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Native Instruments Kontrol S61 MK3

20 Customer ratings

4.1 / 5

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11 Reviews

Native Instruments Kontrol S61 MK3
£599
Free shipping incl. VAT
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M
Intuitive & Built Well
MatKH 20.05.2024
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
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Great hardware, nightmare software background
Lajbert 20.08.2024
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.
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T
My main controller
TonyKTL 18.09.2024
I choose this for its polyphonic after touch. Integration with my Kontakt libraries is added bonus.
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D
Everything you need for making songs and diving in your Creative potential
Doubletilde 26.11.2024
This + Software is very good.
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Native Instruments Kontrol S61 MK3