much has developed since its release earlier this year.
the USB driver has improved much, although i've never had problems with them myself, the earliest driver i've installed, v1.03 ran perfectly for me. there were problems in the beginning, but none that crippled basic usage of the board, mostly nitty gritty program-support details that any new product would experience when first out on the market. the tech guys participate actively on their forum, and new problems are being solved constantly and promptly, which i think is something that few other manufacturers actually offer. support for many programs has been improved much since. in fact, some of the forummers themselves help to contribute to development work.
check out the progress here at
http://www.cme-pro.com/forum
anyone interested in this board must definitely look this up before buying. many ppl come to this forum. newbies, pros, hobbyists.
i can personally say(since i have one, and gigged with it) i have no gripes with the faders, knobs or any controller features. breath control unit worked flawlessly too. slider motion is smooth, however the knobs all have a center detent. can be both advantageous and disadvantageous.
some background info about this company CME: before they decided to venture out into manufacturing their own midi controllers, they were an OEM company that provided keys for yamaha and fatar keyboards. it is left to the individual companies to design their own hammer-touch and key action. on top of this, the sequencer transport buttons, sliders and knobs that u find on synths such as the motif are also provided by CME.
the m-audio weighs in at 21.3kg, and the CME at 23.5kg. just 2.1kg more than the m-audio.
to address your question, garagesale_01, the mobilepre will deliver the audio, but u'll still need USB midi interface. i have my doubts though, abt connecting so many USB devices together. latency won't be that great, for one. you'll be hard-pressed to achieve optimal DAW performance wtihout some serious OS tweaking. anyway, the fact that it's all running off a laptop too, feels a little fragile.
last i heard from sinamex, they are seriously back-ordered on their keystation stock. you'll probably have to wait quite a bit for your turn. CME is available in singapore, showroom at tong lee building. company is LSR Consultancy. i am currently one of their contact personnel. if you would like to know more about this product, please PM me. i shall not post commercial information here.
