With its new A-PRO line of USB controller keyboards, Cakewalk sets out to combine Roland’s years of keyboard design and manufacturing experience with Cakewalk’s DAW insights. The 32-key A-300PRO ($299) is the smallest of the three models, while the A-500PRO ($349) offers 49 keys and the A-800PRO ($399) has 61. (Why the latter wasn’t called the A-600PRO is beyond me.) All three controllers are easily portable, with the heaviest weighing in at just under ten pounds.

The keyboards feature the same set of controllers, including nine faders, nine knobs, eight pads, transport controls, and a small bank of assorted function buttons. Their Roland heritage is immediately evident by the presence of a pitch/mod paddle instead of separate pitch and mod wheels. All connections are located on the left side instead of the back of the keyboard, keeping you from having to walk around your keyboard to hook it up (see Fig. 1).

FIG. 1: All of the A-300PRO's connections are on the side panel instead of the back.

The A-PRO controllers come with drivers for Windows XP or later, including 64-bit Windows 7 and Vista, as well as Mac OS X 10.4 and later. The disc includes an editor application that allows you to create and save controller assignment configurations so you can adapt your A-PRO to studio or stage easily.

A software bundle, dubbed the Cakewalk Production Plus Pack, includes Sonar 8.5 LE and a trio of Cakewalk instruments—Rapture LE (Mac/Win), Dimension Pro LE (Mac/Win), and Studio Instrument Drums (Mac/Win). The Pack certainly adds value, especially for novices buying their first keyboard and pros who have been wanting to try Sonar. But most Gearwire readers will be inclined to leave the disc in the box and use the A-PRO with Sonar or another pro-level DAW and associated soft synths.

Playing Around
I first auditioned the A-300PRO with Sonar Professional 8.5 on my quad-core Intel i7, running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Installation was painless, and the unit worked as expected throughout the review period. Setting it up as a control surface in Sonar took a few minutes, but it’s not difficult if you actually read the directions.

Getting control over individual plug-ins and soft synths in Sonar is a function of ACT, or Active Controller Technology (see Fig. 2). ACT allows a control surface to remap its functions according to context—when the soft synth is the selected window, all control surface functions map to its controls, and when the Sonar mix view is in front, the controls map to it. ACT was very impressive when it was first introduced, but it has lost some ground to the competition since then. That’s not the fault of the A-PRO keyboards, of course, but it does have an effect on their ease of use. If you find you don’t like the default mapping of controls, you can reassign the controls as quickly and easily as clicking the onscreen control and moving the knob or fader you would like to associate with it. In fairness, ACT couldn’t possibly make that part any easier.

FIG. 2: Cakewalk’s Active Controller Technology (ACT) facilitates context-sensitive control assignments for devices such as the A-300PRO.

According to Cakewalk, all three models share the same key mechanism, differing only in the number of keys. The keys certainly feel snappy and responsive, and with four Velocity curves and the choice of light, medium, or heavy response, you can fine-tune their feel to your needs. The keys provide channel pressure (Aftertouch) with four response curves, but not key (poly) pressure. Splits and layers can be controlled from the A-300PRO itself or loaded from the editor.

The keys felt a bit small to me at first, but when I measured them they were only 3/32-inches smaller per octave than my acoustic piano and other MIDI keyboards. Given that the A-PROs are intended to be portable, this is not too surprising, and it certainly isn’t a big difference. Nevertheless, it made a real, if subtle, difference to the feel of the keyboard. The length of the keys is exactly the same as my other compact keyboard, which is understandably shorter than my decidedly non-portable full-size controller.

The choice of 32 keys for the smallest one of the line struck me as odd at first, but a 2-octave keyboard wouldn’t have had room to accommodate all of the knobs, sliders, and other controls the A-300PRO shares with its siblings, so from that perspective it makes a lot of sense. The bottom line is that the A-300PRO's keyboard is a very fine keyboard for a compact controller.

I wish I were as impressed with the A-300PRO's pads. They feel fine, and they are certainly easy to use, but they don’t respond very well to Velocity. I simply could not get a good range of velocities out of any of the pads, regardless of which of the four Velocity curves I used. If your drum programming tends toward the heavily compressed, this is probably not a problem for you. If, however, you aim for a more acoustic and natural feel, you won’t be satisfied.

