Edirol is actually a division of Roland. I myself have the Edirol PCR-80 and I love it. I run it straight through my USB port, so there's no need for a MIDI port or a power cord. It has plenty of presets for its numerous dials and sliders, but it also allows you to program them as you wish. The keys are full size, touch sensitive and they have aftertouch, but they are not weighted (not that I really care about that last one for synths). If I had to do it over again I would surely choose the same controller as it is an excellent keyboard for the price.

I will admit I'm now in the market for a JP-80x0 or a Virus, as soft synths aren't quite as warm yet as their traditional analog counterparts. Hope this helps.

i'm using an Edirol PCR-30 myself. it's got 8 knobs and faders, and the keys have an excellent feel, not like the toy keys on the M-Audio Oxygen8. for $300 (+ GST/PST) it's really your best bet, unless you want to pay twice more for the 8 extra knobs on the Novation ReMOTE25 (only Long & McQuade carries it AFAIK). what the Oxygen8 sells is portability, so if you have a laptop, that's something you can consider, but it sounds like you'll be using the controller keyboard in your studio with the sound modules.

the microKORG has the worst keys i've come across. the demos from KORG's site are pretty impressive for its price (a $500 KORG synth?!)
the JP-8080 is really the bomb. it's got tons of controls so you can craft the sound to your heart's content. Airwave and Armin use it but of course you knew that already. you can find one at Songbird or on Buy & Sell for around $700. also check out the Yamaha EX5R, it's oliver lieb's favourite.

Thanx for teh info in the edirol controller.... i'll be looking into it. I know there's a Long & McQuade near me and one way downtown near Osgoode. I'll also look into that yamaha EX5R...

would any1 happen to know what kind of synthesis the 8080 and EX5R use??... (ie: additive, subtractive, FM, etc??)

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I believe the JP-8080 uses analogue modeling synthesis, and the EX5R combines several synthesis methods into one:

http://www.yamahasynth.com/pro/ex5/feat1.html

8000/8080 uses dsp chip to recreate analog waveforms, so it's a virtual analog synth (like the virus, supernova, q, nordlead, ...) dedicated sliders for all important functions is nice indeed but the knobs & sliders are relatively expensive (compare the virus rack xl with the virus c price)
I regret having not saved the extra money to buy a q rack instead of the micro q

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There are the Evolution Controllers as well which are quite popular, ive got one on order so hope to see how good it is.

Novation ReMOTE 25 is an all out midi controller keyboard.

mmm how about getting the novation 25 and jp8080 together; will that be pointless and overdoing it? Or is that perfect?

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That would be useless. The jp has it's own dials and sliders. Why would you want to control it with something else. All you need is a keyboard. You can map the filters in the jp to soft-synths, so if you are using reason, you can make the cutoff on the jp the cutoff on subtractor, the resonance the resonance, the amp attack the amp attack, etc. The Remote 25 is not worth it in a hardware environment.

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