“somewhere between “Kit” from Knightrider and the front grate of a Mazda” Novation Impulse series from £199 inc. Impulse 25, 49 and 61
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he newest of the bunch here, the Novation Impulse range of keyboards look a little bit different – somewhere between “Kit” from Knightrider and the front grate of a Mazda. Whether this is a good look is up to you, but we’re personally quite keen on the black and red stylings as the keyboards conven-
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iently match our company colours! As with all recent Novation controllers, the Impulse keyboards ship with Automap software, which (as you might expect) automatically maps controllers to whatever software you’re using, so e.g. if you’ve got the DAW mixer up on screen, the faders will become track volume controls; if you’re running a synth plugin, one of the knobs might become a filter cutoff control etc. The Automap software cunningly appears on screen overlaid above whatever you’re looking at to show you what’s mapped to what, which is a great feature that saves a lot of time.
“get twiddling right out of the box”
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urrently only one in the range – a 49 key model – but offering a great specs to cost ratio, the Alesis QX49 offers the standard velocity sensitive keyboard plus pitch and modulation wheels. On top of this, however, there are a few extra control methods: eight faders, four drum pads, eight knobs, six assignable buttons, and basic
transport controls. Other than the above, the keyboards ship with a Lite version of Ableton’s worldbeating Live software, meaning you can pretty much get started with your twiddling right out of the box. Clearly Alesis have managed to offer this functionality at a great cost, and this is the key selling point of these keyboards.
Alesis QX49 from £119
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