UK please
As a fellow UK mechanical keyboard enjoyer, you have my sympathies . Things arenāt as bad as they once were but UK ISO can still be a massive pain.
Personally I find a number pad pretty close to compulsory with Renoise and that obviously limits things even more. Are you wanting full sized/close to full sized or do you prefer tenkeyless? Rough idea of budget? Obviously itās one of those things you can go pretty over the top with if you want to.
I want the number pad. Budget is probably up to 150 euros or so.
Well, most of this is going to be based on (many hours of) online research but one thing I can say from direct experience is avoid any Glorious stuff. Their hardware is good but the software has been an absolute mess for a long time.
If you donāt have a switch preference I donāt think you can go too far wrong with Duckys as a full, vanilla off the shelf option. They do the budget āOriginā models for about Ā£60 and they still have PBT keycaps, which is pretty nice. Then the One 3s are about double that with more premium materials etc. I happened to spot a solid deal on the more expensive Shine 7 here for One 3 prices, they have the MX Red (linear, silent) and MX Blue (tactile, clicky) versions in stock.
I had a Shine⦠I want to say 5? That was the first modern mechanical I had and it served me well. Was certainly less hassle than this Glorious one has been!
Oh, and if youād prefer wireless I think Keychrons are more or less the standard easy recommendation there. Something like the V5 Max would probably be a good option, Iāve been tempted once or twice myself.
Iād suggest buying one from somewhere local like that rather than directly from Keychron though as Iāve seen more than a few stories about support/returns nightmares when importing them.
I was looking for a full size keyboard for use with Renoise recently, and was 5 minutes away from pulling the trigger on buying a Keychron V6 Max as I had a good experience with my V1. Then I followed up on some reports I was seeing about issues with keys not registering and it seems like thereās been a real manufacturing issue with their boards recently. Someoneās been compiling all the issues here - https://www.reddit.com/r/Keychron/comments/1ip03k0/comment/mhlga9b/
It seems like the soldering on the hotswap sockets on the PCB has been shoddy, and is causing chattering (inconsistent electrical contact which leads to double presses etc). So you could get it and it would seem fine, but weeks/months/years down the line a socket solder point might come loose and start giving you issues. Not worth bothering with for that kind of money IMO. Iāve seena lot of reports of bad experiences with the warranty service too. Itās a real shame because Keychron have been my go to recommendation for a bang-for-the-buck mechanical keyboard for a while now for their build quality and features.
Fed up with worrying about this kind of problem I ended up getting a used Realforce R2SA for a really good price (150 euros-ish) on ebay, my other Topre switch Leopold keyboard has been my favourite for the last 5+ years. Iām glad I ended up going this way because the Realforce is close to the ideal board for my use case. Topre switches use contactless sensing that have built in hysteresis so are ultra reliable and will never chatter, and because this board is a silenced variant it doesnāt make distracting clacky noises when Iām inputting notes. I have done a bunch of mods to it to get it how I like though, new DES domes and some foam in the top panel to make it feel more solid.
You might also want to look into other contactless switch designs, thereās been a lot of hall effect and optical boards coming out in the last few years. Theyāre usually linear though, which may or may not be to your taste.
As timeās gone on Iāve become more and more convinced that hot-swappable keyboards arenāt a great long-term investment. My GMMK2 gives double presses all the time and it seems a common complaint on their subreddit in general. The newer hot-swappable Ducky ones (One 3 etc.) also have a lot of chatter (lol) about it. That older Shine I had was soldered and just super functional at all times.
On paper youād think being able to swap switches will mean you can keep the keyboard going indefinitely but in practice this one has had more issues already that some of the cheapo rubber dome ones Iāve had, despite probably costing Ā£200 in total. That feels pretty bad really.
The next one I get will probably be soldered (actually a bit tempted by that Shine 7 I linked to), I might even be tempted to move back away from mechanical. Most of my Renoise use is on a ThinkPad anyway.
Every electrical contact based switch that Iāve used in any board (hot-swap or not) has had some kind of chattering occur, though to be fair the Keychron K-Pro Browns in my V1 have been the best in that regard. Itās just a problem that is inherent when closing two contacts. Hot-swap sockets add an extra layer of possible failure, though as long as theyāve been soldered properly and youāre not swapping them constantly I donāt think they should be any less reliable than standard boards.
Iām strongly of the opinion that thereās really no excuse for manufacturers to continue using them, for higher end stuff at least. Like Elektron and others absolutely should be using hall effect or optical switches that will last forever.
Iām seeing small hall effect boards being sold for as low as Ā£50 now, not sure what the quality of those is like but clearly the tech is cheap enough that they should see much wider adoption.
Yeah, itās definitely not the only factor but in practice/real-world manufacturing they do feel problematic. Another layer, as you said. I guess in mechanical keyboard world if you throw enough money at it you could get it done ārightā but even then I doubt there are guarantees really.
Iām half tempted just to get a wireless Cherry Stream next time and be done with it, though going back to scissor switches feels a bit like the keyboard equivalent of selling off all your hardware and going back in the box
I have daydreamed a bit about Renoise supporting velocity on Hall effect keyboards. That could be pretty fun.
Just purchased Renoise. Iāve used trackers on and off for years. Planning on exporting my multitracks from Ableton and doing some additional beat mangling before mix/master
Renoise question (from a noob):
Most of the time I find 8 lines per beat to be detailed enough, but sometimes I want to āzoom inā more than that. Is the easiest way to just make the patterns where I feel like I want higher resolution a higher LPB? How do I make just one pattern have 16 LPB, when the rest are 8?
You can use the ZLxx FX command to change LPB within a song, so in this case youād use ZL10 when you want 16 LPB then ZL08 afterwards when you want to switch back.
You can also use phrases with a different LPB for the bits where you want higher resolution. The nice bit about this is it can be applied to single instruments instead of the whole song.
I have yet to mess with phrases at all, but thatās good to hear!
They are amazingly versatile and useful, and can even be manipulated using some of the same effects as for samples.
Tried this now, and it works.
However, if I have a pattern which already contains information at 8 LPB and I then change it to 16 LPB, it (obviously) goes off at double tempo. Can I somehow āconvertā a pattern I have programmed at 8 LPB to 16 LPB?
If you bring out the advanced pattern editor sidebar (A<ā>E button to the right of the pattern editor) thereās an āexpandā function there. Highlight your original pattern info then use that (with the pattern length doubled too, of course) and it should do what youāre after. It defaults to alt+F9 on Windows.
Awesome, that works great! Never even knew that menu was there.
Cheers.
I dont dabble in them too often, but the one time i did was for that extra resolution lol