Best affordable keyboards, monitors?

depends on what you want the oxygen series controllers look good for the money and i heard m-audio's mapping software is pretty easy to get a grasp of. Personally i've been waiting for about a month for a novation remote zero and control the parameters of my daw and plugins, they have versions with keyboards and pads so you have everything in one unit. The automap is supposed to be real slick. Shit has been on backorder for almost a month though.

The akai series controllers look packed but i heard the pads suck dick. A clean alternative would be an mpd 32 or one of its counterparts I saw on youtube where you can take the crappy pads it comes with out and swap em out for genuine mpc pads.

I'd fuck with one of those if i didn't have the maschine which i've recently realized after having the unit for around a year how insanely sick it is. The hardware is built solid and the software integration is like nothing else i've ever messed with. I'm hoping the remote zero running reason or logic will be as smooth as this

As far as monitors I have mackie mr5s i think i got them for around 400 a pair, they sound pretty good but really heavy on the low end like most speakers under 5 bills. I wish i had a couple more hundred to blow toget some tannoy reveals or something with a more prominent mid and upper range but i dont have 700 bucks. Monitors are subjective though, once you have a speakers inherent traits pegged you can get a good mix out of them if you know how to mix and know what your listening for.

i might cop some more shit because i bought a turntable i'm realizing i'm not really gonna need since I figured out how to sample from my ipod so i don't really think i need vinyl aside from building a to this point non existent vinyl collection and archive to digital. I was thinking of getting my money back on everything and copping a microkorg xl since the maschine has midi out and fuck with that shit. I usually splurge on audio gear around tax time.

Affordable is relevant to what you have to spend. But if you don't even have $400 and are trying to get half-way decent monitors and keyboard.......I don't know about that one man. You might want to save a little longer.

only thing i'd need the turntable for would be for sampling and archiving vinyl or if i wanted to get another one and a mixer and learn how to be a DJ but software is taking over that world too. I saw a video of a guy with tractor and maschine and the shit was insane.

I'm hoping its not to late to take it back to zzounds, the turntable is taking up alot of desk space anyways and when sampling in maschine the software only reads the first 2 inputs of my saffire.

if all you need is a midi controller just go for the $100 m-audio keyboard

i might just hold on to the turntable for the sound of vinyl, hunting for records seems really time consuming though i hardly know where to start

AS FAR AS MONITORS M AUDIO BX8a'S SOUND GOOD AND COME AS A PAIR I GOT THEM IN MY LAB RIGHT NOW THEY SLAP....

depending on the size of the room your working with 8 inch speakers might be overkill, my MR5s slap just fine in my modestly sized home office. Most sets of speakers under 500 bucks 5 inches and up are pretty heavy on the low end anyways. Before i knew the speakers I had to eq my kick and bass tracks to cut some of the lower frequencies down to make my mixes sound clean and crispier.

You should just go with M-Audio. their keyboards are decent, you should get the ones with the pads on them. and then for monitors, you can get the bx5a or bx8a or whatever. they sound good and they are affordable.

BTW, i have the akai MPD32. the Pads do suck dick. but i opened it up and did this electric tape trick i saw on youtube to fill in the space/air between the pads and the sensors. so that really made my mpd32 really good, nice and sensitive pads.

you can use Lo-Fi plugins to get a vinyl sound (clicks, Pops, etc, dirty sound) on your tracks. of course its not as real as ...real vinyl though. haha

You can go to mpcstuff.com and get authentic MPC pads and put them in the mpd as well

if you got the cash i'd suggest fucking with one of the Novation SL series controllers with keys the make 25 49 and 61 key versions. I told you i got the zero SL which is the same deal without the keys, the mapping capabilities are off the hook. I got the piece working in Reason and Logic and the shit is tight and I havn't even gotten to editing any of the parameters yet. I'll be busy all summer playing with this stuff before I have to go back to class. Its all a matter of taste though, I like the feel of the pads on the M-Audio controllers that are similar but i have no use for them I'll probably assign some controls to them or something since i have unlimited pages of assignments i can fuck with I'm thinking slip mode mutes and or solos.