Controlling Reaktor with your external hardware isn’t very difficult. Just click Reaktor’s little MIDI Learn button, tweak some knobs and you’re set right? Well… not if you’re using FL Studio.

FL Studio’s MIDI Learn works a little different from most other hosts. Its last tweaked parameter -> link to controller in the wrapper menu is an easy way of assigning any control to the knob/slider/whatever on your external controller.

The multi-link function is even easier. Tweak a number of controls on your soft synth, turn the same amount of knobs on your controller, done! (If you’re not exactly sure what I’m talking about here you can check the FL Studio manual for more info on linking to external controllers).

Unfortunately FL Studio’s way of linking controls doesn’t work with Reaktor. No matter which knobs & parameters you change in Reaktor, the “last tweaked parameter” never becomes active so there is nothing to link to.

Now how is this possible?! What good are all these knobs and sliders on our controllers if we can’t even assign them to anything…

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Pro-Sounds has released Sanford Sounds, a sound bank for Novation’s V-Station software synthesizer.

Sanford Sounds features

• 128 presets in FXB, FXP, and MIDI format.
• A mixture of Leslie Sanford’s love for the digital sounds of the 80s and a knowledge of the modern dance scene.

The Sanford Sounds Bank can be purchased for $24.95. A demo bank showcasing 24 presets is available for download.

Visit Pro-Sounds for more information.

Novation has relased version 1.5.1 of V-Station, a soft synth plug-in featuring Liquid Analog sound based on Novation’s K-Station sound engine.

Changes in V-Station v1.5.1

• VST parameters with 0 centred range now normalised. NOTE: this fix causes patches made on older versions of V-Station VST to load incorrectly, consequently a new ‘legacy mode’ option has been added to the global options page. If you are loading a patch created on an older version of V-Station then set ‘legacy mode’ to ‘on’.
• AU presets saved with patch number 356 or above now recalled correctly (settings and sessions saved by the new version, with a current preset number of 356 or above will not be loadable with older versions of v-station).
• Improved rotary pot control behaviour.
• Fixed bug in saving of env trigger states.
• Knobs can now be reset by ctrl-clicking (so can be reset when pot ctrl set to rotary) as well as double-clicking.
• V-Station now authorizes correctly in Digital Performer on Intel Macs.
• Fixed crash caused by frozen V-Station tracks in Logic.
• V-Station GUI now appears correctly when Automap-wrapped version is loaded in Logic.
• Fixed crash caused by holding note past loopback point with an arpeggiated patch in Logic.
• Arpeggiator now triggers correctly at start of playback.
• Patch rename window no longer appears behind plug-in window in Live (Mac VST version only).
• Fixed crash when using V-Station in Windows on a computer with a hyperthreading processor.

Visit Novation for more information and a link to download the latest version of V-Station.

I’m looking for some insightful comments on these 3 MIDI controllers.

The Remote SL series have Automap Universal. Seems like a big plus, but does it really work as advertised?

Korg’s Kontrol49 looks pretty sharp and has the sliders which the SL Compact doesn’t have. The Akai MPK49 looks great as well, but my local shop can’t seem to get a hold of one of these and Akai’s email support left me in the dark too.

Please share your experiences. Why do you like yours, or why wouldn’t you buy it again?