MX claiming to be n-key rollover but having USB connections on the end.

But at the same time it doesn’t make any sense why the lower data transfer of PS/2 should support more key presses than USB.

I know Cherry used to do a keyboard with a decent mechanical feel and n-key rollover for about £30 but I’ve having difficulties working out which it may be, if still available. Anybody willing to try and help? Seems a few that offer n-key rollover mention using the Cherry MX keyswitch…

Thanks for the info about the DAS keyboard, but it has one big problem (for me) - the Enter key is only the same height as a normal key - I can see that leading to a lot of typing errors on my part.
I think I’ll contact Cherry and ask them which of their keyboards offer N rollover of more than 6 (that will be more than enough for my tracking needs. My current Cherry MX keyboard seems to have some sort of system whereby only certain combinations of keys can be pressed at the same time - sometimes I can press four, sometimes five, but other times, depending on which keys I’m using, it stops at three. But apart from that, the MX keyswitches are fantastic for typing.)

That looks interesting, but their site is a bit unclear: it says “No-click mechanical professional gaming keyboard” and then “18K gold-plated mechanical switches”, which I presume means Cherry MX keyswitches, which certainly click (which is why people buy them).

Well I got a speedy response from Cherry wrt full n-key rollover and here it is.

I’ll ask which keyboard are 6-key and more and see if their response is as fast. Doubt it as it will probably need more looking into…