Donner has introduced the DMK-25 PRO, a portable MIDI keyboard that’s designed to be small enough to fit in a backpack, but to offer a wide range of controls, including four wheel controllers, six transport controls, two touch strips, eight pads and more.
Features:
- Intelligent Dynamic Scale Mode
- Arpeggio, note-repeat and chord functions
- 25 velocity-sensitive mini keys and eight velocity-sensitive pads
- Pitch bend and modulation touch strips, 8 backlit pads, 4 assignable knobs, 4
assignable sliders, 8 function buttons, 6 transport buttons - OLED display feedback.
- USB Type-C, 3.5MM Jack MIDI out
Pricing and Availability
The DMK-25 Pro is available now for $109 USD.
Wheel controllers? That’s an unusual twist.
I love the unplugged effect pedals on the table…sorry.
The main question with any MIDI controller, but especially with compromise-prone, budget mini-controllers is scan rates. You almost never hear any company mention it (with the one exception of Novation). But it is super important. How often the processor scans the controllers determines whether the ribbons, sliders and wheels sound smooth, zippery or steppy. The velocity scan rate determines how responsive the keyboard is to your playing. Most people don’t care, but it is (IMHO) a fairly cheap and easy way to make a piece of $#! keyboard into something much better.
I like seeing the pitch & mod ribbons, as those are underrated. For pitch, it is important to know if you can have two fingers on the ribbon for trills.
What is innovative about the wheels? They are small, there are 4 of them, you can’t see what their value is by looking.
Who’s hungry?
At least it has dedicated transport buttons. In your face Arturia!
I’m with stub on pitch & mod ribbons. They’re the next big thing for me *personally*, being one step below a Korg joystick. My hands aren’t tiny, so I love wrapping my hand around the end of the case and being able to make tiny X-Y ‘stick adjustments with 2 fingers.
The ribbons on my Multimoogs were gratifying, so a “mod wheel” that can be set to hold its position and a “pitch wheel” that’ll do hammer-ons seems like a fair compromise. Arturia’s Minifreak does the ribbon thing, too. Seems to be catching on a little…
A long time ago I tried a Kurzweil keyboard with ribbons for pitch & mod. I was so surprised how quickly I preferred it to wheels. There were other things about that keyboard that I didn’t like, so I returned it. But that experience made an impression.
Fast forward a few years, and I have two of the long ribbons that Kurzweil makes. It’s great for the kinds of special effects that come up once in a while, but it’s not as useful (to me) as those short ribbons. Ideally I’d have both. I wonder whether some company might make a little ribbon sidecar. Please let it not be B-word.
So basically identical to the Arturia minilab 3, also in price.