Best MIDI Keyboard Controller for Sonar X2

Hi
 
Im looking to upgrade my basic MIDI 3 octave keyboard to a 61 key MIDI contoller. I have looked at M-Audio and Behringer but they do not ofically support Sonar as its not part of the 'big' DAWs!
 
The obviuous choice is the Roland A-800 61 key as this is built with Sonar in mind... I have also looked at Novation SL Mk11 which reports to be compatible with Sonar...
 
What do other users prefer as it seems the options are more limited for Sonar?
 
Thanks
 
Martin

Novation has actually made their controllers a lot more DAW friendly. A guy at Guitar Center showed me how the latest controllers automap to every major DAW: http://us.novationmusic.c...i-controllers/sl-mkii/

I have an A-Pro 800 and it's an excellent keyboard with nice action and great build quality. I wasn't going to be influenced by the fact that it's a Roland but in the end I liked the feel of it more than other keyboards I tried in the same range. 

Do you just want to use keys and controllers, or are you also looking for DAW functions like play, stop, record, etc.?

For keys and controllers, most things work fine--including M-Audio and Akai.

Beepster


For what it's worth I have an M-Audio Oxygen 25 and it works with X2. I just plugged it in and I was able to play without drivers or anything. There don't seem to be any preset maps for the knobs and stuff though but it's not too hard to map that stuff manually... except for some of the broken stuff in X2 but I don't think even the Roland stuff works with those controls from what I've been told.

I used to have one as well but I was not using the contoller buttons and knobs just the keyboard. I now want to start to use a contoller with these functions for drum pads, transport etc...

Lynn


Cakewalk makes the A-800 pro keyboard with 61 keys.  It would probably work with Sonar.  Just look above under their hardware products.

Hi Does the  a800 have on board sounds as well... so you might be able to play it stand alone?

my m-audio keyboard is buggy in Sonar but it works for me if I mess around with ACT enough.

I'd definitely recommend the Roland/Cakewalk A PRO series.  I use an A-300 PRO on my desktop, It only has 32 keys so  I have another Roland by my side when I want a full keyboard.
 
All of the functions work well with Sonar, and the keyboard has a nice action, better than most controllers I have tried.

Thanks quietman...I just got done counting...and you are right.... 61 keys.

Hahaha... this made me laugh harder than it should have.

Thanks. Needed that.

Although A-PRO is a very good MIDI keyboard, there are, IMO, at least 2 inconveniences when using it with Sonar Control Surface Plugin. I'll post them later 'cause I have to go to work now. 

OK, there are two editors prepared for A-PRO: one is Sonar Control Surface Plugin for Sonar and the other is A-PRO Editor for other daws. 

I do recommend A-800PRO, but the Sonar Control Surface Plugin has these inconveniences:

- If you want to use the faders/knobs on the A-PRO to control the volume/pan of tracks and buses in Sonar, you can only control volume/pan of eight CONTIGUOUS tracks OR buses. This means you can't assign, for example, the first fader to the drum bus and the second fader to the bass track.

- If you want to control modulation (e.g. rotary speaker speed, vibrato) of your VSTi by connecting your expression pedal to A-PRO, you can’t do it by default. A-PRO has twenty built-in control maps (0-19), and Sonar Control Surface Plugin uses either 0 or 19, but the Control Surface Plugin won't let you assign modulation to the expression pedal (which is assigned Volume by default.) So if you want to record takes using your expression pedal for modulation, you have to manually switch the control map to the one that allows the pedal to control modulation (which is easy but you need to know how to use the A-PRO Editor, too).

- If you are going to use a non-Roland sustain pedal, it may not work with A-PRO. My Yamaha FC3 doesn’t. Roland tech support confirmed it. (Oops, this has nothing to do with Control Surface Plugin.)

The A-Pro Editor, on the other hand, has no trouble doing the first two, but it can't control Sonar's console and a plugin's parameters separately (You can't assign, for example, the first knob to the pan control of a track and assign the same knob to the Attack control of your VSTi).

If you don’t mind the above, I highly recommend A-PRO (I wish it had more pads, though).

Thanks