Studiologic NUMA

Great action!

The Control 2 input can be used as a modulation controller by using a continuous controller.

The firmware upgrading can be tricky...just make sure you are in the VCOM mode when you upload.

4 zones total, with lots of control for each.

This comment is really just an update to my original post, with upgraded scores. Fatar has been providing updates to the keyboard, and they are fixing some of the issues that I mentioned. Therefore, I increased my overall rating to 8 because the usability has improved, and I do like the keyboard for piano work. In fact, I also bought the black one...which has wooden keys, and a slightly different feel. They are both very excellent actions, and I would recommend it for piano players. Fatar is coming out with a Numa Nano that would be more suitable as a midi controller since it has a proper pitch and modulation wheel.

The Studiologic (Fatar) Numa is an 88 key graded hammer action keyboard with some midi controller capability. The main purpose of this keyboard seems to be for piano players because of the attention to detail in regards to the keybed action. Studiologic claims that the keyboard has a luxurious feel, and their advertising catch phrase is "It's a Feel Thing", and it does live up to these claims easily. The other integrated features seem like an afterthought though, and I found the aftertouch and control wheel to be unusable.

The keyboard has a unique velocity feature that allows you to not only change the velocity curve in many different ways, but you can actually create your own velocity curves by simply playing...the keyboard will extrapolate a curve based on your personal playing. While this feature works, I personally feel like this is a feature that is required to address more of a manufacturing/engineering issue rather than picky piano players.

Another unique feature is the touch sensitive 'iPod' like controls that allow you to scroll through your parameter screens using a jog shuttle type wheel, and several touch sensitive buttons. I personally found this to be a rather intuitive user interface, and quite full featured, but you do have to dig a little (one or two screens) for simple things like program change, transpose, etc. This might be a problem for live performance situations, but you can setup your own presets that might address most issues.

The look of the keyboard itself (early units have a white/eggshell plastic case with silver brushed metal back) is quite pleasant, but it may not appeal to the typical keyboardist in a band. It has an elegant look to it, so I would prefer to have this sitting at home in my studio rather than dragging it around to live performance. However, I imagine that it is road worthy since there are few external moving parts. I personally bought this as a midi controller for my home studio.

One of the main issues of this keyboard was the engineering decision to put the modulation wheel on the side of the keyboard. Now, if we all put our engineering caps on we might agree (somewhat) that because the keybed is the most important aspect of this keyboard, everything else is secondary. And, we may also conclude that a piano player will rarely use a mod/pitch wheel. Granted, while these arguments may be true, if you are going to give me a mod/pitch wheel, make it usable. The fact that it is programmable is a bonus (it can be assigned with any CC value or pitch), there is no center reference. The obvious solution to me is that you would make the zero reference at either end of the wheel so that you could use it for pitch bending, and then push it all the way to one side ot the other to return to your current pitch.

However, it is not designed that way, and you must struggle trying to find your pitch at the center. This is actually impossible to do since you would have to have perfect pitch to do this, so this is a serious design flaw. It could be fixed through software I imagine by allowing you to set the zero reference at on end or the other (polarity is programmable now), so this might be fixed in a firmware upgrade. My guess is that future keyboards will have some kind of center reference that is easy to find.

The fact that you can assign CC values to the mod/pitch wheel, pedal controllers, and aftertouch is good. My keyboard had a serious problem with the mod/pitch wheel and aftertouch though, and I am not sure if this is engineering or software. In trying to use the control wheel (for anything) I discovered that it was skipping many of the values, making for a rather jumpy modulation. But worse than that, when the controller reached 78 it jumped to 98. I noticed this because I was controlling a knob in one of my Reaktor ensembles and I visually noticed the knob jumping, as well as the sound.

This was not fixable in any fashion by changing parameters, so either this is a bum keyboard or a serious design flaw. Furthermore, the aftertouch basically starts at about 40, which is actually above the range I typically use. It was impossible to get a smooth range on either controllers as well, but I was able to get satisfactory control from a continuous foot pedal I have on the Controller 2 input. I believe the mod/pitch and aftertouch to be physical defects, but there may be a way to fix this in software, so again a firmware upgrade might fix this.

The keyboard can be powered directly from USB, and your midi communication can also be used from this single cable, so you can have a very clean look as far as cabling goes. I used this keyboard on my Windows machine, and it installed the drivers automatically (I did have to do it twice for some reason though) and then simply selected this new midi device for communication. It is supposed to be Mac compatible, but I have yet to connect this to my Mac. I imagine it will work just as well. The keyboard also has one midi out for simultaneous output to another device.

This cluster of inputs and outputs is located on the left side of the keyboard...there are no jacks on the back. This 'panel' seems a little cramped to me, especially with the mod/pitch wheel shoved into this space. There is a single push button power switch to turn the unit on/off, and you also have a power adapter jack to plug the (included) wall wart adapter into. This is a low power device, so the adapter was surprisingly small. Since I didn't have to look at it, and I wasn't able to use the pitch wheel, I quickly forgot about the aesthetics and focused on the playability of the keyboard itself.

There was no software or manual in my box, so I had to download the user manual from a rather obscure part of the Fatar website. I did need the manual to figure out how to get into some of the modes for editing, but once I learned that, the user interface was very intuitive (in my opinion). You do have a lot of control in a very small space, and I found the features to be quite powerful, or at lest adequately powerful for me. The main problem I ran into was the fact that the actions of changing presets or entering the edit mode would send out a torrent of midi information. I noticed this immediately because it locked up my host software (Steinbergs V-Stack) where I was controlling all of my VST plug-in instruments from.

The information it spits out (as far as I can tell) is controller information to reset any device that may be connected...on every channel. So you get volume and pitch reset information, along with some system exclusive data. The program information is understandable if I have program change information saved in my patch (this can be deleted), but no matter what I did, I was always getting pitch bend information (CC value of 64). I imagine that this was some kind of rushed attempt at solving the 'non-centerable' control wheel, but it is useless and lame. You cannot turn it off.

The keyboard action itself is the best part, and it is exquisite. This is by far the best piano action and response I have experienced in a keyboard. My first reaction was that the keys were rather 'weighty', but I had been playing a lighter keyboard for a while. I quickly git used to the specific feel, and immediately stopped fussing about anything...and playing! I finally feel like I have a piano (especially with my Modartt Pianoteq VST!). Doe this single feature outweigh the negatives?

In my opinion, this keyboard was rushed. The aftertouch and control wheel seem like afterthoughts, and (on my keyboard) were unusable. So, I basically bought a graded hammer action keyboard...like the Yamaha KX8, or several other $700 keyboards. Why am I paying a premium for this keyboard? Is it worth the "feel thing"?

Since I need aftertouch and a modulation wheel I am now looking at a secondary keyboard. This may add another $500 to my total cost, so I am now in a price range that is astronomical for what I intended. This is unacceptable. They may be able to fix my current issues so that at least I can use the features that I paid for, and they may redesign this altogether, but they do not work now.