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I bought this for a desktop/deskside complement to Cubase and my DAW. As a keyboard, it is excellent. It has semi-weighted keys, aftertouch, pressure sensitivity curves and more.As a controller, it's a mixed bag. The Mackie Control implementation at this stage of the game (January 2015) is useless to me. While you get rudimentary control over Cubase, you also get some things you don't want, such as the keyboard triggering software functions, instead of just sending MIDI note on/off/aftertouch information. This makes it useless in Cubase as a controller. However, I did use it for a short time in Cubase as a Mackie Control device (I also tried Mackie HUI, which was no better). Here's what I found: the transport controls work fine. The fader banks 1 & 4 control the faders of channels 1-4. Fader bank 2 allows the faders to control the pan of channels 1-4. Fader bank 3 controls the main fader, regardless of which fader you use. The drum pads were not tested much, but they act as triggers, for the most part.I suggest not using the Mackie Control function, as it doesn't really work very well.Back to the keyboard. It has a nice feel, and it seems to be built very solidly. There is a set of octave up/down switches on the front panel. There is also a very nice set of pitch and modulation wheels, on the left hand side and above the keyboard. There are MIDI In and Out ports on the rear panel, along with USB port, power input for the supplied wall-wart style power adapter. There is an expression pedal input (tip-ring-sleeve, not suitable for a breath controller), along with a sustain pedal input, and another pedal input, which is an on/off style input (tip-sleeve). There are also CV out and Gate out connectors, for control of old analog synthesizers. These CV outputs only work if you've plugged into the wall wart power adapter. In addition, the fader LEDs only light one LED unless you're plugged into the wall wart.The included software package consists of ZYVEX, a system editor for the MAX25, Akai Connect, which is a plugin control wrapper for your VST collection. I have no yet used either of these. You can download the latest firmware from the Akai Professional website. I upgraded the firmware as soon as I took it out of the box to the latest version, which is 1.1.24 as of this review.You also get to register for and download the AIR Ignite! standalone ROMPler software, which I found to be quite nice sounding, despite the fact that there's no VST plugin. This pretty much means is only useful for fiddling about, and not really good for composition.When I performed the firmware update, the Numark logo and name appeared, so I presume that Numark are involved in it's production, either through the firmware development, or the hardware (I'm guessing that it's the firmware only). As such, I'm not sure how likely it is to receive the needed updates for the Mackie Control implementation that would actually make it useful as a controller for Cubase. I haven't quite decided whether to return the unit or not based upon this deficiency. I really wanted something to control Cubase, as well as a keyboard, and at this price (I paid just under $300), as a keyboard controller, it's quite expensive. It will depend upon how I perceive Akai's support to be. If they are not Johnny on the spot with a firmware update to fix this issue, I think I might return it.It is a very well made unit, however, but at this price, I want it to be more than just a pretty face that I can input phrases with.

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