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cakewalk and Roland A300 pro midi controller


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I just bought a Roland A300 pro midi controller to use with Cakewalk by Bandlab. It arrives in 5 days. Anyone using one? (or any A-pro series-500If so, how well does it integrate out of the box? What tips, tweeks, drivers, etc. do you need to run with windows 10? Ive already sent back a behringer and i rig... so I know its not going to be as easy as if I got  novation to run ableton. Its just that Ive been using cakewalk exclusively and refuse to jump ship. You are encouraged to email me @mickeymonster@mail.com when you reply to this so Ill know to log into the forum. I'm hoping us A  pro series owners can build a mapping system worthy of having Bandlab reach out to Roland to partner with after Gibson went bankrupt

 

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9 hours ago, Mickey Monster said:

good advice. Anyone else actually own a  Roland A 300 pro?

 

I do, and I posted my notes about 4 years ago regarding A-300PRO setup in that link to the old Cakewalk forum above.  Please see my first reply to this thread.

Just stating this here, in case you maybe overlooked that.

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Thanks everyone. I will read all your links. It should arrive Monday. Play mostly guitar and bass but I had an ensoniq ESP MIDI sampling keyboard back in the day and love to play a piano whenever I run into one and there are lots of vst instruments that Ive been triggering with my qwerty keyboard for almost 7 years now (Aaaaarghhh!!! Yuck!!!) so I'm super psyched.

 

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The A-300PRO (mine is branded Cakewalk by Roland) has a nice synth keyboard action. If you have the patience to set up the control surface plugin, as described in the links and documentation, it can act as a Cakewalk control surface as well using ACT.

The only reason I don't use it much anymore is that I wanted more than 32 keys. So I now have 49 and 61 key controllers, as well as a 25 key that I pack for travel.

And one quirk with Roland keyboard design is the all-in-one joystick for pitch/modulation. It is spring loaded, and always returns to zero. Sometimes I want a mod wheel that stays where I leave it when I take my hand off. But that is just a small niggle, for an otherwise well built keyboard, with plenty of knobs and faders.

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I have the A 49 which is the simplest A series model. But it looks like they share a similar layout and design. It replaced a Roland P 200 I had had since 1990. It was made in Italy so I think the Bontempi factory. 
It was still working but pretty beat up so I had keyboard GAS. 
I’m a fan of using music stores as much as possible for important stuff. So I went to Tom Lee and tried them all out including 88 key models. What I found was a lot of cheap plastic feeling keys in the small controller models. I think feel is often overlooked by none keyboard players. Would you by a guitar with a sh—y neck?  No  

To my surprise they still made my P 200 now the A 49. Same shape and size with a few more features. It was definitely the nicest feel of them all unless you tried a large $$$ piano. 
Best of all it has both midi and USB connection and USB powered or wall wart option. 
It also has a proper midi driver which makes life easier. It is the only midi device I have that I can connect with Cakewalk open and it will work with out reboot. 
So I do believe you made a excellent decision to go with Roland. 
 

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I got a Roland A-500 Pro. Had it for about 5 years know. Satisfied with it. Good general interface. Durable.

From time to time I miss being able to go an octave or two more down for the bass, key beds are decent, drum pads are not for 'playing' ... but nice to have as triggers for one-shots. To me it looks like it was ahead of it's time in terms of features and layout.  I'm used to and like the Roland style 'Joystick' for pitch and modulation, the modulation is a bit special though and sometimes it's better to also assign it to a rotary pot meter for more precise and static type of usage.

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9 hours ago, abacab said:

The A-300PRO (mine is branded Cakewalk by Roland) has a nice synth keyboard action. If you have the patience to set up the control surface plugin, as described in the links and documentation, it can act as a Cakewalk control surface as well using ACT.

The only reason I don't use it much anymore is that I wanted more than 32 keys. So I now have 49 and 61 key controllers, as well as a 25 key that I pack for travel.

And one quirk with Roland keyboard design is the all-in-one joystick for pitch/modulation. It is spring loaded, and always returns to zero. Sometimes I want a mod wheel that stays where I leave it when I take my hand off. But that is just a small niggle, for an otherwise well built keyboard, with plenty of knobs and faders.

yes abacab ... Thats exactly why I bought it! I want to use the faders for track/ bus level automation and the knobs as pans. I want to assign the keyboard to Kontact Komplete control and the pads to addictive drums. Thats my goal, and Ill probably need help from all of you to do it. OK... deep breath... here we go. 

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 No what it seems has happened is Roland has handled over the driver to Microsoft so all you need to do is connect the keyboard to the USB ports and Windows will automatically download and install the Roland driver. This has become the norm now. The CD will be an older driver for older OS. Looks like W8.5.  
Once you do this open the Device Manager go to Sound and Game Controllers and check your A 300 is installed and open the Properties dialogue and see what the driver tab says. 
 

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