The Novation Launchkey is one of the whole Novation range thats had a bit of a 'facelift' as of late. But whats changed other than the design (mainly the colour scheme of the units being bought into the 21st century, I mean, grey and orange.. hmmm) and the MK2 being placed behind the names in the title.
Here are 5 changes that I can see straight away.
- New, adjustable velocity curves on keys
- New internal Novation firmware designed and supported in-house
- New additional Ableton controls: Device, Pan, Send A, Send B.
- New RGB Launchpad buttons
- New, stronger and better built knobs attached to chassis.
Lauchkeys all come with everything you need to start making music (apart from the computer and producer chair of course): Ableton Live Lite, Novation Bass Station and V-Station virtual instruments, plus a tidy 1GB collection of production-ready samples from the masters at Loopmasters. It’s also fully bus-powered via USB and class compliant, so you can get straight into hassle-free music making.
There are eight rotary knobs on all of the range, from the 25 to the 61 key, to give you full control when tweaking your instruments and effects. The 49 and 61-note versions have 9 mixer faders also, making life travelling through Ableton, so much more easier and faster.
With all updated MK2 versions of products, you really have to follow the ethos of "if its not broke, then dont fix it" and with Novation products being spot on anyway (apart from that grey and orange design haha), you really have to just listen to previous comments from consumers and do little 'tweaks'. Everything that has changed across the whole of the Novation line has 110% been improved and made the products more desirable, still maintaining their affordable cost.
To see the full range, have a look at our main website