M-Audio Oxygen Pro – Detailed Review PART 1 – Look & Feel Is a new song from a very high talented artist DSoundman, listen and download it here for free in mp3 format.
Look and Feel ~ Welcome to part 1 of this 3 part detailed review of the new M-Audio Oxygen Pro USB controller! In this video I take an in-depth look at the look and feel and discuss the controls, keybed, and general layout of the keyboard.
Click here to watch part 2: https://youtu.be/y80JhZQgLJQ
Click here to watch part 3: https://youtu.be/KiytJMjubJs
Click here to watch the connection and setup video: https://youtu.be/aSCxfgDxVB4
Click here to watch my unboxing and first thoughts video: https://youtu.be/4hXg31cmF3o
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00:00 welcome back to another beautiful day in
00:01 the land of music my name is douglas and
00:03 today we’re going to be taking an
00:05 in-depth look
00:06 at the m audio oxygen pro
00:16 i’m going to break this video up into
00:18 three main parts the first part we’re
00:19 going to talk about the look and the
00:21 feel
00:21 second part we’re going to talk about
00:23 the software and the virtual instruments
00:24 that come with it
00:26 and then third we’re going to talk about
00:27 the functionality that’s included
00:29 right inside the controller and talk
00:31 about how to edit some of the parameters
00:33 maybe how to change the note that a
00:35 certain pad triggers
00:37 and i’ll show you those things to
00:38 hopefully give you a kick start if
00:40 you’re looking to buy this controller
00:41 and
00:42 wondering if it can do some of the
00:43 things you need it to do for the music
00:45 you create
00:46 or if you’ve already bought it and you
00:48 want a deeper understanding of what this
00:50 controller can do
00:51 this video is for you so let’s jump
00:53 right in and talk about what might be
00:55 one of the most important aspects of
00:57 this and that is
00:58 the key bed so all of the versions of
01:01 the new oxygen pro
01:03 have semi-weighted keys there’s a mini
01:05 version
01:06 which is going to have keys that are a
01:07 little shorter and narrower
01:09 and then the 25 49 and 61 all have full
01:12 size
01:12 keys all of the versions are
01:14 semi-weighted as i mentioned
01:16 and they have a really nice feel to them
01:17 they’re not too heavy
01:19 not too light they don’t have a cheap
01:21 plasticky feel to them
01:22 they feel really good they have a nice
01:23 balance to them and all of them have
01:25 built-in
01:26 aftertouch as well so i come from a
01:27 background of piano playing and over the
01:29 last
01:30 20 or so years i’ve played a wide
01:32 variety of digital pianos
01:34 synthesizers controllers keyboards kind
01:37 of the whole spectrum right
01:39 and it’s important to me to have good
01:41 keys
01:42 and so that’s one thing that i was
01:44 really happy with how this controller
01:46 felt is that the key is really really
01:48 good you can get some of those fast
01:50 licks in there but it’s not so light of
01:52 an action that you end up hitting wrong
01:54 notes as you’re
01:55 moving through the keyboard another
01:57 aspect about the semi-weighted that i
01:59 like and this may be a pro or a con
02:01 depending on how you look at it
02:02 but the overall controller is actually
02:04 heavier than
02:05 maybe another controller that doesn’t
02:07 have semi-weighted keys
02:09 i like this because it doesn’t bounce
02:10 around as much
02:12 as you’re playing it it sits right there
02:14 it’s got really big rubber feet on the
02:16 bottom
02:16 and so it sticks right to the surface
02:18 and it doesn’t have any bounce to it it
02:20 feels really solid
02:22 again if you’re traveling around with
02:24 this and you want something that’s
02:25 really light to throw in a bag
02:27 you may want to look at something that’s
02:28 not semi-weighted because
02:30 this is going to add a little bit of
02:32 weight and so
02:33 as if you’re lugging that around you’re
02:35 going to notice that eventually
02:36 to me i consider it a pro this is going
