Arturia MiniLab 3 slippery knobs

Lab MiniLab
#1

My first ever Arturia buy.

Despite almost passing out (& turning into a zombie) from watching so many reviews before buying, none of those reviews I watched mentioned this:

Minimalism gone too far
The knobs are slippery.

They require more force to rotate than another popular brand, which makes the slippery 7-sided knob design a problem. The knobs themselves would be fine if they required less force to rotate, or if they had fine grooves for better grip (as seen on virtually every plastic bottle lid). Instead, the knobs are smooth with no fine ridges for gripping. The 7-sided knobs design is simply not a good design for decent grip. This makes using the MiniLab 3 not as nice as it could be, in my opinion.

Arturia industrial designers: please consider a more sensible, fine-ridged, grippy knob design in any future products. Just look at your typical bottle lid for inspiration.

Packaging
The other popular brand uses what looks like polystyrene to support the keyboard in the box. Arturia uses cardboard. I feel less guilty with cardboard, so good job. I wonder if using cardboard results in more damaged products, because the other popular brand is not using cardboard & the foam supports seem more shock absorbent. I am not sure.

Sealed box
The other popular brand uses a transparent sticker seal on the box to let the user know that the product has not been opened. Arturia does not. I think it’s good practice to make sure your customers receive a product that they know has not been opened, returned & repackaged by the retailer, because this affects your image.

Branding
The Arturia “A” logo always reminds me of the Anarchy logo, which gives me negative feelings. Might be just me.

USB C
I wonder if a larger connector (such typically seen with USB printer cables, as used by a popular competitor) would be more robust than using USB C. There might be some advantages to USB C that I’m not aware of, but I think these smaller connectors (such as USB C) are generally less strong in case of cable stress and accidents.

Linux
I am using Linux so I wonder if there will ever be some support for Linux in future. I have yet to register or try any of the software available to download, so I can’t comment on it.

Thanks for listening to me ramble.

#2

I can’t see them moving away from USB C. The ‘larger connector’ you talk about is presumably a USB B connector, which Arturia used on their larger controllers until as recently as the launch of the Keylab Mk3 earlier this year, and is still used on the Essential line (I think?). The industry is quickly moving away from legacy USB A and USB B connectors, being low-bandwidth 90s technology with limited device-to-device integration.

But yeah USB C sockets do not seem as sturdy, in general.

Linux
check the board for existing threads. This request has been rumbling on for years.

#3

Hi Jon_Vincent
Thank you for your informative reply.
Re: USB. When you said “device-to-device integration”, can you explain?

Bandwidth
A keyboard should be a low-bandwidth device that probably doesn’t even come close to saturating the USB 1 bus, let alone USB 2 or later, if I am not mistaken. Maybe some other Arturia products can benefit from more bandwidth and they are standardising on the newer connectors (for bulk component discounts). but I am just guessing as to the reasons USB C was chosen.

Linux
I will look around for existing threads. Thank you.

#4

Just to add, there ARE USB3 equivalents to the old USB2 type B connector, i have them on both of my interfaces, Neve & RME, as well as my UAD2 Satellite. They look like this


USB3 B
USB3 B800×800 25.2 KB

In fact that’s the exact one i use with my main interface, note the blue inserts for identification as USB3.
The B connector is also a slightly different shape to the old style USB2 B connector as well.
If you are using actual USB3, most manufacturers will recommend a maximum length of 2m, you CAN exceed this though as i use a 3m one, but ended up spending another £80 for a better USB3 PCIe host card. I gained another 4 USB3 ports though so i wasn’t too upset.
USB3 and up is FAST!
I get faster data transfer on an external USB3 flash drive than i do from a couple of SATA internal SSDs that i have for storage.

Quality also varies on USB C connectors, i have a few here now, one of which connects with a very reassuring ‘clunk’ and is VERY nicely made too. Not quite as nice as the Lindy one above, but often you get what you pay for.

#5

Regarding bandwidth, I think you misunderstand. You’re right that midi data from a midi controller requires laughably-small bandwidth compared to what USB C is capable of, but that’s not the point. The industry is moving away from USB A and B, and has been for about 10 years, albeit slowed by the fact that these older technologies had a strong foothold, and manufacturers (except Apple) were wary of obsoleting the sockets before the market was ready.

It just makes absolute sense from every angle for manufacturers to standardise the port to USB-C when they launch a new product, no matter the bandwidth requirement. It’s something you will see Arturia doing along with most other manufacturers.

The article below explains some of the the technical advantages of USB C over legacy USB sockets, but there are many, including the fact it can be used to transmit data, digital audio, digital video, it can send and receive power (enough to power a laptop), it can be daisy-chained, and is future-proofed (allegedly). The article also covers the disadvantages, but TLDR mostly they are related to confusion over how USB C differs from legacy ports:

#6

matjones, I have seen those. Thanks for that.
Jon_Vincent, it really started to make sense when I saw this in the article you linked to:
The European Union has also required manufacturers that market their products in European countries to use this system.

Sidenote: I think it’s a bad idea for gov to mandate any of this stuff because it just gives useless bureaucrats more power to regulate (ie. fine) and this sort of useless regulation stifles innovation (lack of better connector designs), but because it’s regulated like this, Arturia’s decision makes a lot more sense to me.

credit where it’s due
One thing I can say is Arturia seem to have designed their right-angled USB C connector better than your average USB C cable, to minimise the chance of damage. I wonder if their main competitor will switch to using these connectors in future products (I still hope they keep the existing larger B design for better mechanical integrity).

MiniLab 3 key design
I forgot to mention that Arturia have got the key width right compared to their competition. The keys are just a little bit wider and taller than their main competitor, but that minor difference makes all the difference in playing. Good job.

#7

The EU legislation does not inherrently cover midi controllers. It only covers (mostly, portable) battery-powered devices with a rechargeable battery, where the battery can be charged via a socket. This is why I didn’t mention the EU law as a reason, but definitely in light of the law it does present another reason to unify connectors across all products.

As much as anything the law was a response to Apple insisting on locking their iPhones and AirPods to proprietory licenced sockets (the so-called Lightning cable) which was deemed anti-competitive. The Apple Fanbois on the mostly-American MacRumors website went utterly crazy that a parliament they didn’t elect on the other side of the planet should dictate the charging-sockets on their Apple devices, but they’ve sure gone quiet now they realise they don’t have to pay $30 for a charging cable.

Like you, I’m fundamentally against legislation dictating the technology we should use. But sometimes - just sometimes - when big gatekeepers like Apple act like complete a-holes, it’s nice to know there’s an organisation with a big-enough political clout to enforce common sense.

(edited for better grammar)

#8

I wonder if the world is going to flip when midi 2.0 starts to take hold and gone are the 5pin din old midi cables and suddenly you just have a usb-c port that is used for everything

1 Like
#9

The thing is, even though both sides of a USB-C cable look the same (unlike USB A/B) there is still a distinction between “hosts” and “devices”, so you won’t be able to just connect a bunch of synths and controllers together using USB-C cables without a computer or other host device between them. I think it remains to be seen how this will play out, but I bet the 5-pin and TRS MIDI ports will be with us for some time, even in devices that support MIDI 2.0.

#10

@innovationsinm
Personally, i cannot wait for that day!
I hit the dreaded ‘10 devices’ limit on The Korg Midi driver the other day with my Minilogue XD, i wanted to reorganise it for an upcoming project and had to do it all over DIN Midi, it took AGES!!!
I’m all for progress when it comes to Midi.