Controller recommendation

hi all,

Do you have a controller recommendation to use with renoise please?

Thank you for your reply

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Welcome to the forum.

What kind of a controller do you need?How many keys or pads faders etc?Any midi controller will work with Renoise i believe.I have a 61 key M-Audio oxygen and a Novation Launchkey mini working great with Renoise but i dont recommend an M-Audio keyboard,too many problems and bad quality.You need portability or not?

Yeah, to echo
stoiximan
, you really need to provide some parameters. What are you willing to spend? How much space is available? What is your main user-case (finger drumming; piano-style; knobs and sliders)?

I have an Akai MPK mini I use most, because it has a keyboard, pads, knobs, but still fairly small. But when I want more controller-y things (pads, sliders) I use an Akai MPD226.

I keep falling back to my Korg Triton Taktile 49, just because, like @James_Britt says, it’s got a little of everything - keys, faders, knobs.
I could definitely see myself getting something with lots of knobs for controlling more parameters in real time.

I’ve messed around with smartphone and tablet apps to control midi faders and haven’t found anything that works better than physical knobs. I currently use a Roli blocks lightpad as faders but the bang for buck is not there so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Probably something very generic? The Korg nano controllers look cool and are simple. I can’t vouch if what works out of the box though as I’m using the Akai Fire :fire: It’s 99$ and you can script for it. (My brother wrote something for me to do generative stuff so I’m exploring that)

I’m curious too to know what is a popular out of the box controller that works with Renoise as well.

Pretty sure every controller will work with Renoise since they just send MIDI messages.

If you aren’t sure what to get, then something in the realm of the Akai MPK mini might work. Basically, some piano keys, some pads, some knob/slider stuff

You need to think of you want something pressure/velocity sensitive. I find it important, but it is one of those things that adds to to price.

You need to look at some models, read reviews (mainly about durability), decide how much you are willing to spend for what features.

About the only caveat is make sure the device is MIDI class-compliant.

I am not sure what your budget is. Not even sure what country you are in lol, and if you are paying with dollars or something else…

I am using the Roland A49, and I love it. Unfortunately, it is not cheap because it is $200. Even worse, is that it is just about the cheapest controller I can think of, with any sort of quality.

I’ve tried a couple of $50, and $60 dollar ones back in the day.

Roland, Nektar, CME, and Alesis are all descent and in the $150 - $200 range.

Nektar has a couple of controllers that are less than $100, and if you are spending less than $100 you need to look at them.

If you have, “real money,” for a controller… lol, which I don’t. I like spending real money on things like monitors, or computer upgrades…

but if I had, “money to burn,” on a controller… I suppose there is the Roland A-500 Pro, or the Studio SL 73

At the end of the day, I am very happy with my Roland A-49. It must be 5 years old already, still runs brand new…

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Thanks a lot for your answers.

I have no budget or defined wishes.
I am looking that up.

I am currently enjoying myself with the old akai mpk mini. Perfect for fun on the go.

I do not use the finger battery.
I use the keyboard, and the knobs.

I know very very little product reference.
I will watch it all

Thanks

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Small correction – MPE controllers are kind of a hassle with Renoise. My Roli Blocks always want to be in MPE mode and I have to set them EVERY TIME to work in MIDI-only mode.

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Good to know!

Akai Fire is nearly perfect for a mobile studio with Renoise. I prefer playing note grids over piano-style keyboards, and at $99 the bang for buck is unmatched. Portable, great build quality, feature-rich; it’s almost like a miniature Push with a simple MIDI protocol that you can script to do whatever you need. I wrote a fairly capable tool that will eventually get published, and another user of this forum has already released one.

It all depends on what you want to do, though. The Fire isn’t great as a performance instrument because its velocity sensitivity is limited and to get any kind of pitch-bend/modulation, you’d have to use knobs or a sidekick device (I like the Touche SE; it cost more than the Fire). But for step sequencing, navigation, data entry… it’s great. Even the grid is 16x4, perfect for a hex-loving tracker.

Work backward from your goal, considering how you like to make music…and the ideal controller may present itself. I would be interested to hear about how people like to use Renoise – workflows, frequently repeated tasks, etc.

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