Again, in reference to the pads, we’d (personally) prefer them to be positioned in 2 rows opposed to 1 long line. But that’s really all down to personal preference. Before pitting the Minilab 3 up against its other 25-key rivals, it makes sense to have an idea of the Arturia Minilab 3 specs. Do so & you’ll be able to full understand what this upgraded Minilab offers, as well as all some quirks and features that your perhaps didn’t know about.

The MPK Mini and Arturia’s new Minilab 3 both come with 8 assignable encoders. Knobs on both of these controllers are endless too. As for drum pads, the Akai steals the show. Aside from the pads being that much bigger & being arranged in a 4×2 style, the pads also feel more responsive to play. You can achieve softer, more delicate sounds with the pads on the MPK Mini than you can with the Minilab 3. On the Minilab MK2 you had to make do with a sustain pedal input and a USB A connection. While the Minilab 3 gives you a ‘portage’ upgrade to USB C, as well as a 5-pin Midi out port, which allows you to connect the controller to hardware synths!! Monitoring your progress/ adjustments is 10x easier on the Minilab 3, due to its useful screen, which displays a whole range of data in relation to any plugins/ settings. What’s more, it also plays its part when navigating your DAW/ software instruments too. Perks you have to make do without if you opt for the Launchkey Mini.

SOUNDS

At first we thought this may have just being our controller, but we’ve since heard a lot of other people saying the same thing… you do have to tap the drum pads with quite a bit of force to get sound out of them. That’s not to say you can’t achieve softer sounds with the pads – you can. It’d just have been nice to have a little more sensitivity. In typical Arturia fashion, the Minilab 3 includes 2 touch strips for pitch and modulation. However, with the Minilab 3, any adjustments made via these strips can be monitored via the screen, opposed to the bar of lights you find with other controllers. kaiprager wrote:.......(Only AnalogLap - which I use as VST in Studio One is working like a charm, by the way.)

Info that should allow you to make a fair comparison + reach a firm conclusion about whether the Minilab 3 is the right midi controller for you; as much as we’d love for you to ‘take our word for it’, no 2 producers have the same setup, nor work in the same way. So be equipped with the right information when making comparisons, just makes things a whole lot easier. The Minlab 3 also gives you the luxury of a screen to display a variety of useful info from your DAW – yet another workflow perk you don’t get with the MK2. Turn the keyboards over and the underside of the MK2 is made of metal. Whereas the Minilab 3 is just plastic. Whether you are tweaking virtual instruments or effect parameters, you’ll never run out of knobs to assign. Touch strips The keyboard itself impressed us with its stellar build quality, while Analog Lab gave it 5000 presets culled from the company’s V range of vintage synth emulations, each with pertinent parameters auto-mapped to the hardware’s rotary encoders.While both controllers feature endless encoders, with the MK2 you get a whopping 16 compared to the measly 8 you get on the Minilab 3.