CME UF-7

Easy to use but not light to carry about at 12kg (built like a tank)
Quality action

Loads. Very comprehensive midi controller keyboard. A pair of sustain pedals can be soldered to the circuit board for foot changing of programs (about ??20 and a fraction of the cost and complexity of midi pedals! I reckon it would probably work for other CME kbds to. For instructions on this simple project email me. Sliders great for organ drawbars.

n/a

100%

Is available

I am profesional musician, I even dont read the manual,just listet, i thing its standart informative manual, its not a book cme for dumies, uses easy, just plug to midi port, or install software and plug it to usb, nothing particulary new and extraordinary...

it a simple midi board. with some butons knobs and sliders,
these arent very good quality, could be better, but than yuo usesed to them , they did them work well.7 -for quality of knobs.

Dont listen to jurks that who say that reverd and effects didnt work :D, are they kidding its midi keybord, first yuo mus assign (map) these knobs in pc application. Keyboard dont have reverb or etc by itself

Velocity - Ok, nothing wrong found.Response to pushing is normal, ofcouse and aftertutch.One jurk says velocity the same with aftertutch and without, are yuo kidding, this one stupid reviewer dont know that is aftertuch. Feeling of keys - I compared with keys of expensive roland yamaha synths , i found them the same feeling or very close to them

I am on it , everythere :gigs home studio
No unexpected surprises...

Didnt know what it is :D

I gave it 10. Becouse feels that other reviewers aren real musicians, music gamers...I own it for bout year, everything works perfect, even after lots of times falled from table, intensive gigings, dust, car turbulences ,... Metal cover you know

So there was really nothing good in this thing. Editing patches is pretty impossible and the manual was only couple of pages of crap. I only had this 5 days and only played with it about 2 hours but that was enough.

So there was 76 semi-weighted keys and they were pretty good to play. There is couple of effects like reverb, chorus and so on but they didn't
even work and it didn't matter which knob or slider I used. There is a chance to buy a piano expansion card for these models, but I didnt have this thing that long that I'd even thought about that. Polyphony was pretty poor also.

This is a midi-board so there isn't any sounds inside it. Well if i'm honest, I can say that I don't really even know what that aftertouch means, but It didn't matter was on or off because it felt all the same.
And as I allready said those so called effects were terrible. It doesn't matter if I played with this or my very old Yamaha DX-7 'cause they fellt same.

NO!!!! Thats enough to say about this thing. Some times pressing keyes doesn't make any sound and so on. It feels like a toy when I play it I feel myself like an idiot.

Haven't dealt with CME company but when I asked things about this from thomann.de they were very helpfully. Thanks to Thomann!!!

If it were stolen I would laugh for the thiefe who stole it. I only paid it 333 euros but every single one is robbery. Ok I have only been playing about year, but I'm enough clever to say that this thing is nothing more that piece of crap. I promise that I will never buy anything from CME again. I glad that returned it and started to save money to a REAL keyboard. I'm playing now with my DX-7 and going to buy Kurzweil PC1X. But maybe that someone else would like this thing but i don't.

relatively easy to use, manual is small and in broken english though - you'll end up figuring things out yourself which is very cool if you like puzzles and riddles to keep you amused. not so cool otherwise.

This controller has all the features i was looking for in a midi controller, touch sensitive keys - lots of assingable controls(8 knobs and 8 sliders - the best feature, and two scroll dials) you can split the keyboard into two midi channels, or transmit on two channels at the same time, its pretty powerful in a lot of ways., it has an expansion card which i never looked into the keys are great too - weighted and touch sensitive and all that, all in all it has served us well and is a "vital" part of our band, im glad we have it, despite its flaws.

Well its a midi controller - the keys are touch sensitive and they do a good job of that, but thats about all i can say about this, the range of sounds depends on the software you are using i suppose.

