The full featured Axiom Air 61 is a powerful DAW and MIDI keyboard controller that comes with impressive auto-mapping capabilities.

This MIDI controller comes at you with guns blazing, featuring semi-weighted keys and an army of pads, faders, knobs and buttons.

Just one look at the Axiom Air and you can say that this is a busy keyboard controller, and that is a valid assessment. This keyboard is the result of M-Audio's experience with building keyboard controllers, interfaces and music software integration, they packed as much features as they can into a controller that will serve both as an instrument and as a control surface for your MIDI software or hardware.

The bread and butter of this unit are its 61 TruTouch semi-weighted keys. They are designed to match the quality of more expensive digital pianos and synths, featuring aftertouch that allows for expressive control. Matching the performance of the keys are 12 velocity and pressure sensitive trigger pads. You can freely assign the pads for use as a percussion controller, or for triggering samples while maintaining impressive dynamic control. The keys and pads make the Axiom Air a worthy instrument for live use.

Axiom Air is designed to give you a fully immersive musical controller, it is equipped with a variety of controls for conveniently managing your DAW or music production software. It comes with 9 long-throw (70mm) sliders, 8 rotary encoders and 9 buttons along with dedicated transport and navigation buttons. All of which are useful both in the studio and in live performances, giving you a more in-depth control over your software without having to reach for the mouse.

Axiom Air's Hypercontrol automatic-mapping technology simplifies setup and integration with various DAW software. This means less time configuring and more time making music. Having been designed by M-Audio, instant mapping with industry standard DAW like Pro Tools are expected to be a breeze.

The "Air" label is taken from the German-based software developer that created "Ignite", A.I.R. Music Technology. Obviously, the Axiom Air is the perfect companion for Ignite software, which continues to gain popularity because of its unique work flow. Ignite has an interface that mixes some of the features of Ableton Live and Garageband. The result is an interface that is very intuitive, the whole feel of Ignite makes it very suitable for aspiring music producers.

If you want a powerhouse MIDI keyboard controller that is reasonably priced, and if you want to try out the new Ignite software, then we highly recommend the M-Audio Axiom Air 61.

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