I’m not in the market for these keyboards but this is one of the nicest official promo songs I’ve ever heard, props to Novation.
Yeah it single handedly destroyed my computer a while back.
Had to reformat my whole computer
Evil 
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yeah it was pretty irritating but I used it on a Mac without many problems. Only way to get values from Nocturn in & out of Max. Great controller poor implementation
So dope
its getting pretty good for hardware these days innit
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Gaz on Sonic Talk #553 at 41:34, talks about how much he likes the feel and the quality of the SL MkIII, that “Novation has really stepped up their quality.”
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No USB Host port?
I’m pretty sure of this, but haven’t found documentation that states this explicitly, so please correct me if i’m wrong.
I think the USB port on the SL MkIII is peripheral only. It would be nice if they had two USB ports, one of them a host port, or even a USB On-The-Go (OTG) port. That would allow you to plug in USB only controller hardware, i’m thinking in particular of the new USB only Expressive E Touché, and output in DIN MIDI or CV or USB MIDI.
There is a technical catch too to doing this as USB MIDI can be so much faster, that there exists the potential of over-runs on a DIN MIDI pipe. The way that you deal with this typically is with MIDI message filtering.
I put together a list of devices that allow you to do USB host mode without a computer, but it would be nice if the SL MkIII could do this internally too. There are several ways to work around this, but i think Novation missed a trick here.
The Waldorf Quantum, as for instance, can be used as a controller and has two USB ports for this. I know there are others too, but they are all synths as well, so being able to do USB hosting makes even more sense. I’m not aware of any other controller (exclusively so) that has a USB Host port.
Video SL MKIII
I went online to the Novation Components web-site – they already have the connections in for the SL MkIII.
With all the user support and judging by all of the templates available for the SL MkII i expect to see quite a list developed for the MkIII templates, both for hardware and software.
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With the Circuit series, Novation has been known for their long-term support with new features and updates. Hopefully that policy and commitment goes to the SL MkIII controllers as well.
Loopop in his video points out a few suggested improvements with the controller:
- You are only allowed only one arpeggiator at a time he’d like more.
- Currently you can’t transpose sequences.
- You can’t have micro-timed step start points, they currently all get quantized.
- You have to use the Components software to make and name templates.
I expect that Novation may have changes in some of these areas coming up.
ADDED: Another example of Novation’s long term product support: New firmware for the five year old Bass Station II, adding paraphony and microtuning. Nice to think that Novation might still be upgrading the firmware for the SL MkIII five years from now.
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Live jams with the SL MKIII are popping up on youtube :
Here’s one from @Calc
And another one from @Bobeats
And I must say, the workflow looks nice, and the jams sound great.
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Seems really expensive.
Price Comparison (in USD)
(List not complate – plenty of good stuff costs less too.)
49 Key
- NI Komplete Kontrol S49 Mk2 – $630
- Novation SL MkIII – $600
- AKAI Advance – $500
- Arturia Keylab MkII – $450
- AKAI MPK – $400
- Nektar T4 – $300
61 Key
- NI Komplete Kontrol S61 MkI2-- $730
- Novation SL MkIII – $700
- AKAI Advance – $600
- Arturia Keylab MkII – $500
- AKAI MPK – $500
- Nektar T6 – $360
Other
- NI Komplete Kontrol S88 Mk2 – $1000
- Ableton Push 2 – $800
- NI Maschine Studio – $800
With Novation there’s the Impulse and Launchkey series costing less.
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I’ve got to believe Arturia will be answering the Novation SL MkIII with a product of their own.
I would have thought that with their KeyStep products and both of the MiniBrutes having innovated in the same directions they would have done things differently than what they chose to do with the new Keylab MkII. They no doubt had to have considered those directions, at least tenatively. (My career is in new product development so these sorts of decisions interest me.) The list above shows that they have decided to keep their prices a little lower, perhaps seeing the MiniBrute in the higher slot.
The chart above is also interesting for me to see how far Nektar has been able to cut their prices from the P series to the T series.
It’s a matrix of factors beyond price – i think the Novation SL MkIII fills the space nicely.
The SL MkIII is good with Live. In the box i’m wondering now how it will work around Omnisphere? Komplete 12 too.
From the manual:
Holding Shift will also display a Capture button if you recently played - but did not record - MIDI notes. Press this last soft button under the screens to grab the MIDI you just played and place it in a clip, even though you were not recording in the traditional sense.
Is that what you mean Ryan? Seems pretty easy to me.
Tight integration with Komplete 12 stuff is something important to me though, and something i want to explore more. I wish there was a video on this.
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I played a live set on Saturday with the MK III. It was a breeze to do pattern changes across multiple parts.
My favorite part of the workflow was the templates I made for controlling the 4 tracks on my A4. I was able to break out the features I wanted by synth track and quickly access (Filter/Resonance 1/2, Delay, Pan, Etc). This was in addition to performance controls I also had mapped. Being able to just immediately control an envelope function w/o leaving an amp page was incredibly convenient to my live workflow.
I also used the step sequencer to quickly run polymeters into the my Rytm without breaking the existing tracks and patterns I had. So I could have off beat clamps programmed in the Rytm then mute the clap track but trigger it from the keyboard.
The other workflow benefit I found was triggering program changes into my BigSky and then adjusting the full mix reverb sends w/ automations to the sequence.
Are there features I still want? Absolutely (chords, better transpose controls, etc) but having coming from a Pyramid this was just so much more immediate and intuitive. I felt like the sequencer wasn’t getting in the way of the performance.
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Arturia Keylab MK II allows you to program chords with the 16 pads if I am not mistaken. That maybe my next general purpose controller. Waiting for loop to see if push3 gets announced before getting the keylab MKII
What’s that little white synth module by the SL MKIII in the first video ? Sampler ?
Rob
Do you mean the Preen FM?
That’s the cool thing of the SL Mk III to me, you can use it with the grab bag of synths you might have laying around. For instance i have a TX81Z that sounds great, but has the worlds worst ui for an FM synth.
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This is cool looking and has more modern features than before, but…
Maybe it’s just me, I’m getting bored with the standard piano key layout. I have nimble fingers and can play pretty well but I find myself not wanting to bother with a huge keyboard these days.
Tried one of those Roli sponge keyboards the other day and while it was more interesting it was still “keys”.
The launchpad Pro/Push stuff is more fun but not quite as expressive as I’d like. I really want something small and expressive (and different than piano keys).
Still have a Novation SL MKII 49 gathering dust. Along with others…
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This sounds like the start of a thread, a good one – What kind of keyboard am i looking for? As long as the answer isn’t Tuesday.
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