Native Instruments Kontrol S61 vs. older Scope-Pulsar setup

[Gary_101]

hi Folks,

been out of the flow for a few years doing DAW work with my old Scope-Pulsar setup, and I'm looking to upgrade my old Korg Trinity to a spiffy new keyboard from Native Instruments called the Kontrol S61. Trouble is, I'm not sure if my old Dell computer (OPTIPLEX 760) running Windows 7 + my old Pulsars 1+2 cards in parallel are up to date enough to deal with the new Keyboard.

here are the tech spec's of the S61:

System Requirements
• MIDI 2.0 compatible
• Intel Core i5, Apple M1 (and equivalent or higher)
• macOS 13 (Ventura) or higher (compatible iwth macOS 12 in MIDI 1.0 mode)
• Windows 10 (latest service pack) or higher
• 8 GB RAM
• An internet connection and a graphics card that supports Direct 3D 11.1 (feature level 11.0) or higher are required to download and activate this product. Once installed and activated, the product can be used offline.

I kept my old Dell PC alive just to work on my Scope-Pulsar music setup. I switched my daytime computers to Mac platform 12 years ago, and prefer everything in Mac now. Newest Mac is a 2020 27" iMac, which would likely run macOS 14. Trouble is, my old Pulsar cards require PCI slots, which iMacs do not have, and is there any iMac compatible software put out by scope that would run my old Pulsar cards on some kind of PCI interface that would connect to my iMac?

Sorry for all the questions, but i'm in my 70's and my old brain has a hard time keeping up with new technology. But that S61 keyboard looks very cool for an affordable price!

Thanks for any help

Gary

[Gary_101]

quick addition: I'm running SCOPE v5.1 (just reallzed it's 10 years old!) My 1st Pulsar I card is probably 30 years old! Yikes!

[valis]

If you route the keyboard through the DAW first (ie, connecting via USB) and then back out to the Scope software midi driver, things should work fine.

[nebelfuerst]

Connecting a pci card to your Mac will not work. Even if you would find some exotic adapters on hardware level (like Magmas), there is no software on Mac to handle scope. As Mac changed its cpu several times (68xxx, PPC, Intel, Arm), using old software is a nightmare.
So my suggestion is to keep the Dell unchanged and just feed Midi-data to it. As Midi is a long term standard, even a new keyboard should work with very old hardware, so you just connect midi-out of the keyboard to midi-in of scope.
As valis wrote, you could also use the Mac to interface the keyboard , where you could filter unrequired midi-codes and then feed it to scope by midi cable.

[Gary_101]

Hi People, want to resurrect this post.... for some reason I'm attracted to the Native Instruments Kontrol keyboards, there's some nice weighted 88-key MK2 synths on sale used at a good price.

Since these Native Instrument KB's don't have analog output, I'm kind of stumped as to how I would use them in my current DAW setup (Pulsar 1 & 2 on upgraded Win10 PC with the latest Scope software). Right now, all my analog instrument inputs go to a Behringiner 8200 ADAT routed into Pulsar 1 or 2.

I guess I could hook up the NI Kontrol keyboard to my iMac, then route my iMac's analog output back into my Behringer ADAT, and then into Pulsar/Scope. That's all my brain can comprehend.

I could route the NI Kontrol keyboard into my PC, but I don't know of any way to get that signal into my Scope setup interally; I don't believe the Scope software has any way of accommodating that.

Sorry about my lack of technical know-how in making these things work. Maybe I'll just stick to my old Korg Trinity, or look for a newer keyboard that still has analog outputs.

[astroman]

The hint Valis gave above also applies to the S88 version of the keyboard: use Midi.

[Bud Weiser]

Be VERY carefull when you consider buying NI hardware.
The current NI masterkeyboard products are mk III versions.
That´s why you see many used older NI masterkeyboards for low prices in craiglists etc..

AFAIK, every NI product has to be registered AND activated online via NI "Native Access 2" software which is a free download.
It has to be installed on an up to date system,- p.ex. Win 1022H2 or Win11 22H2-25H2.

Native Access 1 is discontinued and doesn´t work in a Win7 system anymore and there´s no way around !!!
There´s simply no connection to these servers since many month now and everyone is forced to install Native Access 2,- which itself also doesn´t work in a Win 7 system.

I myself I´m a NI customer and I tried everything to stay w/ Win 7 Pro SP1 x64, unfortunately w/o any success.

So, I don´t recommend buying these NI masterkeyboards at all ´cause these are outdated and discontinued very quickly always.
It´s NI´s strategy to sell new hardware.

For SCOPE as also other DAWs,- you might be fine w/ the discontinued Edirol PCR300 / 500 /800,- which all work w/ Win7 32 and 64Bit and dedicated drivers are still available in the web.

Roland A300 / 500 / 800 Pro are also good and discontinued,- and there are drivers for Win7, Win10 and 11.

I own PCR300 and 500 as also Rolad A800 Pro.

For Mac, these are class compliant,- just plug into an USB port.

The "ancient" editor software runs in Win7 and Win 10 still.

But,- 61-keys max only,- non-weighted synth (diving board) action.



Bud