Buggy as hell, its biggest flaw, i've just been using it and spent half an hour trying to figure out why there was such a large latency between the keyboard and computer, in the end i figured out that the keyboard was upset and needed to be turned off it was fine again after i turned it on, it has reverted itself to factory settings at least twice, dont even bother with the usb drivers, they dont work that well, the manual is written by a two year old bulgarian with no english.These are all minor bugs though, its just that its liable to go a bit crazy sometimes and you won't have a clue why
.But on the bright side the keyboard itself is very sturdy, we have been gigging with it for 6 months now, and it has survived a lot of abuse and knocks,it has a very good build quality - mostly metal, And its still working too!!!, despite all the scares.

havent had the pleasure.
but i'm sure they are well versed in dealing with calls about this
keyboard.

I don't think i would not buy this particluar keyboard again - for a start its the uf7 - probably too many keys for a midi controller - because of this its a heavy bugger,if you were buying a cme you'd be better off buying the uf5 or uf6 version . i'd like to try other midi controllers on the market, maybe they arent as buggy as this one, which is my biggest gripe.

1.0 software version.
No presets. Easy to edit patches but as the earlier review said, you can't store patches. Manual somewhat on the "tounge-in-cheek" side with it's funny chinenglish.

Very easy, powered by USB. Could be more controls and knobs though. But no hidden menues. A numeric pad wouldn't be that wrong. Most interesting feature: The drawbar mode, where all sliders (incl volume) turn into a drawbar for you favorite hammond b3 plugin. And they reverse in value, so 0 is with sliders on the top, and "10" or full stops, are at the bottom. Very nice one.

Keyboard action is stiff.
I bought this so I could do my "B3-smears" because my KX-88 weighted hamemr action midi controller didn't cut it. It cut my fingers instead with blisters!. It's solid and feels more rigid than the rest out there. Aftertouch channelmode only no polyphonic aftertouch though. Polyphonic aftertouch can be nice feature with brass patches and lines, but nothing I would die for.

However, when comparing USB to MIDI I found the MIDI bus faster in latency terms. Use MIDI. And one or more of the controllers that worked with USB did not work with MIDI. Say the first volume knob, even though all settings on the software were right and the same.

Once you unplug the USB cable to move anything around, the PC and software looses contact with the USB driver so your PC has to be restared. This is probably so with anything USB. Not so with MIDI though. Plug in and unplug as you like without restarting. Tested this with several soundcards and PC's so it's NOT depending on anything else but the USB 2.0 specifications and bus.

It's easy velocity and easy to play once you get accustomed to it.
You should use this to play all other sounds of your gear BUT piano.
Have a 88 keys weighted hammer action for pianos. The velocity curves could be a lot more to choose from though. Hope that that will be fixed be the next revision. But as expressive as it gets for this price and features.

Yeah, it's rugged and of all steel metal all around and doesn't weigh as much as my Yamaha KX-88 which clocks in at 17 kg.
Yeah, I would gig with it without a backup

Haven't needed it yet.

Yeah I probably will get a new one if it was stolen.
Been playing for ages.
Love it's all aluminum chassi, and overall rugged feel.

Anything I wish it had?
Yeah, more knobs, more controllers, more displays! And a a ribbon! Just like the one on Kurzweils, Alesis and old Yamaha synths! They are a hoot! I wish - actually - that every button, knob or sliders should have a blank field with a display under, so that you could label for yourself what they should and could do or call tehm anything you'd like, each time a new parameter went up. Just as one "christens" patterns or patches when you come up with a new soudn on you synth, you should be able to wipe out the CUTOFF letters under that knob, and label it to "WELDING UNIT" if you'd like. Of course this should be programmable. And then one asks the inevitable question? How does that work with different programs then? Then, it doesnt, but with the USB 2.0 protocol, you should be able to tell the MIDI controller, which software you are at present using.

The first thing you notice is the size and weight of this thing. It is big and weights a lot, which is remarkable if you think it's "only" a MIDI controller. However, this is one of the few MIDI controllers that doesn't exist out of plastic.The metal casing makes it more suitable for "roadwork". It has 8 adjustable sliders and 8 adjustable knops. Finally, there is a MIDI masterkeyboard on the market where you don't have to press "blindly" hundreds of buttons to achive a simple task. Sad thing though, is that it isn't possible to "preprogram" pathes, there isn't simply enough no memory for it. So, switching a patch, including settings for chorus, delay and so on has to be a manual task. However, it will not take that many keypresses and knobturning.

