native instruments komplete kontrol keyboard s61

In that price range there's a lot of alternatives. I bought this for 300 euro on the second hand market and I'm happy with what I got. The buttons and encoders feel great and the screens are easy to read. The arpeggiator is great, but, as explained before, these functions are all depending on the software, so in stand-alone mode these functions do not work. The light guide is no use to me, and neither are the scale and chord functions. They seem to admit that that it is partly a bug and that things should be working with Live 10. Other functions that are mentioned in the manual do not work and I did not get a really clear reply from Native Instruments why this is. Play, Record, and Start/Stop work fine, as does switching the loop on and Off.

The integration with the DAW, Ableton Live 9 in my case is limited. It has become so much easier to find sounds and to tweak them, that Komplete has absolutely doubled in value for me. The rule here tends to be: the simpler the synth, the greater the 'tweakabillity'. Depending on which instrument you have loaded it is also very easy to tweak the sound. The S61 has some great features the way you browse the library form the keyboard is great. I bought the S61 mainly to unlock the full potential of Komplete 11, which I already owned and which, I think, sounds great. The light guide, scales, chords and arpeggiator do not work in standalone mode. You can still use them as midi controllers, but the functionality is greatly reduced. Without the Komplete Kontrol software, the keyboards work in stand alone mode. I hope this is useful to you.īefore we start it is important to note that the Komplete Kontrol Keyboards are the hardware controllers for the Komplete Kontrol software. This is just my personal opinion, based on my own experiences.

Please head over to the Sound on Sound website for that kind of review. This is no in depth review of all functionality.

Native instruments komplete kontrol keyboard s61