midiplus X6 Pro USB MIDI Keyboard Controller

I will back up others who said this is a great product. Documentation is not great, but it's simple and straightforward. Here's what you get. Firstly this has a real metal enclosure with plastic end pieces. The red aluminum is attractive. Excellent full-sized velocity-sensitive "synth-style" keys, a solid-state pitch/modulation slider, fully-assignable switches and knobs. USB powered. 5 pin MIDI IN and OUT. (no thru) A General MIDI tone module. Nothing special but clean, high-resolution sound including drum kits and effects. The combination of all these features at this price make the 61-key or 88-key models of the X pro series ideal for either beginners who might want to use a simple DAW like Garage Band, or more advanced users. The built-in sound lets you get started immediately and the advanced MIDI capabilities grow with you as you do.

First want to start with the fact that I currently own an 88 key Krome and a 35 key old piece of garbage midi keyboard. Aside from that, I’ve played on dozens of different midi setups over the years with varying levels of control, and ended up choosing this keyboard paired with mainstage over a Nord 3. Another important note is that I use a separate dedicated controller to match a custom interface on mainstage, so I have very little need for many additional knobs, but it delivered right where I needed it to. The keyboard itself is made out of a thicker more durable material, not too crazy heavy, but sturdy enough that I don’t feel bad lugging it around in the back seat of my car. Keys are semi weighted, which takes a minute to get used to if you’re coming from full weighted, but actually have good sensitivity and touch response. I haven’t touched the internal sounds. Last piece is that it did in fact work out of the box without me having to dig through instructions and aesthetically it looked much nicer than a $200 keyboard should. I have 0 buyers remorse.