The manual is short, very, very short. Coming from a Chinese company, you might expect some strange english phrases, but also key information -like, how to perform/receive a midi dump- is missing. This dump thingy is the only way to edit/store settings on your computer, because there isn't an editor for the CME UF-serie yet at this moment (june 2005). But then again, thats a disadvantage for the early adapters.

Using this keyboard is very intuitive, the manual is not really needed for most of the things. No hidden button-presses-knob-jiggling to perform standard things. It all right there in front of you, one slider, knob or button away.

The difference between the UF5,6 and 7 compared with the UF8 is the number of keys and semiweighted vs "hammeraction" (UF8). For the rest, all the models do have the same capabilities. It has a single MIDI OUT and an USB port. Using the, little buggy, USB driver on your computer, you can use this USB port for MIDI OUT & IN. MIDI IN doesn't do much, only for receiving sysex commands, it cannot "merge" the incoming MIDI with its own MIDI, like some other MIDI master keyboards.

Beside the eight (programmable) sliders & knobs, it has 6 buttons to operate a sequencer (start, stop, rewind, forward, rec and begin). The MIDI messages these buttons will send are not standard, but templates for populair software sequencers are provided.

It is possible to buy an expansion card, the UF400e. This will give you an A/D converter, firewire, (extra ?) MIDI OUT, IN and THRU. At the moment, this board isn't available in Europe, so I didn't have the chance to check it out.

Well, the main feature of every MIDI masterkeyboard is of course the keyboard action. The UF7 is semi-weighted, so it doesn't emulate the hammers of a piano, but the touch is a bit heavier then a normal synth. This way, it is easier to play with "expression" - playing soft and hard notes without playing with volume slider. I played a Roland A30 before this one, and the A30 is absolutely lighter to press. Strange thing is that if you play the UF7 the first time, it feels very stiff, but after a week, it will become more "natural". So, it takes a while to get used to the feel, but after that, you will not trade it in for anything else.

It can use 2 layers or a split. It is very, very easy to adjust the settings for both options. For a MIDI master keyboard, controlling only 2 channels at once is a bit dissapointing. You might expect more. However, in most cases, you never need it.

The controller has 4 - non programmable- velocity curves. But only the default "curve 0" is usable in my opinion, the others do peak to soon. CME stated it is working to adjust this problem in a software upgrade. The keyboard has channel-aftertouch. Never worked with aftertouch and never needed it, so I can't tell if it is worth anything.

Well, it's a midi controller, so no sounds, what do you expect ?

As stated before, this thing is build out of metal, it will survive the handling of many careless roadies. If you need a MIDI master controller on the road, this one is a very good candidate. Most MIDI master controllers on the market are not meant to be on stage. They are hard to handle/program on its own and the plastic setup will break soner then you think. Thank god this controller is different. Since I own this thing two weeks, I don't know if I can depend on it for the electronics part of it. The rotating knobs and the knobs on the sliders are made of plastic and might come off a bit to easy. That might a be a thing to watch out for.

Since UF-keyboard users are early adapters, there might be some problems regarding manuals and drivers. However, CME as an *excellent* Forum where *real knowledgable CME employees* help you as much as they can. Even thought there english is terrible (more then mine ;)), there help and suggestions are very usefull. I hope they will continue this support when the UF keyboards become mainstream.

I searched a long time for a replacement for my poor,hard-to-program, easy to use Roland A30. Now I finally found a good road-worthy MIDI controller. If it was stolen, I definitly buy a new one. I have a bunch of synths and modules and a do a lot of sequencing on my laptop. Having a good controller is a must in such environments.As I child, I used to playing piano very heavy, so I really need something to play that can handly my heavy torture on the keys. However, playing for hours on a gig would be to exhausting if it was a hammer-action keyboard, and not all sounds are piano. So this is a good in-between solution.

The only thing I really mis is the option to "remember" the setting per patch. Also to pre-program patch/midi options per patch on the master keyboard. Of course, working with a computer, it will not be such a disadvantage. On the road, I use a programmable "MIDI event processor" from MIDI Solutions, this will smooth out any disadvantages I have.