WNAMM06: Dedicated padKontrol from Korg

US Just the thing for your beats 30/01/06

No flash plug

James is a Kontrol freak

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Amongst the many new products from Korg for Winter NAMM release, was the new 16 pad dedicated padKONTROL â€“ a velocity sensitive trigger unit with a wide range of other control options. Essentially, it looks a bit like the pad section from the Kontrol 49 - eg they illuminate but you also get an X-Y control pad, pedal or footswitch input that you can trigger a kick with if you desire. The X-Y touch pad (based on KAOSS pad technology) can be used to dynamically control natural-sounding flams and rolls when creating drum parts. Any two independent MIDI control messages can be assigned to the X-Y pad for expressive real-time performances. Two knobs can be assigned to a variety of control change messages - such as pan or decay time - for additional control.

Hit me baby one more time

Controller assignments can be stored as one of 16 user scenes, for instant recall. The trigger pads may be used to switch among the user scenes, allowing quick setup changes onstage. Thirty preloaded scenes offer full compatibility with popular music and drum software titles. The padKONTROL comes ready to play thanks to the special dfh SUPERIOR drumkit plug-in instrument created to work exclusively with it from Toontrack. This 250 MB drumkit features multiple velocity levels, and a variety of microphone positions â€” 2,600 samples in all! Also included in the box is Korgâ€™s â€œCreative Kontrol Pack Volume 2â€� including acclaimed software applications from Ableton, I.K. Multimedia, UVI, Propellerhead and Korg. The padKONTROL connects to a Mac or Windows computer using a convenient USB connection, and can be used as a USB-to-MIDI interface for other external MIDI sound modules. The included Editor/Librarian software allows the user to easily edit and manage scene data directly on a computer. For maximum convenience, the Korg padKONTROL can be powered using USB bus power or an optional 9-Volt adapter. The Korg padKONTROL is available February 2006 with a U.S. MSRP of $299.