Top Midi Control Surfaces From $50-$150

so i'll start at the top with my least favorite which is this icon uh eye control um i'm not really impressed with this controller and i shared it in my video because it kind of feels a little old and a little dated and that it might be i'm not sure when this controller came out but it just feels old feels like 2010 2009 in my hand that's what it feels like and it might just be i don't know i cannot remember uh but i i don't like the fact that it has these little bitty baby pants that's kind of you know a drawback to me um the joystick was the funnest part of that because you can actually use this joystick to control your mouse on your keyboard believe it or not um and the fade but i love the fact that it has like real faders like real mixer faders like i put my finger in there it cuffs it's just like controlling the mixer so the plus on this is that you get actual mixer faders and a joystick where you can control your mouse if you want to uh the other than that it's really really thick really really heavy um it's durable so that's a plus because of the thickness and the heaviness uh but it just feels dazed something like this the way it feels i would pay 39 for it i would pay half what they're asking for it i don't think it's worth 75 bucks i think it's worth more like 35 i'm really not impressed with this i wouldn't use this i wouldn't keep this in my bag at all uh moving on the behringer uh hx touch mini uh i think this is a really really cool controller uh it's a little bit on the chunkier side just like the eye controls i think it's actually thicker than the eye control just a hair thicker but even though it's thicker it's light it's really light really really light it's not heavy at all it's durable it feels durable but you instead of faders the drawback to this one now you have one fader here which is cool but the drawback is it doesn't have a phase they give you eight knobs that you can kind of control volumes with they have this really nice you know fader right here if they had eight of these on here uh i would definitely be in love this would probably be my favorite controller but they do have one that has all eight and it's more expensive like i said that's that plus 200 dollar range one i would recommend this if you don't mind the knobs you have some assignable buttons here you have your transport controls and you have a master fader it does what it needs to do i think it's really really cool uh now moving along to these over here i'm going to cover these in the same breath and i'm only going to pull one of them up because these are and if you didn't see my my video on it you don't know what i'm talking about these are the same controller the pal and the world these are the same freaking controllers uh this is pretty cool these both are both the pal and this one are pretty much cool you have a cross fade on here which i haven't really found a use for maybe if you do lighting if you're using this for lighting you can use it to fade in lights or do some stuff like that maybe with it which would be kind of cool but i think it's supposed to be used to fade from one track to the other uh you can use it for some stuff but you could probably map this and just use it as another volume slider maybe as a master volume slider you do have a knob here it's not clickable it's not like a secondary like some knobs they have like a secondary click function where you can move and then you click kind of like on the x touch on the x touch when i move here i can actually click it down and get a secondary function that doesn't have that it's just uh it does it's not bi-directional like where you can like click here click left click up and down it's just a strict strictly a knob then you got two assignable buttons here you got your mute button it's just a strictly strictly one button here that you can use as either mute or solo volume sliders they feel decent they feel really good this is a good buy the both of these live in the 47 dollar range uh so uh they're they're a pretty good buy pretty good buy then on to what has been one of my favorites and what i believe is the one that started it all which is the nano control this is probably by far the most popular um the most popular slimline midi controller it is very slim very thin it won't take up a lot of room on your uh setup lives in the sixty dollar range um it's got a nice little fader there uh that you can grab and push up or whatever some people are kind of you know iffy about that you know i've heard mixed reviews on that fader i like it i like the way it feels i wish it stuck up a little bit more i wish you gave me a little bit more protrusion kind of like on here or whatever maybe just a little bit more so you got your fader control but i love that it has solo mute and record arm i would use the record arm but the solo and the mute are useful too of course the transport controls here and all of those things like that to be able to do what you need to do it's very useful very small very thin one of my favorites and i definitely recommend this one um moving along uh the midi mix is one that i have used uh quite extensively over the last year i've talked about in other videos how i use this uh in my setup to control volumes uh if i'm using ableton most most likely i'm using this controller because if i'm using ableton most of the time i've got um bus mixes and things going on from like my musicians it's it's very functional multi-use that you can use for really nice faders i've always liked the faders on these so i think it's really really cool to be able to use uh and this lives in the 99 dollar range so you can take that for for what it's worth comes with ableton comes with ableton live light and i i didn't really mention software with any of these others um core comes with a lot of software a lot of stuff you could check it in the individual videos these two really didn't come with any software uh behringer uh it came with uh what did it come with it came with something it uh it's in the video i'll put the link the video in the in the description put it up in the cards and you can see what this one came with but it came with some software this comes with nothing i think they say that you get reaper with it but i don't even i'm not even going to recommend that and then the last one that i want to talk about is the nano control studio now this uh controller has become my new favorite uh mainly and primarily because of one thing and that's wireless bluetooth control i really really really really really really love that i really really love the fact that i can control this uh you can use this control to control my software my instruments my ipad all of that stuff using bluetooth wireless midi this is my new favorite this is my new mv mvp so that's it i hope this video helped you hope to bless you hope it gave you some insight into the world of usb slimline controllers uh and all of that good stuff like that check out the links in the description to some of the individual uh reviews that i did on these controllers and also check out the product links if you're interested in purchasing any one of these if it kind of helps you make up your mind about one of these or the other uh check it out uh they are affiliate links so the channel does get a little bit of a kickback if you decide uh that you want to uh use these products or what have you by using those links all right appreciate you guys hanging out i'll talk to you guys on the next video i'm out i'll let you boy

Channel: John Mike

Views: 175,751

Keywords: dynamics music, john mike, Top Midi Control Surfaces From $50-$150, Midi Control Surfaces, Control Surfaces, Korg NanoKontrol, Korg NanoKontrol Studio, Akai MidiMix, Akai, Pyle, Behringer X-Touch Mini, X-Touch Mini, Worlde, Icon iControls

Id: 8RcM5XJVgOw

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 25 2019