M-VAVE 25 Key USB MIDI Keyboard Controller With 8 Backlit Drum Pads,Piano Keyboard Wireless Semi Weighted Professional Dynamic Keybed 8 Knobs,Software Included

I'm a very serious amateur musician who has been writing and recording for...well, forever. I've been using MIDI extensively for nearly 40 years. And having recently retired, I'm able to spend 40-50 hours a week just writing and recording music. Recently, I started working on an Ableton-based live solo set, which is why I got this little two octave keyboard. I have three Roland Boutique mini synths I wanted to use, but only got two of the "dock keyboards" for them. This one is hooked up to the third one.Of course, it's not that simple, because this budget mini-key keyboard does NOT have a DIN MIDI out for a direct connection to the Boutique. But with some MIDI routing through Ableton, I was able to get it to work the way I wanted easily enough. I'm used to mini keys, and, while I don't prefer them, they're no problem to me. For the money, this is a solid enough keyboard, though of course I wouldn't use it as a MAIN keyboard.I have not tried the Bluetooth connectivity because for my purposes, why would you want to use that and introduce additional levels of latency? But it's there if you need it. It DOES have a sustain pedal jack and USB host jack, which I'm using and which work great. The on-board controls are easily to map in Ableton, and for what I'm using it for, it's working out well. I can't vouch for the pads because I have that covered with an 8x8 "pro" pad and an SP-404 Mk II for hand drumming. But for the money, this definitely does the job. Works great with my M1 MacBook-based studio.

After researching how to get this thing to work properly I was finally able to get it to work once the proper drivers and midi components were downloaded. The instructions are far from intuitive. If you have experience with midi and DAWs etc you will have an easier time setting this up. If you are new to the technology you will likely end up tossing it in a corner because you won't be able to figure it out.But once set up and running; it works quite well and is effective.Had the setup and instructions been better made and explained It would have gotten a better rating.

The media could not be loaded. I feel that a lot of cool connectable electronic devices nowadays are very Windows exclusive so it was great to find a MIDI keyboard that I could easily connect via Bluetooth. It was actually pretty straightforward to set up via Bluetooth to the MIDI Audio Suite and GarageBand on my Macbook. The only downside with this connection is there was a bit of delay with getting the keyboard to respond with the touches, but the pads were very easy to tap on and respond to the touches. The layout of the keyboard is very intuitive. Size-wise, I do have slender fingers but I thought it was pretty similar to a normal keyboard. For the price range, I think its a very decent price for the functionality and would recommend for a budget MIDI keyboard