Korg - nanoPAD2 - Slimline USB MIDI 16-Pad Controller - Black

PRO's:1. Great for assigning the various knobs and sliders to parameters in VST's and VSTi's (Synthesizer and audio effect plugins alike). You can do this on the fly or you can set dedicated controls to work for the same thing each time you load up your starting template in the DAW you use. I use it a lot with Serum for example.2. can be used as a mixer controller by default if you prefer - although I personally do not as the sliders aren't very big - this is referred to as "travel" and due to the small size, moves in slightly larger dB increments when compared to a larger control surface with greater slider travel.2. Seamless integration with Ableton Live but if you use FL Studio there is a custom script you can load into it which is arguably even better than the standard Ableton Live integration. The script for FL Studio is called Nanometer and you can find this by searching it on youtube. I use both DAW's extensively.3. Extremely portably - As you can tell by the picture I have provided, it sits comfortably on the lower portion of any laptop surface without intruding on the keyboard (mine is a 15 inch laptop for reference) and it leaves a little space to not get in the way of your left hand when you wish to reach for keyboard shortcuts that involve the use of shift, ctrl or alt.4. The quality and feel of the knobs and sliders is absolutely satisfactory for the price point (it is twice as expensive on amazon now for some reason, I picked it up for circa £50 from here but it was a while ago).5. The transport controls are extensive as it has not only the usual play/stop/record but also buttons to flick through your various time markers that you set throughout the length of your project. It has fast forward and rewind which is also very uncommon but great to have. Cycle typically works as a loop button. It has track buttons to flick between your mixer channels too. I can not express enough how great this all speeds up workflow and ergonomics of any setup.6. Korg provide a software utility to edit the CC values associated with each button/slider/knob for a setup totally specific to your own nuances.CON's:1. Small slider travel so not excellent as a mixer controller if you are OCD about very accurate dB setting due to the larger adjustment increments or lower resolution if you prefer that term.2. Sliders are not motorized - this feature is another mixer focused feature that this control surface lacks which basically means that the sliders would move independantly without you touching them to match the mixer settings on-screen.Conclusion - I have owned a large number of different MIDI controllers since 2008 and no matter how sophisticated my home studio gets, this will always be a part of it. Also, the picture I attached is of my portable setup that fits entirely in a backpack (minus the tower fan on the left) so it is extremely portable.

My nanoPAD2 arrived this morning and I must admit I was intially caught out by the packaging. The USB lead is tucked neatly at one end under a cardboard flap so it appears the box is empty, hopefully that tip will save you a couple of minutes.Installation was swift, the drivers seemed to install well on Win7-64 even though the site suggests a fix would be needed for Win7 32/64. My tool of choice is Propellerheads Reason 6. Adding the nano2 to the Reason set up was simple and I was tapping away drums and messing about with synths in no time.The construction seems solid and the device itself is bigger than I expected which makes it very comfortable to play (for scale purposes the touchpad is similar in size to that of a notebook's). The 'Kaos' pad can be used in a number of modes which will be fun to play with even though I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet... The note-pads themselves have a decent - velocity sensitive - response and I had a lot of fun tapping out beats with it and I'm no drummer.One thing that seems to be a bit of a gripe is the apparant inability to change the octave of the pads themselves. While the touchpad is in 'touch scale mode' it is affected by octave shifts. This may be a limitation of my understanding of how to use this but I thought it was worth mentioning as I didn't even think of this when I bought it. I is perhaps possible to do this within the Korg Kontrol Editor but my brief experience with this software wasn't plesant. I will endeavour to flesh this part of my review when I have more experience.All in all though my 4* is based on the fact that this seems a quality bit of hardware for a very reasonable price.

Although the keys feel a bit loose and rattly, they work surprisingly well in practise and the velocity sensitivity works well enough to be useful.The editor software is a bit crude and shonky (as is standard with Korg), but it does work.Do note that this device is a USB client only. If you wanted to plug it directly into something like an Elektron Model: Cycles, you can't just use a USB cable with the right connectors- as neither end is capable of USB host mode. To achieve that, you'd need something like the Retrokits RK-006 (which is tiny, powerful and highly recommended), then you can use a TRS cable to go between one of the RK-006's MIDI outs into the M:C's MIDI in, and everything magically works.In any case, this is a deceptively useful little controller keyboard, once you have the connection sorted out. It's a lot nicer than using your QWERTY keyboard with DAW, or using the weird button "keyboard" on small instruments. For a portable setup, it's very functional and hits a sweet spot of size vs functionality that the smaller Akai controllers can't.If you absolutely need to pack light, this isn't a bad choice at all. You might end up wanting to find an angled mini-USB cable for it to make the cabling more tidy, but otherwise, I have no real complaints. Just be sure that you understand what you're getting and know that you can't plug it directly into MIDI ins without some extra kit, as above.