You know, I haven't played with Maschine Jam, or any of the NI Kontrol keyboards or whatever, mainly because they really want you to work within some shell of an NI software product, inside which you then load any third-party software instruments and plugins you want to control. I do have the original, first generation Maschine controller and software, bought because I thought it might be a modern-day software MPC - but it kind of was and wasn't at the same time. It is possible to use that Maschine controller without using any NI software, just as an agnostic pad and knob controller, but the thrill wore off quickly. The NI Kontrol keyboards really DO want you to use the Komplete Kontrol software in order to get the slick parameter labels in the displays below the knobs - and that whole concept will not work AT ALL with Logic's built-in instruments because they are NOT plugins as such - they are built into the Logic app and so you can not load up the Komplete Kontrol plugin and then instantiate EXS-24 or whatever inside KK, which is how they need it to work. So the whole world of KK keyboards is a Komplete non-starter for those of us who use Logic's built-in instruments. I like the key lights I guess, and the slick soft knobs with labels would be cool, but 95% of my music comes out of EXS-24 so this is not an option for me. I am not a typical case though - I think nobody serious uses EXS anymore except me. If somehow I could magically map the KK knobs to control EXS parameters then I might be interested, but those keyboards still have the touch strips instead of normal pitch and mod wheels, which is no good for me, and the display and knobs are dead-center, right where I need my Mac keyboard to sit, so if I was going to use a KK keyboard I would need to disassemble it, move the display and knobs section over to the left, and either reassemble it or just build it permanently into my desk. Too much hassle for not enough benefit at the moment.
As to Maschine Jam, well, it didn't excite me much. I think the pads are not velocity and pressure sensitive drum pads but are just simple on-off buttons for launching clips, like what you'd find on a Launch Pad or whatever. I may be wrong, anybody know? The touch strips are not my favorite - I have iPads and some Dave Smith synths that have touch strips, and I really prefer good old-fashioned faders and knobs with which I can FEEL what I'm doing without having to actually look at the thing. With touch strips, a touch screen, or an iPad control surface you MUST look at the thing way more than I want to when in the heat of battle, so anything like that is a non-starter for me. Slate Raven, iPad control surfaces, etc - I just can't. The touch strips on the Dave Smith synths are not so bad because you're usually looking at the synth and standing right in front of it, but I find myself using fader controllers very differently - my eyes are either on the keyboard or on the screen, and never on the control surface. That's why I want a Fader Ctrl - I can just grab and figure out which fader I'm using by FEEL, and estimate how far up or down the fader is in it's throw range by feeling with my fingers against the edges of the case. You kind of wedge your thumb against the lower edge of the case and move the fader with your middle finger and you can easily tell without looking how much you've moved the fader. Hard to explain why this makes a difference for me but it's huge enough to keep me pointed at the same kind of normal hardware fader boxes I've used for 20+ years. I think it comes from my years behind the big SSL consoles, where you wanted to keep looking straight ahead and not down at the faders, but the excellent (accidental?) ergonomics of these consoles meant that you could slide your hands left and right and sense, either by well-known and familiar distances and muscle memory, or by actually counting in the back of your mind how many of the little ridges between the fader plates your finger had passed over, what channel your finger was on. Similarly, parking your thumb on the little raised bezel around the VCA group rotary switch next to the fader gave your hand a positional reference when adjusting faders. My hands, and what's left of my brain, still kind of work this way.
I'm not sure if Maschine Jam can be used as a software-agnostic controller in the same way that the original Maschine controllers can, but even still - those touch strips do nothing for me and I don't need a clip-launcher button grid. Same deal with all those Akai grid-based controllers - can't use 'em.
I’m starting to miss the focus here, as I was simply putting another option out there for Rohann's discussion about MIDI CC boxes, by offering an example of something that I’m finding to be useful, but which is not necessarily related at all to whatever else is tried-and-true for others. It certainly does not negate anything else that also works in that respect.
When I add a device, it’s for a specific reason in terms of enhancing workflow, and as such, is not necessarily meant to replace or discard something else in that flow. I am thinking of keyboard discussions here, which sometimes sound as if it’s the last choice one will ever make in life, but where it’s really about the budget in hand at the time.
Keyboards and controllers are, to me, like string libraries. They add up, do different things, and sometimes coexist if not integrate with each other for maximum benefit. Each is very personal, as you also indicate detailing your experience with various touch surfaces you have tried. But I watched that excellent tour you gave, and those wonderfully unique and esoteric instruments in your studio, and as I often do, and found analogies there with the meager things I sometimes integrate in my studio, relative to what new or different workflows they might inspire.
I also come at this from the perspective of a visual impairment, and where the LED options in the NI hardware has met a need recently, despite some of my initial reservations (and the price tags). But faders are also here to stay, for many, and for all the preferred reasons you mentioned, and which I agree with as well to some degree.
With respect to the NI Kontrol keyboard, or any of their hardware, it is absolutely a non-starter for some, and to me that is an obvious point. But the narrative that sometimes gets posited in these threads seems to lapse into disparaging something that actually can provide great benefit for others in a particular context. Part of that context here being the $70 - $250 MIDI CC options, where I mentioned another perspective, albeit it one that does not use physical faders.
But to clarify what little I know about integrating the NI hardware recently and some of the questions you raise…
The JAM buttons are multi-faced in terms of setting up scenes, launching clips, step sequencing, and a host of other functions. They do not function as full velocity buttons for select clips/sounds, but are set at 50%, and can be edited to a different value. I suspect there will be other functionality as well as they release future updates.
Which is where it dovetails into the Maschine Pads, but where you are then beholden to buying into that combination if you want/need that full velocity. I think this is where the more established Maschine types are both loving and/or hating things, where the JAM also now shortcuts a lot of the shift+ combinations in the other Maschine hardware.
The touch strips are not just used for controlling parameters and levels, but in instrument mode can trigger strums, arpeggiations, designated chords/modes and even be tapped for some very performable iterations. In this way, it’s not merely an EDM approach, but for me, opens up some exploration, such as programming in an array of Spitfire Chamber Strings patterns I started to selectively trigger amongst a myriad of sound-sculpting instruments loaded into Kontakt.
But you are partially right, in that these devices are all dependent on the workflow of the NI software integration, which is either in tandem with Maschine (which also loads as a VST into a DAW), or, as with the Komplete Keyboard itself, as in instance of Komplete Kontrol in the DAW, to then have access to al the visual and mapped parameters and keyswitches.
But where, for me, the development of NKS support in many of my orchestral libraries is absolutely a boon when loading up an instance and having full articulations, keysiwtches and parameters already visually mapped.
But the keyboard also “swaps” to its MIDI controller status when not using the software, via the “auto focus” when simply clicking on any track instance of the DAW itself. And as such, all the knobs and sliders are then doing whatever you have designated them to do. But to reiterate something you and others have said, perhaps limited in scope in terms of being a full on MIDI controller on par with others. Hence, my point that many of these devices are supplemental, and very useful in the environment of the NI software as well, but not necessarily what some will want for a main controller.
The JAM is also pending support for templates to use it as a Mackie-style device, but as I said earlier, this does not interest me.