Customer Reviews

Novation ReMOTE 25 USB MIDI Controller

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4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
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I actually have the 49-key model, but the controls are the same regardless of the keyboard size. I chose this after sampling a variety of control surfaces. It has a much nicer keyboard than the M-Audio series, although the key action still falls short of a good quality digital piano, much less a real one. The Edirol keyboard seemed somewhat better, so if that is your main criterion it might be a better choice.

However, the Novation is one of only two control surfaces in the lower price brackets I'm aware of that offer aftertouch (E-Mu is the other), which is a genuinely desirable feature on a synth. Be warned, though, that the Novation aftertouch is monophonic (aftertouch on one key affects all sounding notes) rather than polyphonic (allowing aftertouch to control only the note sounded by the wiggled key).

The second feature of the Novation that clinched the decision for me was the number and variety of controllers -- in addition to abundant knobs, sliders, and keys, it includes a touchpad and an adjustable pitch/mod stick. Finally, the Novation is unusually generous in its collection of MIDI ports, in case you want to add additional hardware later.

The Novation is not plug and play with XP, and in fact getting it up and running was a little bit tricky -- the included drivers didn't seem to work, although downloaded ones did and were accompanied by reasonably clear instructions. The manual is not a model of clarity but does at least appear to have been written by English speakers, unlike the manuals for much musical hardware. The pre-set templates are already a bt behind the times in terms of covering current releases from Cakewalk, Native Instruments, etc. Ironically, although this unit was supposedly originally conceived to be specifically a Reason controller (it evolved well beyond that), its functionality with Reason seems to be a bit iffy; since I'm not a Reason fan, though, I haven't investigated whether the issues reside in the hardware or software.

Novation has quick and friendly technical support through e-mail in case you get stumped along the way. (My own tech support issues did not involve product defects, only a slowness on my part figuring some things out.)

I purchased this item three years ago. I chose it because of its nice look and because appeared more robust and offered a bigger number of controls in comparison with the competitors, even if it was more expensive. This is true (it is quite heavy, and this could be a value point or a problem, depending of the use you make), but the item I bought suffered of several problems:

1) the joystick was not perfecly tared, and the Y (pitch bend) axis didn't reach a the full octave when pitch bend is set to 12 semitones.

2) the x-y touchpad is not very precise, and the item I own suffers of a defect when it is touched near the upper border: it sends completely wrong values. However this problem arise only when touching the extreme upper border, so I can avoid it if I take care if it.

3) after a year or a bit more, the vertical sliders produce bogus values when moving them initially after turning on the power. After a bit of use they return to function correctly. It could be due to the dust in the potentiometers, but other older midi surface I own never suffered of this problem.

I realized that the actual quality of the sliders is really below the councurrence: they are short and not very precise.
Also the knobs are very narrow and it is very difficult a precise adjustment.

The keyboard quality is very good, and as the previous review says, it does have the aftertouch.

For my presonal use I replaced it with a three octave Garage Keys keyboard (which has no knob or slider) together with an Evolution UC-33 (which has 9 sliders and 24 knobs). The two items together offer more controllers and octaves than the Remote 25 and occupy the same space and weight.

I had to throw my $.02 in after the "not reliable" review. I have owned one of these for a while and gigged live all over the place with it. Bars, nightclubs, raves, tent parties in the middle of nowhere and this thing takes it all in stride. I bought it because the available control surfaces out there when this came out couldn't touch it. The knobs are responsive and so is the key action (for a midi controller). I wish the faders were a little looser, but that's just for my playing taste. The touchpad has a lot of assignment capabilities and the joystick is just awesome. Def one of the best control surfaces I've ever owned.