For the price range I give the X-8 Pro 5 stars for now because it does exactly what I bought it for and more. I’ve only had it for about a month, so after using it for a year I may come back and post another review. I needed a MIDI keyboard in order to take advantage of the “Dual Keyboard” feature of my Nord Stage 3. I considered a number of other 88-key MIDI keyboard products and read as much as I could. All of them had mixed reviews, including this one, so any purchase had an element of risk. MIDI-only keyboards do not have built in sound generators and, therefore, can not be used as a stand alone instrument without a computer or, in my case, another keyboard with a dual keyboard MIDI capability. For about $50 more than my next likely choice, the X-8 Pro does have its own sound generators with a wide selection of voices (tones) and can be used as an instrument on its own. It also has a set of programmable percussion pads that work nicely, which for my purposes is a bonus feature. Dimensions (using a tape rule) - Side to side is a bit under 53.5 inches, front to back is 8.5 inches, table to knob height is about 3 inches. The key widths are standard with the white keys about 7/8 inch. White keys are about 5.5 inches long, black keys 3.5 inches. Power - The X-8 is powered through a USB cable (supplied). You don’t need to plug it into a computer USB port to power it up. It can be plugged into an appropriate USB wall charger/power supply. There’s nothing in the manual that states the power draw, but computer USB ports supply 5V and at least 500ma, meaning if the X-8 design was based on that specification, then a USB power device that supplies at least 500ma should suffice. I picked up a cheap 2.0 amp USB charger and it’s working fine (make sure you buy a charger that accepts the supplied cable USB plug). Additionally, I tested it with a USB battery pack used to recharge a cell phone or tablet when other power is not available (mine is a Mophie) and it worked fine. I only tested the battery pack for 1/2 hour and its indicator LEDs were still showing full charge so I figure the power consumption of the X-8 isn’t very much. A drawback is the X-8 does not have a power on/off switch, which means you have to unplug the USB cable or provide an external switch of some kind. Key action - I am not a professional musician and do not have many years of experience playing acoustic piano or other particular keyboard. I do have some experience on a Hammond organ M3 from the late 50s, a Lowrey organ from the late 60s, a little plinking time on acoustic pianos of various makes, a small Yamaha from the 90s, and my Nord Stage 3. With that said I can say I don’t have a strong preconceived notion of what a particular kind of keyboard should or must feel like and in fact have come to appreciate they all feel a bit different from each other and that is their “personality”, which the user needs to adjust to. The X-8 keys have a slightly stronger spring (rather than weighted) feel than the Nord and other keyboards I’ve mentioned. The sensation was slight and easy to get used to and doesn’t interfere with my playing at all and, in fact, I now expect the tactile feedback as part of the “personality” of this instrument. You can select one of eight possible velocity curves for the keyboard, 1 & 2 are Light dynamics, 3 & 4 are Normal dynamics, 5 & 6 are Heavy dynamics, and 7 & 8 are called Settled dynamics. You need to experiment with these to discover what your preference is for the piece (soft or jammin’) or instrument (piano, organ, other) you wish to play. Users Manual - I give the manual 2.5 or 3 out of 5 stars because it could use some work to make it more informative and user friendly. I believe the instruction manual should be rated separately from the instrument and not effect the rating of the instrument. Some of the problem may be in a less than accurate translation from Chinese to common working English, but that isn’t all the problem. Beginners and others that are not well versed in MIDI terms and functionality will be confused when MIDI usage and terms are presented. A few extra paragraphs and a glossary of what the acronyms and abbreviations mean would be helpful to avoid numerous trips to the Internet to discover what they mean. Some of the “how to” examples are cryptic or just plain wrong, for example the procedure to modify the use of a single drum pad doesn’t even mention when to select which pad for programming. A word of CAUTION is to write down the default values of buttons and knobs, which are displayed on the screen when you use them, BEFORE you change them. As far as the knobs go (T1 - T0) you should leave the pre-assigned knobs (T6 - T0) alone until you know what you are doing. Even though the examples in the manual have you modifying T0, you’d be better off to experiment with T1 instead - leave T0 alone until you are sure of what you are doing. In any case, if you totally mess up there is a factory reset procedure, which should return the instrument to its factory out of the box settings. Appendix 3 & 4 should be combined into one useful spread sheet showing the drum tone and serial number used to set up a percussion pad instead of trying to decipher the tone to a syllable key on appendix 3 and then to the serial number on appendix 4. The list numbers (1 - 61) on appendix 3 apparently have no meaning and the manual doesn’t explain at all what the purpose of using key syllables has. The phrase “it is memorized” is used to indicate the setting will remain after cycling the power and not just for the duration of the current session. It would be nice if some space was dedicated to the use of the MMC transport section, which I haven’t used at all yet. The buttons and pads can be programmed to send a MIDI command or perform a function. My advice is to study the manual carefully and experiment to get past its shortcomings. Like other digital instruments the X-8 has a power up default setting, which does NOT read the current positions of any of the analog knobs. For example, it starts with a piano setup with loud volume level regardless of where the volume knob (default is T0) is positioned. Simply tweak the appropriate knob (T0 in this example) to where you’d like it after power up. For my dual keyboard application I may not want the default piano sound at all so I simply tweak T0 up a bit and then turn it right back to off. This seems to have no effect on the drum pads so I can have the dual keyboard action through the Nord and drum pads through the T-8 at the same time - Nice! The X-8 came with a serial number code you can use to get a free copy of a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) type software called “Bitwig Studio”. I downloaded it but haven’t tried it out as I write this. You could also use “Audacity”, “Garage Band” on an Apple, or any number of available commercial DAW systems. This review is for the X-8 as I use it, not a related software review. The X-8 has a wide range of tones (voices) and has plenty of sounds and function control capabilities and is a very good value for the price. It can easily be used strictly as a MIDI controller or a stand alone instrument or for some configurations both at the same time. So far, I’m glad I took the chance on it.

I’m super impressed with this midi keyboard. The build is nice enough that I have no significant complaints other than the force of the keys springing back is a bit much, but not too much to get used to. I only bought this to control my MPC and other synths but when I plugged it in and realized all of the onboard sounds, I was pleasantly surprised. The sounds a quite nice. From piano, to sitar, to gunshot sounds, it has a great selection. Even the drum pads are responsive to velocity and have a number of useful samples. The knobs and buttons are of good build and easy to use. Highly recommend for the player that doesn’t want to break the bank on a useful controller.

Aucune notice en français, pas évident à utiliser même pour un pro !

Easy to use, great software and stand alone sounds. Well built and great looking. Key response out of the box is a little limited especially playing light, I will have to see if it can be adjusted. MIDI interface works well across all modes.

J'utilise le X8pro dans mon studio pour contrôler mes synths virtuels. Facilement programmable avec Logic Pro et Protools. Les touches sont très bien. Sur la coche pour la qualité versus le prix. Très heureux de mon achat!