The action on this keyboard is terrible. It feels very "plastic" and unnatural. The features-the knobs and sliders however are pretty useful. But if you care at all about how the keyboard feels, I don't recommend this board. Go with a Studiologic keyboard.

Coming from the world of analog, making the jump to Light-Speed in the Midi world has been an arduous task at the very least. This is my first controller, so in all fairness I can't compare it to anything else. But I guarantee that will all be changing soon because I am getting rid it ASAP! Why is it that all the owners manuals tell you "What" the device does, but never "HOW" to do it? My first impression of this thing was that it is a BOAT ANCHORE! After zero help from their, [CME] so-called tech support it's still a BOAT ANCHORE! All things considered, the action is not too bad for a controller I guess. But the velocity settings are schizophrenic, making it very difficult to play with any feeling or texture. The controls are very cheep and flimsy feeling. I am very dissappointed with this unit, and for what it does, it is WAY TOO Heavy! Why else would they be discontinued? Spend your money more wisely elsewhere. Run as far away from CME products as you can. You'll thank me later!

having bought this controller at a discounted price, when i picked it up, i was simply amazed at how much this beast packs. sometimes you can't get what you want out of it, but that's often to be expected, as with any products there are certain restrictions or limits. but for the amount of use i've put into it in 3 months, i can only say this beats buying massively priced synths or workstations if you're a home studio user. make sure if you use this, to come equipped with a couple of rack effects with MIDI ability, or come loaded with a massive amount of VST plugins for your home studio or mobile laptop workstation, otherwise, you're not going to get the full worth. and always use the power supply when applicable!

Even though it has the hammer feel of the keys, they tend to be very klunky. I am very disappointed overall in the purchase of this keyboard and definitely will never buy another CME product.

The action is simply superb. Better than a Motif, and that's saying a lot. There are downsides, but overall it's unbeatable at the price. Physically it's a tank, rugged, not quite as cosmetically precisely made as a Yamaha, for instance there's a slightly narrower spacing on every octave between the B and A key. There have been critiques of the construction (by Mr Bullshark e.g.) that are too nitpicking, granted this is not a swiss watch, but for one thing the CME is way way better than any M-Audio. The aftertouch on the UF8 is a little stiff and does not emit enough intermediate level messages for my taste, but still very usable. I prefer moderation to an avalanche of aftertouch messages on every keystroke. The default velocity curves (4) are all very useful for specific purposes. Yes it does emit all the way from velocity 1 to 127, and in addition sends release velocity codes.

The USB driver on Windows works fine as long as the external power supply is used, and a short high quality cable. I have not tried a very long cable, but there have been complaints on some forums. Over USB, the default assignment for the faders and buttons is OK, though assigning CCs for the transport buttons is debatable as it may be competing with assignments in some VSTis. For me, in Cubase and Logic, these buttons work great. Over MIDI the mappings are different and you need to be able to capture and map them in the DAW - the messages for the transport buttons are odd. The faders and pots have dual/triple mappings because there's a sort of "shift" selector button, you save only the complete setup of the keyboard on powerdown, but there are no multiple "memories". On a Mac, I don't know, allegedly the USB driver is not as good as on Windows.

The templates CME provides for various DAW and VSTi programs seem to work. In using the Steinberg templates, you find that the assigments shift if you add/subtract tracks, but this is a general problem, not a CME issue.

I have not experienced unusual problems with the CME USB driver, but USB MIDI in general is a little touchy when you have a half dozen potential inputs, and it's never been obvious to me how best to map a set of faders to a DAW. In most DAWs, it's relatively simple to set up a mapping for a specific task, like say mixdown, even if you are using several control surfaces, but it's not so simple to work into your workflow if you are adding tracks and changing the structure of your setup on the fly. Probably it's asking too much to expect artificial intelligence, and this is the reason dedicated control surfaces like for ProTools are so popular. To make a long story sort, I see no advantage to having multiple memory sets in the keyboard, it's just one more spurious thing to deal with, the way the CME single memorized setup is remembered on powerdown is more than adequate. I wouldn't pick a master keyboard controller based on the number of knobs or snapshot memories it has. I think the new CME motorized VX series is absurdly overgadgetized.

CME provides an odd "beta" mapper editor that sits between the hardware driver and the DAW. In this program you can change fader mapping, the velocity curve, the aftertouch curve, do a bulk save/store, etc, it can be very useful, but it's pretty crude. It has to be started before you start your DAW, and it can cause problems if both the processed and raw stream enter your DAW at once as in "all MIDI inputs". I suspect that some of the people having trouble with USB are in this boat.

The feel and layout of the CME UF8 is superb. This is the main thing. It's a lot like a nice steinway keybed. The faders are decent and the rotaries feel great. I have tried many, and unlike my Fatar/Studiologic, which is OK but inert, this is a MUSICAL instrument that invites me to play. There's a very specific light "bounce-back" on the keys that emulates the sense of hammer return, and for some reason it just feels right. It's lightly graded, but not so much that it makes playing bass or percussion with the left hand difficult, on the contrary.

This is a big and heavy piece of gear, make sure you have room for it. But even the spot for a QWERTY or additional fader box on the right is smart. If you cannot try it out in a store, and you're looking for a musical action, take a chance, you will not likely be disappointed.