02:38 to be sitting it’s my dedicated
02:39 controller for pro tools
02:41 and so i’m not as concerned about this i
02:43 used this last weekend
02:44 to record a multi-track session used it
02:47 as my dedicated controller for pro tools
02:49 and it worked flawlessly i was really
02:51 happy with how all the controls were
02:53 i didn’t have to reach for my mouse as
02:54 much use the transport controls here
02:56 adjust volume levels with the knobs
02:58 across the top so it really
03:00 sped up my workflow in the recording and
03:02 i’m sure if i had the larger version
03:03 with the sliders and some additional
03:05 capabilities around the dock control
03:07 it would have sped it up even more and
03:09 that’s one thing i want to point out
03:10 here is there are some variations
03:12 between the mini
03:13 the 25 and then the 49 and 61. so the
03:16 mini
03:16 is gonna have four faders and then four
03:20 knobs the 25 version which i have here
03:23 has eight knobs
03:24 and only the main fader and then the 49
03:28 and the 61
03:29 have eight faders plus the main fader
03:32 eight knobs and then on the 49 and the
03:35 61 you also have the ability to
03:37 select arm solo and mute tracks within
03:41 your daw
03:42 that’s something that i wish was in the
03:44 25 and maybe in a future release they’ll
03:46 put it
03:47 on some of the top row of pads or some
03:49 way
03:50 to be able to quickly arm tracks that’s
03:51 one thing i found myself reaching for
03:53 the mouse a lot in
03:55 was arming tracks soloing tracks so when
03:57 i was recording
03:58 arming the track i can record and play
04:00 from the transport controls
04:02 on the controller but it was reaching to
04:04 arm the track itself
04:06 that i had to keep reaching for the
04:08 mouse and then when it comes to mixing
04:10 with the volume controls on the knobs
04:12 there’s a lot of times where i solo a
04:14 track and try to get an idea for the
04:16 feel of how i want to mix it
04:17 it would be nice to be able to solo the
04:19 track right from the controller itself
04:21 so that’s one reason you may want to
04:22 look at getting the 49 or the 61.
04:25 and then the split functionality which
04:26 is i’m not going to dive too much into
04:28 in this video i’ll have a future video
04:30 on that
04:30 but you can split your quarter scale
04:33 mode and your arpeggiation or your
04:34 normal mode
04:35 across a keyboard and with 25 there’s
04:37 really not a lot of
04:38 room to split and still have a playable
04:41 surface
04:41 so besides the couple of things that i
04:43 just mentioned all of the other controls
04:45 and functionality that are in
04:47 the 25 key that i have are also present
04:50 in the other versions they may be moved
04:51 around depending on the variation of the
04:53 keyboard that you have
04:54 on the mini the buttons are in different
04:56 locations that i have here
04:58 but overall all of the controls and the
05:00 functionality we’re going to talk about
05:02 are included with all of them so that
05:03 being said let’s start
05:05 up here with the buttons there’s one
05:07 button that you’re really going to want
05:08 to pay attention to and that’s this
05:09 shift button
05:10 right here it sits to the left of the
05:11 screen and anytime you see a label
05:13 that’s below
05:14 the button or below the pads or below
05:16 the knobs
05:18 that function is accessed by holding
05:20 shift and then tapping that button or
05:22 pad
05:22 or twisting the knob so that’s something
05:24 to keep in mind as we go through here
05:26 for instance if you want to go to the
05:27 global menu
05:28 you hold shift and press the back global
05:30 button
05:31 and that brings you right into the
05:33 global menu if i want to go back
05:34 i don’t hold shift and i just tap the
05:36 button the label above the button is the
05:38 function that’s accessed just by tapping
05:40 the button
05:40 without shift a couple other exceptions
05:43 to this are up in these three buttons
05:44 here
05:45 you’ll notice that there’s a single dot
