Recording - December 2017 - 50

Studiologic
SL88 Studio and
Numa Compact 2

Keyboard Controllers
Full-featured control or a handy piano/
controller-without the weight
REVIEWS BY ALLEN GOODMAN AND MIKE METLAY

good keyboard controller is a valuable asset to any
studio that relies on hardware synthesis modules
or, more likely these days, software synths inside
a DAW. It should offer 5-pin MIDI and USB connections,
plenty of interfacing for things like pedals, be easy to set up
and configure... and if we're talking about something that's
going to be played all the time as a primary instrument, it
should feel great under your hands.
StudioLogic keyboards are made by Fatar, the Italian firm
responsible for some of the very best keyboard actions used
in controllers around the world. The SL88 Studio is a very
deep multifunction controller, and the Numa Compact 2 is
mainly intended as a basic source for useful sounds like
piano and organ while offering some control capability as
well. What really sets these keyboards apart from the competition is how small and light they are for what you get-
they're barely larger than their keybeds.

SL88 Studio

The SL88 Studio starts with a Fatar TP/100LR keybed that
provides an 88-note fully-weighted triple sensor keyboard
with aftertouch, yet it only weighs in at around 30 pounds,
much less than other comparable controllers.
This controller is built like a tank. It has a lovely matte black
finish and a solid feel to it overall. The front panel is very
minimalistic: there's a centered TFT color display equipped
with a single rotary encoder, and three performance joysticks
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RECORDING December 2017

to the left. The rear panel features all sorts of connections-
standard 5-pin DIN ports for MIDI (one In and two separate
Outs) as well as USB and four pedal inputs. Inputs 1 and 2
are switch inputs, 3 is a continuous input for a volume or
expression pedal, and 4 is used for a triple pedal such as the
StudioLogic SLP3-D, a universal one-box solution for grand
piano una-corda/sostenuto/damper with continuous control.
The three performance joysticks are a nice change from the
usual pitch bend and modulation wheels, with each having a
slightly different feel. The one on the left offers up springloaded
X and Y axes, so it always returns to center. The second is
springloaded in the X axis only, and the third is completely
unsprung so it floats freely in two dimensions. All of them are
assignable to any MIDI CC. Like the rest of the unit, they have
a solid feel and would probably take a beating on the road.
By default the joysticks are set to pitch bend, modulation, and
filter cutoff and resonance.
The SL88 Studio comes with four separate Zone settings,
each accessible from the Home screen by clicking the encoder
over one of the brightly colored quarters of the display. This
immediately grants you access to the volume parameter for
that Zone, which is great for mixing levels on the fly. Here
you are also able to dive deeper and control other aspects for
each Zone, such as its MIDI destination, joystick and pedal
settings, and keybed responsiveness (including Key Balance
for each key individually). You can then save these settings
and produce a "set list," if you will, that you can then shuffle
through to load all the necessary patches for each Zone.
The SL88 comes with SL Editor, a fully-fledged and very
elegant editor package for macOS and Windows. It mimics
the full access to all parameters that you can edit via the center
console, but using a mouse while looking at a computer monitor
seems much more efficient. This is particularly true when
editing Zones, where you can simply click and drag the
corresponding color onto the GUI keyboard. Another welcome feature with the SL Editor is that any edits you make
while connected via USB are immediately transmitted to the
keyboard, with no need to mess with System Exclusive dumps.
How does it feel? The SL88 Studio is not intended to perfectly
emulate the feel of a piano, nor is it an ordinary unweighted
synth keyboard. It's a weighted-action keyboard controller
and it works well as a compromise between the two extremes.
While my classical-pianist friends felt it lacked a "real piano
feel," my personal experience was very different. I love to play
rock piano and keyboards, and I found the dynamics-and
therefore the emotions conveyable from my various sample
libraries-to be wonderfully realistic, so much so that I plan to
buy the SL88 Studio for permanent installation in my studio.
For me, playing the SL88 Studio is as close to playing a real
piano as I can come in my small home studio. After decades
of playing only synthesizers with unweighted keys, I'm really
going to have to relearn my classical fingering technique and
build up my hand strength, but it's so very enjoyable to play
that I'm actually looking forward to the process.
The StudioLogic SL88 Studio is a great weighted-action controller
for the money, offering fantastic features with a sturdy and solid
feel at half the weight (and cost) of similar controllers.-AG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2017