Midi Keyboard Recommendations for CbB

[tunesmithers]

I am looking for recommendations to replace my Novation Remote SL 61 Keyboard.  The Novation was recommended to me years ago as an option for having hands on controls for VSTs but it wasn't super intuitive and I never got it to work great (I may have given up, so no disrespect to Novation.  I also never really took the time to learn ACT so if that's a suggestions on how to get there, let me know).   I was thinking I would want it to be a 61 key keyboard with knobs and sliders, but if it makes sense to have a dedicated controller just for effects, I would be open to that. 

I primarily use Waves plugins and would love midi keyboard/controller that gave be tactile control over the parameters (ideally when the plug in is the active window).  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  

Thanks,

C

Edited November 17, 2022 by tunesmithers

[azslow3]

If you still have Novation, try to find the way to control plug-ins.  With Automap software (assuming it is still working, I have not checked for a long time) you will need to use the wrapper plug-in, but the keyboard should work as desired. Alternatively try to get some MIDI from controls (probably hard without Automap server) and use them with "Cakewalk ACT MIDI". For Cakewalk there is nothing new in that area, there are still "dynamic mapping" (which is still buggy, but usable) and "direct mapping" (you will need to write all parameters for each plug-in into text file and your device should be Mackie MCU or one of its full clones).
Getting parameter on the display and encoder rings on Novation is rather hard with ACT.

From what I know, there is no controllers with display and ring feedback which will work with ACT out of the box. Theoretically NI S keyboard can do the trick using my solution, but practically that was never tested (I have only M, its tiny single display is able to show only single parameter/value). Note that NI keyboard have great own mapping for plug-ins wrapped into Komplete Kontrol , so great for VSTi but tricky for FXes.
If you want "play" with ACT  using on-screen display, you can try Behringer X-Touch Mini with my solution for it.