Native Instruments Kontrol S61 MK3

The keyboard is well built and feels premium. I personally really like the single screen - I like the simplicity of it. The user flow of searching for what I need is intuitive and encourages me explore and experiment. The light guides are very useful, especially if you're learning, and when paired with some of the tools they make it a really great experience. The polyphonic after touch is implemented in some of the instruments I tried, and does feel like it adds some depth. The keyboard does not include a lot of other features you might see in other keyboards (like pads), but what it does offer is very solid and premium

The keyboard itself would be great, if it worked as advertised.
The problems I'm facing are:
- sometimes, after turning it on, it turns off in a few seconds. It might happen several times after each other. But once it's gone, it's gone, it has never turned off during use (not cable nor connection issue, probably a software problem)
-The knobs are too close to each other, it's close to impossible to turn one knob without touching and turning the neighbor knobs if you have bulkier hands
- Native Instrument software is terrible. More than half of my instruments do not work with the keyboard: if I install any of those instruments, the keyboard doesn't connect to Kontakt anymore at all, unless I uninstall the instruments causing the problem.
- the velocity is too hard. Even if I change it to the softest setting on the keyboard, I still have to press VERY hard to get maximum velocity. Right now I have Fixed Velocity turned off because I'm afraid of physically damaging my keyboard having to press with such force if I want to take advantage of the velocity option. I'm hoping a future firmware update resolves this.
- Native Instrument downloads are VERY slow, a 120 Gb game on Steam downloads much faster than a 20 Gb instrument from Native Access.
- The Kontakt software anyway feels like straight from the 90s: unintuitive and looks/feels terrible on a 4K display. They are decades behind with UX/UI.
- The support is close to non-existent. I contacted them with 4 different issues so far, it's impossible to talk to an agent. Only 1 ticket was created for one of the issues I contacted them about, the others were ignored. Even the support chat robot is not responding for 2 days...

Otherwise, the build quality feels solid, it feels great to play and the extra buttons and knobs are quite useful. It also has very nice DAW integration, so I would be more than happy to use it on a daily basis if I could...
I wish I did not get rid of the original packaging so quickly so I could send it back... I would probably wait at least 6 more months before purchasing this because NI definitely needs time to fix all these issues, and there is a lot.

Da ich schon immer recht viel mit den NI - Libarys gearbeitet habe sind die Komplete S88 (Controller) Keyboards ein wahrer Traum. Bevor man starten kann dauert es zwar eine kleine Weile, da man erst einmal die Software updaten und sich (falls man noch keine besitzt) die mitgelieferten oder zusätzlich erworbenen Libarys herunterladen muss was schon ein wenig dauern kann.

Die anschließende Integration in (in meinem Fall) Cubase lief absolut reibungslos in knapp 5 Min.

Und wenn man dann alles eingerichtet und heruntergeladen hat ist das Teil ein wahrer Traum. Vorhörfunktion, direkte DAW Steuerung über das Intergrierte Display, Live Plug-In Steuerung, die Intergration der Libarys LED's über den Tasten für Funktionsumschaltung oder Anzeige der gspielten MIDI Noten, Oktavenwechsel und und und.... alles direkt am Gerät. Dabei ist auch alles wirklich hochwertig verarbeitet und vor allem die Einbindung und Steuerung der NI-Libarys ist makellos. Für Details lest euch die überall im Netz verfügbaren Reviews durch aber ich für meinen Teil bin wunschlos glücklich ;)