

To help transform your musical ideas into fully-fledged, pro-sounding recordings, MiniLab MkII includes a powerful music production platform, Ableton Live Lite. Whether you want to experiment with a bass line, tap out a solid drum beat, or tweak the parameters of your favorite synth patch, our new controller gives you the freedom to totally control your music any way you like. Helping you make the most of your virtual instruments and recording software, MiniLab MkII features a great-feeling keybed with 25 slim-keys, 16 knobs, 8 RGB pads, and touch controls in a space-saving package. Analog Lab Lite lets you perform using hundreds of legendary synth, piano, organ & string machine sounds, and Ableton Live Lite lets you record, arrange, and cultivate your musical ideas into a finished product. This powerful controller also includes several critically acclaimed software titles that will have you creating professional recordings in no time. The available controls have been greatly expanded for many apps with scripts that are customized for specific DAWs like Ableton Live or FL Studio.MiniLab MkII is a high quality, feature-packed controller which gives you hands-on access to the sounds in your virtual studio. Arturia has put additional effort into improving this over the last couple of years and we’re starting to see some of the fruits of that labor. The integration with DAWs has been improved on the MiniLab 3, though. While the Akai MPK Mini MK3 has far and away the best pads of the bunch, its keybed is nothing to write home about and its integration with DAWs is extremely basic.

The pads and keys on the MiniLab are better than the LaunchKey Mini MK3, but its arpeggiator isn’t as unique and its integration with Ableton Live isn’t as tight. All of this is basically par for the course, and other similarly priced controllers have their own pros and cons. The knobs and sliders have a decent amount of resistance and the keybed is slightly springy.

The hardware itself is what you’d expect for $109.