05:47 beside arp and two dots beside latch
05:50 to access the arpeggiator you just tap
05:52 it once to access the arpeggiator with
05:55 the latch turned on
05:56 you double tap and it blinks now so one
05:59 dot
06:00 single tap two dots double tap same goes
06:03 with chord and scale mode
06:04 and then over here with our tempo and
06:07 sync you’ll notice that sync has a dash
06:09 or a line
06:10 that means you hold the button and that
06:13 brings up
06:13 our settings for our tempo where you can
06:15 change it from the internal to the
06:17 external clock
06:18 we’ve got a little bitty screen right
06:19 here that gives us some information
06:21 as we play so let’s say i want to know
06:23 what my after touch
06:25 velocity is is i press a key and if you
06:28 don’t know what aftertouch is
06:29 that’s after you’ve pressed the key all
06:31 the way down you press it
06:33 more and it almost has a spring action
06:36 that allows you to press the key down
06:38 even more and you can assign that to
06:41 a certain channel within your daw and in
06:43 a lot of the virtual instruments that’s
06:45 assigned to maybe
06:46 a filter effect or a modulation vibrato
06:49 effect
06:50 depending on the instrument you’re
06:51 playing a lot of virtual instruments
06:53 have that built in
06:54 but what we can see is on the screen
06:56 here as i activate the after touch
06:59 you see the value of the aftertouch
07:01 right here
07:02 of the key that i’m playing right and we
07:05 could also see that value maybe the
07:07 velocity of the pad that we’re hitting
07:09 so we’re hitting
07:10 pad 9 in bank 1 and if i hit that all
07:13 the way
07:14 i’m getting a 127 or full velocity out
07:17 of that
07:17 again as you tap that you can see the
07:20 value there
07:20 the same goes for the knobs or your
07:22 modulation wheel
07:24 we can see the value of the control as
07:26 we twist
07:27 or move that control the buttons
07:29 themselves have a plasticky feel they’re
07:32 very clicky
07:34 you can hear that click going on there i
07:37 wish that they were all
07:38 rubberized like these buttons over here
07:40 on the right
07:41 these switch in my daw i’m using pro
07:44 tools they switch between my mix and my
07:45 edit view
07:46 depending on your daw and the preset
07:48 you’re using they may perform different
07:49 functions or if you’ve got a custom
07:51 preset set up you can define what those
07:53 do
07:53 but i wish all of the buttons had that
07:55 soft better quality feel to them
07:57 they’re a little plasticky clicky again
08:00 it’s a little gripe the other thing
08:01 are the knobs are very plasticky as well
08:04 i’ve used other controllers where
08:05 they’ve got a little bit of texture to
08:07 them a little bit of rubberized to them
08:09 and i like that i feel like i can get
08:11 finer adjustments i don’t slip as much
08:13 on those knobs again a small little
08:16 gripe
08:16 but overall they feel really good
08:18 besides that they’re not loose or
08:20 anything like that they have a really
08:21 nice tight feel to them
08:22 and so that’s a plus they have a nice
08:24 quality but plastic
08:26 feel to them up here on the left we’ve
08:28 got our main fader and this is either
08:29 tied to our number one track in our daw
08:32 or it’s tied to the virtual instrument
08:34 main volume so if i’ve got a virtual
08:36 instrument
08:37 up and i’ve got that preset for the
08:38 virtual instrument here
08:40 many times that’s going to control the
08:41 overall volume of that virtual
08:43 instrument
08:44 down here we’ve got our octave down and
08:46 up
08:47 we can tap both of them together to
08:49 reset it back to zero
08:50 so i could go let me activate my mini
08:53 grand plugin over here
08:55 we’ll talk about the plugins here in a
08:57 minute but here’s my mini grand i’ve got
08:59 my sustain pedal plugged in
09:02 i’ve got a heavy delay effect on that
09:04 for a demo that i’ll show you here in a
09:05 minute when i talk about the virtual
09:07 instruments but we can shift up and down
09:09 on the octaves for me having the 25 key
