Qunexus

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aj
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2014/05/28 18:17:07 (permalink)

Qunexus

I was delighted to find, when visiting Denmark St in London the other day that there is now a new keyboard shop. Wunjo Guitars now have Wunjo keys, with a selection of vintage and new keyboards. I picked up a QuNexus there and am very impressed. It's not just an incredibly portable two octave keyboard but is surprisingly playable. Each key responds to velocity, pressure and tilt (which typically you would map to pitch bend). Beautifully built - although there are a couple of firmware issues that I have mentioned to Keith McMillen. Firstly if you map pitchbend to tilt the first small movement of the key after you hold it down will jump pitch to the absolute tilt position. This causes pitching issues that are difficult to work around. The second is that the octave switches immediately retrigger current notes in the new octave - they should only affect new notes.
 
Fortunately in Reaper (I'm afraid I parted company with Sonar some years ago) this is very easy to fix. I've created a JS plugin to resolve these issues and am just testing it before I post it back to the Reaper forums. Amazing technology, these are just simple text files that allow you to create effects for MIDI or audio without any faffing around with programming environments. Kind of like Sonar's CAL but infinitely more powerful.
 
Anyway, this is a keyboard controller well worth checking out. Amazingly portable, it is only a few millimetres thick and less wide than your average laptop. And surprisingly playable even if you're a seasoned keyboard player. Oh, and the keys light up when you press them. And the LEDs respond to MIDI note events sent to the keyboard. So it makes a terrific set of drum pads as well. Definitely worth checking out, in my opinion.
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    aj
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    Re: Qunexus 2014/06/01 12:04:04 (permalink)
    So... the qunexus will fit nicely in the little backpack I take to work. And so will my (slightly old) Samsung X120 11 inch laptop. It looks like a netbook but actually has 3G RAM and a Pentium U4100 dual core processor. I was dubious about how well this might work but after some preliminary tests it looked like I could get at least 6ms latency from the inbuilt audio using ASIO4ALL and so I set up most of my main studio stuff, including Reaper (sorry Cake!) , Kontakt 5, RealLPC, RealStrat and RealGuitar. Amazingly, this all seems to be working beautifully. My daily train journey to work is going to be far more interesting now; the qunexus sits nicely on top of the laptop keyboard which, by happy accident on the X120, is protected by a slightly raised edge that means keys don't get pressed. I had been considering purchasing a Surface Pro 2, entranced by the idea of a touchscreen and a much more powerful processor - but - so far - this looks like it is going to work. I have dreamed of being able to do something like this for a very long time, but could never imagine a suitably compact keyboard would ever actually be playable -amazingly, it is entirely possible to play quite fast runs accurately, albeit with some changes to technique, but - I'm simply blown away by this gadget. In fact, I'm probably gonna buy another one - you can have more than one connected - and they will almost exactly cover the laptop keyboard and give me four octaves - and since the X120 has three USB ports that's no problem. It's just a matter of thinking like an organ player with multiple manuals, and I've learned years ago how to play that way. Now, if I could find a very portable but high quality speaker that would plug into the laptop... but for now, headphones will do....
    #2
    AT
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    Re: Qunexus 2014/06/01 12:21:58 (permalink)
    Glad to hear about this.  I wondered about getting one after my last controller died.  However, I got a good deal on another novation.  Maybe next time.  It did look like it would work - but I was wondering about the actually playability.
     
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    #3
    davdud101
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    Re: Qunexus 2014/06/01 18:40:46 (permalink)
    Out of curiosity... Are they tap-sensitive pads like a drum controller? I'm looking for an all-in-one controller that contains 8-track sliders, 8 knobs and a drum pad integrated... I know this doesn't fit at ALL but I am interested in those miniature controllers.

     
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    Jim Roseberry
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    Re: Qunexus 2014/06/03 14:46:24 (permalink)
    The keys are velocity and pressure sensitive (similar to drum pad controllers).
    The unit is surprisingly playable given it's ultra small size.
    You use an software editor to program the unit (stores 4 preset configs).
    I like having the Q (perfect for trying out soft-synths if you've got a crowded studio desk).
    Nice for playing simple one-hand parts...
     
     
     

    Best Regards,

    Jim Roseberry
    jim@studiocat.com
    www.studiocat.com
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