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| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 9.8 inches | | Product Width: | 15.83 inches | | Product Height: | 2.87 inches | | Product Weight: | 4.19 pounds | | Package Length: | 18.5 inches | | Package Width: | 11.8 inches | | Package Height: | 4.9 inches | | Package Weight: | 5.45 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 16 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 16 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
78 of 79 found the following review helpful:
 Feng Shui for your Digital Audio Workstation Oct 07, 2006
By The Information
After 15 years using a Roland U-20 as a midi controller I began to wonder if upgrading would ever be needed. I figured all I needed was something that could trigger midi notes, and my old keyboard did that just fine. Then one day recently I saw a live band using a little 25 note controller to trigger Combinator patches out of Reason, connected only by a USB cable. The little dials on the keyboard were being used musically to change various parameters of the sound. It then occurred to me that maybe I should take a hard look at what has happened in the last 15 years with Midi controllers.
Escaping from my local retailer with M-Audio Oxygen 8 v2 in hand, I rushed home to see if these bells and whistles really mattered. Skipping the dated CD-ROM that came in the package, I downloaded the current M-Audio drivers using the World Wide Web. Driver installation was painless, and then I connected the hardware. After windows carefully chewed on three different hardware wizards it was all done. Not bad, although I have some sympathy for anyone who is not familiar with the Windows "Found New Hardware" wizard. Fortunately the documentation describes the procedure in detail. The creative session that unfolded over the next few hours is what prompted me to write this review. Long ago it was very difficult to pass "special" information over Midi. Users were forced to map out keyboards, sift through menus, and spend hours on configuration. Those days are over! With this current technology, mapping a function to a dial or button is a simple matter. Software like Cubase and Reason just ask for you to touch the dial you want to use. After you give the dial a little twist the software detects it and maps it to the function of your choice. I could not be more pleased with how well this works.
The Oxygen 8 V2, which can be powered from USB, has 8 dials, 2 wheels, an LCD readout, and a number of buttons. Some of the included buttons are transport controls, so you can use the keyboard to play, stop, fast forward, rewind, loop, and record. This makes the midi recording functionality feel more like a Motif or Triton, allowing the user to take their eyes off the computer monitor. By the end of the evening I realized my old Roland U-20 simply cannot take advantage of the latest features being offered by today's software. While this little 25 note keyboard is a lot smaller, it's incredibly functional, and takes up a very small footprint on my desk. With the octave button I can live without more keys. This installation has improved the Feng Shui of my workstation area, giving more features in a smaller space. When you first experience what its like to tweak a Reason or VST instrument with a physical dial, and have the software record you doing it, you will wonder why you waited so long to upgrade your giant old midi keyboard. It is truly frightening what can now be achieved with a laptop, a software program such as Reason 3, and an Oxygen 8 V2. You could sit in a coffee shop and be the next Aphex Twin. I recommend caffeinated.
9 of 10 found the following review helpful:
Great Value Mar 16, 2007
By sanewbury
Works great with Reason 3.5 on Intel Mac. One key shows signs of problems...make sure you get one with even keys. Mine may be a fluke, but I saw similar reviews with this problem elsewhere. Otherwise, a great deal.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Nice little controller Feb 08, 2008
By Kurt Schulenburg
I can recommend this controller for those that need a small keyboard due to space restraints. It's limited by it's two octave range, but for most horn or string parts it's more than adequate. I needed a keyobard with a modwheel to help enter parts into Sonar with the Garritan Personal Orchestra plugin, and so far this keyboard is perfect.
Another bonus: incredibly easy to setup. Put the CD in the drive, load the drivers, plug it into a USB port, fire up your software. It worked perfectly the first time.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
very good, solid, budget keyboard May 06, 2008
By GameMaker
I'm a digital music noob and have been putting together a modest setup on my Dell laptop running Windows Vista. I'll tell ya it hasn't been easy. Drivers that don't work, programs that won't register and are incompatible with each other, sound cards that are also inadequate, audio interfaces that have bad drivers and won't work with anything else, oh my, it's been some hard lessons learned and there are lots of regrets along the way. But my one component that has been hassle free and has worked to my expectations right out of the box is my M-Audio keyboard.
Besides being easy to set up and use, I've been impressed with the quality. It really is a heavy-duty instrument. The whole thing just as a very sturdy, substantial feel to it. The key-action is decent. It does register how hard you press the keys pretty well. The one thing I don't like is that I have a fairly "light touch" and it fails to register some of my keystrokes. It really wants you to pound the keyboard apparently. I've gotten used to it, and it's fine for putting together little tunes at home, but it's no piano replacement, that's for sure.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Just what I wanted! Nov 18, 2008
By evil genius
This thing is great! It plugs right into my macbook and immediately works with Garageband and Reason :) I haven't tried to plug it into my vista or linux because I only plan to use it with my macbook but right away you don't need any software drivers or anything to make it work.
It's much smaller than my 4' old Casio keyboard which is why i bought it and i don't regret buying it :) The Ableton software it came with is kind of crappy and not intuitive at all compared to what I already have, so I ditched it. But I didn't buy this for the free additional software it comes with. I bought it so I could bring it to me and my mac instead of bring my mac and me over to it (like my old fuller sized keyboard >.> ) and it's just the perfect size for that.
See all 16 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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