Looking for a new midi controller to use with renoise, suggestions?

Looking at the Arturia Keylab 49 mk2 or AKAI mpk249. It looks like the only one of those two with support in Renoise is the Keylab right now.

Any suggestions? Searching hasn’t yielded much, especially for a larger controller.

Thanks

1 Like

What do you mean by “support in Renoise”? You can midi-map stuff coming in to Renoise in a few different ways.

The mpk249 should be programmable as well (I’m assuming it is though I didn’t see anything mentioned on the product page).

I’ve used an MPK Mini MKII and an MPD226, plus a QuNexus.

All play very nicely with Renoise.

I don’t know what exactly you mean.

Most USB MIDI controllers are compatible with the standard MIDI input and output. If there is a driver that is not compatible with Renoise, it is the fault of the controller, not Renoise.

Some manufacturers of these devices are “closed” and make their own instructions for them. An example is Arturia. To mention a USB controller, the Keylab MKII has all the transport buttons useless for Renoise, because these buttons do not work with the MIDI standard (in the latest firmware they made a "fix).

In fact, other USB controllers are “too oriented” to work with a specific DAW, instead of programming their software thinking globally for most DAWs. Then you have to distinguish these devices and choose well before buying.

You will find expensive controllers that will remain unusable by these practices of each manufacturer. And this happens in a generalized way, not only with a specific DAW. But with most controllers that work with the MIDI standard, you won’t have any problems. Look well that all controls are compatible. It is possible that 80% do work, and the rest do not, for the reason cited.

Renoise as DAW is one of the most complete regarding MIDI compatibility. There are no complaints here.

What does exist are users who study the available API and create tools compatible with Renoise and the USB controller, whose controls may not work with the MIDI standard. But this is not “support of Renoise.” That is contributions from the community.

A good practice is to study the instruction manual of the USB controller before buying it. Check that everything is compatible with the MIDI standard. This way you will avoid having problems.

About Arturia Keylab MKII, you can see this thead:

In most “unsupported” drivers, it will be possible to create a specific “bridge tool.” But it’s time to study how the MIDI controller and Renoise API works to program it.

I’ve been using a pretty bare bones midi controller with only a couple of buttons mapped via cc, but maybe I’m just missing what I need to do to setup one of these larger control surfaces.

The Akai mpk249 for instance isn’t listed here:

With the rest of the “duplex” controllers

You can also program the controller itself

I see. So, anything that supports the standard should work. I guess I was kind of confused seeing the items listed in the duplex package, and the separate Arturia keylab plugin you referenced.

The Akai seems highly configurable, even can act as a HID.

I was interested in the Arturia because of the build quality and keyboard feel.

I guess I’ll do some more research.

Today I found out about ‘Bome MIDI Translator’ while searching for a way to make get my Midi Fighter 3d to work in more software other than just Traktor and Ableton…

https://www.bome.com/

How it took this long for me to find out about this, considering shelling out the moneyz for the full version. Anyone here have experience with this; is it really the solution for getting those shitty midi controllers to be less shitty? xD