09:11 this is really nice because
09:12 i run out of room really quick so
09:24 and then if i want to go back so right
09:26 now i’m negative two on the octave
09:28 tap both and i’m back to zero right
09:30 there
09:31 [Music]
09:35 really nice delay effect i can’t say i’m
09:37 a huge fan of the mini grand but i do
09:39 like that delay effect on there and
09:40 that’s built right into the mini grand
09:42 plugin
09:42 we’ve got our pitch and our modulation
09:44 wheel nothing special here
09:46 they do have a nice resistance to them
09:47 they’re not really cheap plasticky
09:49 feeling
09:50 they are plastic but they don’t have a
09:52 flimsy feel to them they’re really solid
09:54 and i like the resistance that they’ve
09:55 got to them above the keys you see we’ve
09:57 got some labels for our chord mode we
10:00 can quickly change the key voicing and
10:01 type
10:02 talk about that in a little bit when i
10:03 talk about functionality
10:05 and then around here around the screen
10:08 we’ve got our global menu
10:09 we’ve got our normal selector knob so as
10:12 you’re moving through the menus
10:13 you can move through them by scrolling
10:15 on this wheel or pressing down on the
10:17 wheel
10:17 to select an option and then up here
10:19 we’ve got our arpeggiation
10:20 cord and scale mode and our tempo we can
10:23 tap the tempo or we can go in and we can
10:26 set the tempo
10:27 using the rotary knob here and i’ll talk
10:29 about the arpeggiation cord and scale
10:31 mode
10:32 here in a little bit and i’ve got
10:33 additional videos coming out where i’ll
10:35 go in depth on each of those
10:36 because there’s a lot of time that can
10:38 be spent around each of those pieces of
10:40 functionality
10:41 and we don’t really have time in today’s
10:43 video to get bogged down with that so
10:45 make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t
10:46 miss out on those videos over here to
10:48 the right of the screen we’ve got our
10:50 transport controls for our daw
10:52 in the case of pro tools i use pro tools
10:54 to record
10:55 and you’ve got the arm the play stop
10:59 the loop so you can turn loop play on
11:01 and off and i can move back and forth
11:03 in my timeline using these buttons here
11:06 we’ve got two
11:07 bank forward and back buttons so there
11:09 are four banks
11:10 inside the controller and each of the
11:13 knobs we’ve got one through eight we’ve
11:15 also got 16 pads
11:17 we have four banks of those so let’s say
11:19 you’ve got
11:20 32 tracks in your session
11:23 and you can move between those so tracks
11:26 one through eight are going to be in
11:27 bank one
11:28 can control the volume or the pan maybe
11:30 for those
11:31 we can go to bank two then that’s our
11:33 nine to our 16
11:35 and so on so we’ve got four banks so 32
11:38 knobs
11:38 total and then 64 pads so that just
11:42 gives us some extra functionality there
11:44 i think it’s mostly useful for the dawn
11:45 knob control but you might find some
11:47 other uses maybe if you’ve got the
11:48 sliders as well
11:49 those are going to have four banks so
11:51 you’ll have 32 faders or sliders as well
11:54 we’ve got a note
11:55 repeat and latch right here and that’s
11:57 for these pads we can have the note
11:59 repeat or
12:00 latch depending on what we’re playing
12:02 and then we’ve got
12:03 eight knobs here they do have a start
12:06 and a stop they’re not a 360 rotary knob
12:09 they have a start point and a stop point
12:12 and so those control either the volume
12:16 or the pan
12:17 or whatever dock control value you have
12:18 assigned to them
12:20 or if we hold shift you’ll notice down
12:22 here underneath remember the label below
12:24 you access by holding shift we’ve got
12:27 type octave gate and swing for our
12:28 arpeggiator
12:29 so you can quickly just hold shift and
12:31 change those with these knobs
12:33 rather than having to go into the
12:35 arpeggiation edit menu
12:36 and this is really handy if you’re
12:37 playing and you want to switch it up
12:39 live you can do that just by holding
