Why the $750 keylab is inferior to the $99 minilab3 in Logic Pro

It is really sad that the minilab3 is a far superior controller for editing and using inside of Logic Pro. it comes down to simple functionality.

With the minilab3, you have all the requires buttons all within close proximity to each other. There isn’t a set of dedicated DAW controls buttons to use, rather they muititask the pads along the top end of the keys. This is OK. To get them to function you hold down the SHIFT button on the minilab3 and it swaps to the other set. You have a main control encoder that is used to select functions. Here is where this controller has an advantage. If in DAW mode, the main controller can select the track, but if you hold down the SHIFT and use the main encoder in transport mode to allow you to shuttle forwards and backwards in the timeline of the song. So if you were for example on bar 20 and needed to get back to a spot on bar 3, you’d hold the shift and twist counter clockwise til your progress bar was at the right spot.

I have yet to see how to accomplish this on the KeyLab. There is no SHIFT button. They have 3 unused buttons around the display that could be used to activate this sort of movement but chose not to I guess. They don’t talk about this sort of movement on any of the arturia Logic Pro integration videos for keylab. I have tried to see if I can find anything inside the manual with zero luck.

Arturia does say it has " * Track and Transport control of the most popular DAWs" but I gather that they don’t consider Logic Pro as a popular enough DAW to put it in.

it does have a dedicated FWD / REV buttons that will move you in half bar increments so if you wanted to do the same movement as above, you’d need to click the REV button some 34 times to go backwards from bar 20 to get to bar 3. Not highly productive use. You do have a loop button, that just turns it on and off but you can’t adujust the size of the loop so that’s another wasted function.

It’s got a beautiful keybed with wonderful channel AfterTouch. But it seems. I need to have a minilab stuck ontop of the keylab to be able to do basic daw functions without the need to keep having to shift focus and find a mouse/tablet and move to the screen.

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What happens if you hold down the fast back/ forward buttons?
It look like you have found the Guide and integration script for Logic after all, since it look like you have it working.

Is your post a feature request for having a knob to scroll the DAW’s playhead created by Arturia? I choose to understand it so.

The guide and integration program aren’t all that helpful in you must watch the video where it give you the key bit of information that is needed to get it working. in that you have to manually go into Control Setting and manually change two of the settings from the defaults that were installed to get it to recognize the DAW mode. sadly the pfd with the install says you only need to do this if the setup script doesn’t recognize the keylab controller. this is in fact wrong and I guess I will need to bug report this to Arturia as this forum is not the correct sport to report bugs to.

As to pressing the button and holding it. NO, this doesn’t work as you need to click the actual button for any movement, Holding it down would have been even be somewhat logical solution to not simply allowing the main control encoder to do the two functions like the miniLab can do, but it wasn’t taken. I was inside a small song project and needed to get from BAR 137 back to BAR 21 in Logic. it is just too many clicks to take to get around from one part of a music score to another to be worth it. The controller on the miniLab makes it so easy and practical. this clicking simply is not. (my opinion)

Sadly there is an amount of inconsistency between the different midi controllers that they sell so just because there are features and functionality on a lower end controller, it doesn’t mean that this same or equivalent functions are going to be on the newer versions.

I will limit my post to the opinions and experience of using this controller and give it as more of a review so that others can make the decision if they want to spend their money on this controller or not. If Arturia was wanting to offer better transport control functionality equivalent to the miniLab then they would have put it into this controller as well. Clearly it was not a consideration and seems rather pointless asking for something that must have been rejected for whatever reasons. I am not purvey to them, only a user who now has to decide if this is the correct product for me to own.

Again, sorry if I stepped over the boundary with documenting my opinions of this controller and how it works. I am sure that others may like the functions or agree with the design principals used. I will forward my disappointment to the correct parties at support and sales @ arturia.

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If you have selected Logic as DAW in your controllers settings, and it’s working like this, then i suggest you contact Arturia support and ask, if it should not be possible to hold the buttons to scroll. I presume you can hold the buttons with the mouse in Logic.

I see you complain heavily in other topics too. It’s okay to complain and have opinions, but please also read the community code of conducts:

Thanks for moderating this post.