One point in the pads’ favor, however, is that they offer key pressure. With a tiny bit of configuration, you could easily work out a method of playing everything from the keys and mapping the pads to those notes on which you need poly Aftertouch. Given the A-300PRO's value as a control surface, you may find that you map the pads to button functions more often than not anyway.

Under Control
The A-300PRO features nine sliders and nine knobs, allowing you to control banks of eight tracks or controls at a time while keeping the ninth knob or slider mapped to the master or main bus. I like the feel of the sliders (see Fig. 3). In a perfect world, all sliders would be expensive 100 mm touch-sensitive motorized faders, but they’re, well, expensive. Short of that, I want sliders to move easily with just enough resistance that I know they will not drift or be easily bumped out of position by light pressure. I want the onscreen faders to move in perfect unison with the slider, so I can automate a vocal ride with precision. The A-PRO faders give me just that.

FIG. 3: The A-300PRO's sliders have a solid, positive feel and can easily be used for detailed automation.

The knobs are almost as good, although I generally prefer continuous rotary controllers to knobs (see Fig. 4). For both the knobs and the sliders, you can choose between jump and match behaviors. In writing automation, it’s ordinarily preferable for a parameter to wait until the slider or knob moves through its current value before changing—this is match (called “catch” by some other devices). When programming a synth, however, it’s a waste of time to have to fish for a value with a control before hearing anything change, so the controls should instead jump directly to the knob’s or slider’s position as soon as it’s moved. Kudos to Cakewalk for giving us the choice. The only thing that would be better is for a modifier key to toggle the behavior, so for example, holding shift while moving a slider would engage jump when match is the default, and vice versa.

FIG. 4: The knobs on the A-300PRO are not continuous rotary encoders, but they are solid and offer just the right amount of resistance.

Playing the Field
Running the A-300PRO with Avid Pro Tools M-Powered 8 on my PC worked almost as well as with Sonar. Playing the keyboard was, of course, a no-brainer, but there is currently no control map for Pro Tools included with the A-300PRO. Nevertheless, assigning knobs and sliders to parameters with Pro Tools’ MIDI learn function was simple and painless.

One thing that would make the A-PROs even more valuable with Pro Tools is the ability to assign computer keystrokes to buttons and pads. Since all of Pro Tools’ transport controls have computer keyboard shortcuts, one could then easily map the A-300PRO's transport controls to those shortcuts.

There are 19 control maps stored in the A-300PRO by default for controlling apps from MOTU Digital Performer to Ableton Live. I tested the A-300PRO in Apple Logic 9.1 under OS X 10.6 on a MacBook Pro to see how well these worked. Installation on the Mac was easy, although you must create five separate devices in Audio MIDI Setup to connect the A-300PRO properly. All of this is documented very plainly in the printed documentation that comes with the A-300, as is virtually everything you might want to know about operating the keyboard.

I say “virtually” because using the control maps is slightly less well documented. A separate slim, printed manual covers the various maps in two languages. Each map gets six or seven steps of setup instructions and a couple of paragraphs of troubleshooting tips, plus an implementation chart. It all assumes a bit more than it should, but with a few minutes of experimentation and mild cussing I was able to sort out everything I needed. I was then able to move Logic track faders, solo and mute tracks, and bank left and right. If the other control maps are on a par with Logic’s, the A-300PRO will be a viable control surface for any supported application, although they won’t be quite as tightly integrated as it is with Sonar.

A Pro? Yes.
Overall, if you’re looking for a portable and flexible USB keyboard with a built-in control surface, the A-300PRO is well worth checking out.

Pros: Lightweight. Well-built. Useful number of faders and knobs. Excellent integration with Sonar. Good integration with most major audio apps.
Cons: Pads provide poor Velocity control. Control maps could be documented more plainly.

Brian Smithers is a musician, engineer, and educator in central Florida. He has been a regular contributor to EM/Electronic Musician magazine for more than a decade.