12:40 shift
12:41 and twisting the knob then we’ve got the
12:43 16 velocity sensitive pads
12:45 we can go into the menu and i’ll show
12:46 you that when we get to the
12:47 functionality bit
12:48 where we can edit the note that the pad
12:50 is playing we can edit
12:52 the color of the pad and we can edit
12:54 whether that sends
12:56 a cc a midi so we can edit that right
12:59 within the menu so we don’t have to
13:00 download the preset editor
13:02 that comes with this controller you can
13:04 edit all of that within the controller
13:06 which i really like you don’t have to
13:07 rely on the software is it easier in the
13:09 software
13:10 i’m sure the user interface there is
13:12 much larger than our little screen here
13:14 but it is completely accomplishable from
13:17 the controller itself
13:18 and then over here on the very right
13:20 hand side we’ve got two soft keys i
13:22 already talked about these
13:23 in my daw they switch between mix and
13:25 edit mode it’s really handy
13:27 as you’re jumping during a recording
13:29 session to be able to just
13:30 take a look at your volume levels see
13:32 where the levels are clipping bring the
13:33 volume
13:34 back with the knobs the workflow is
13:35 pretty quick once you get used to how
13:37 this is laid out
13:38 the one other thing i wanted to mention
13:39 in terms of the layout and the controls
13:41 are regarding this bottom row of pads
13:43 here so if we hold shift
13:45 we can choose whether the knob controls
13:48 affect the volume of our tracks the pan
13:50 the device or the sends and then over
13:53 here
13:53 under the dos shortcuts we’ve got save
13:56 quantize view
13:57 and undo so we’ve got some quick
13:59 functions right here i use the undo
14:02 a lot when we were in the recording
14:04 session last weekend
14:05 sometimes you start you don’t come in
14:07 the way that you wanted to
14:08 and so just being able to hit stop undo
14:10 reset back to the beginning
14:12 arm and go i don’t have to touch my
14:14 mouse at all for that which is really
14:16 nice
14:16 the other thing i use a lot is save so i
14:19 save my pro tools session
14:20 quantize if you’re using midi the view
14:23 will actually bring up the detailed midi
14:25 editor
14:26 and quantize will work with the quantize
14:29 on the midi
14:30 so the last thing in terms of the
14:31 controller itself and i talked about
14:33 these in my unboxing video
14:34 if you want to watch that i’ll throw a
14:36 link in the description but
14:38 we have a standard midi out so you can
14:41 connect this into maybe an external
14:43 keyboard
14:43 and so that’s really handy if you want
14:45 to control something else and then
14:46 there’s the usb
14:47 that powers the device itself so even if
14:50 you are plugging into an external
14:52 keyboard you’re still going to need to
14:54 power this via usb
14:56 and then we’ve got a sustain pedal input
14:59 and our power switch on the back
15:00 overall i’m really happy with how this
15:02 controller is laid out
15:04 i do wish as i mentioned before that on
15:06 the 25
15:07 and the mini that you could select arm
15:09 mute solo tracks
15:11 unfortunately that’s only on the 49 and
15:13 the 61 key versions
15:14 the lock arp knobs and lock daw pads
15:18 is just to lock these shortcuts down
15:21 here or the arpeggiation on the knobs
15:23 you can actually lock those even if
15:25 you’re in the daw mode
15:26 and it’ll lock those functions there so
15:29 let’s say you’re playing the arpeggiator
15:30 and you don’t want to have to hold shift
15:32 and twist to knob
15:33 you can lock the arp knobs and then
15:36 as you’re playing you can twist those
15:38 and you don’t have to hold shift so now
15:39 that we’ve talked about
15:41 the look in the field i hope that gives
15:42 you an idea if you’re looking to get
15:44 this or you’re wondering what a button
15:46 did or what a function did
15:48 hopefully that gives you a better idea
15:50 of the controls and the layout of this
15:53 controller itself
15:53 [Music]
16:13 you
