Recommend a USB MIDI controller for me?

[namnibor]

Originally Posted by MBTC

I actually have to disagree with this. There's been lots of evidence to support Windows 8 as better than Windows 7 with regard to music production. The whole metro interface thing does take some getting used to and still bugs me sometimes, but check out these benchmarks and keep in mind this comes to us from Cakewalk/Roland, who has absolutely no motivation to get you to upgrade to Windows 8:

http://blog.cakewalk.com/windows-8-a...-applications/

From the summary : "The results of the benchmarks were surprisingly good! Windows 8 performed better than Windows 7 across the board in all categories, and in many cases with fairly dramatic performance gains."

To keep on-subject, if not for but this one sentence; I think Novation has always been well-ahead of likes of M-Audio in this department going back to their VA Synths such as the X Station, which was not only a capable synth but an all-out audio interface and controller in one. No idea what the Novation Impulse line is like but am glad I went with the Remote SL 61MkII because Automap or not, for me and most of us its the feel of the keys and my top requirement of After Touch, as I find it an invaluable creative routing option for things a lot of people never think of like Breath Control.

Now, I wanted to tell Tweakhead that I do INDEED have what I deem a "pre-mixer" for my hardware synths that is an older Kawai Keyboard Mixer that not only has individual sends for my Lexicon MPX110 at either pre or post-fader AND this ahead of its time utilitarian mixer actually has one MIDI IN and THREE MIDI THRU ports, effectively serving as a midi merge device that's not connected to the audio input signal. Even though sending that mixer's output to AI, if I desire of course to do a sister midi track for some automation am aware this will be effortless to make those connections to do so.
The Focusrite Mix Control on their interfaces seems to be incredibly flexible. Yesterday, got an email that stated Automap has yet another update and supportive of WIN 8 and USB 3 ports. That's great info from Roland regarding benchmarks on WIN 8. I am not being "a stick in the mud" about WIN 7, however, there's MANY people that still utilize WIN XP for audio. Not to mention all those folks that have Clavia Nord Modular that Nord seemed to have dropped them off the train and left them for dead as far as any support post WIN XP or past MAC O.S.--anyone ever wonder why Nord dropped such an innovative hardware/software integration synth?