Xone: K2 Thread

I thought this was a great thing at first. I might still get it in the end but the longer I wait the more I feel like it's just another controller.

In a few ways they nailed it, made just what I want but a few small things disturb me about it. Probably the least significant but the one that I would like your opinion about is the two encoders at the bottom. I like symetric layouts and can't understand why one would place them there. It throws the unit of balance in my eyes.

I know they would be useful and that others will have a different opinion. But I would rather just have seen two more buttons and keep all four "channels" the same. It's a tiny thing, but still disturbs me ;)

Anyways, would be great if they decided to release it so we could finally see some proper reviews and user statements.

Cheers everyone for sharing your findings and ideas.
//Joel

I think they will work for pitch bending and loop size when shifted, for a third shift when you press one of the encoders I will use them for a browser search, I think they are a great addition to a great controller as now all that is needed in the club is one of these an audio 2 soundcard and a laptop and some smart mapping, that will give you 3 lines out into the house mixer and full control, you shouldn't need anymore than that for any gig.

i think the two encoders are the bottom are great... plus u need a "shift" button somewhere so it can't be 100% symmetrical throughout. i think they really complete the controller layout.

I wish the shift was on the left side, then I wouldn't have to cross my arms over to let my dominant right use the controls, if we can control the leds seperately from the active layer I'll make it happen in the software but only time will tell if that is possible...

I also saw on some european website that they won't restock until 15th of April

A little torn about them myself... Sure I could find good use for them to. Suppose I would have to make it a two channel mapping instead to keep it symetric ;)

Anyways, looking forward to try it out!

i still want one for full control over 4 decks, levels/eq/transport/filters/kills but... back when this was announced the only other thing like it was the X1. now there's a bunch of things in the works with all the CMD series and the F1. never mind the MF3D which isnt the same thing at all but still another interesting controller...

they would have killed the market if they had released it already...

the midi implementation is kind of odd too - i'm sure any other controller will allow u to select a pad's color just using the midi value sent to it.

it's still the only controller like it that has a soundcard builtin tho - and that's something i need to get.

I agree with you there! There has been a gap in the market after the X-session pretty much... for a small mixer type controller. And beeing the first one on the market would be a huge sales advantage.

I still think they will sell loads, but as you say, it's alla about getting the product to market in the right time. It doesn't matter if we know it will come when someone else start selling something similar.

Personally I still think it's strange that this type of controller took so long to "invent" ;)

@zestoi, if you check out the manual from the allen & heath website it shows that the leds and buttons on different layers send and receive different messages, I hope this isn't like the velocity pads on the VCI-400 and blocks the other layers messages. but fingers crossed that A&H used their heads when putting this together or it can be overridden (is that a word LOL) with a firmware update.

afaik it can't be overridden, i did make these points when discussing the midi implementation earlier in this thread, saying i thought it was a bad idea...

i like the idea of the latching layers BUT i would also have liked to be able to specify the button colours using one CC/Note per button and varying the velocity/value. seems we'll need to send out a different CC/Note to a certain button to make it change colour. seems kind of dumb. esp for people wanting to implement layers/status in the actual app like vdj/traktor/ableton etc...

but does that mean if you are on layer 1 "red" you can send it a message instead for layer 3 "green" and you will get a different color, cause that can be done fairly easily in vdj... you just need to send on for red and off for green, a bit of a pain in the arse but definately dooable, and considering I want to map effects via a shift on the 4 deck mixer, this will let me know that is active, it might even give us a superbright yellow as well as the standard yellow.... now im thinking i want to have 3 layers, 1st no color red leds, 2nd yellow static red leds, 3rd green static red leds, and I can mix and match different sections for a stupidly complicated mapping.