The original Remote Audio is no longer available, but those who purchased one during its short time on the market can still upgrade it to equivalent X-Station capability although the upgrade uses up some memory in the unit that was originally available for storing user templates, and upgrading wipes these user memory slots, as I found out the hard way!
With the X-Station, to save a user template you must overwrite one of the factory ones. The only other changes in the move from the Remote Audio Xtreme 25 to the X-Station 25 are minor cosmetic ones on the front panel to reflect the presence of the built-in synth. The software bundle has also been dropped, which is a shame, as it made the keyboard package a neat desktop-music solution, but on the other hand, the price of the bundle-less X-Station is also lower than that of the Remote Audio Xtreme.
The X-Station's 40 factory templates cover pretty much all of the well-known audio programs and virtual instruments. This is a different approach to that of using a controller that just kicks out any old set of values, and relying on the software's learn function to map to them, although you can of course do this too. Using templates has the advantage that you don't have to set anything up, but there can be disadvantages.
Propellerhead's Reason can work in either way, and so serves as a good example. Each device in Reason is factory-set to respond to certain CC messages when that device is selected to receive MIDI input in the sequencer. This means that for the mixer to respond to the X-Station's Reason Mixer templates you have to create a sequencer track for it, and arm it to receive MIDI.
For studio work, it's probably fine to use the template approach, as you tend to be working on one instrument at a time. Playing live, you probably want to think about doing things differently, forgetting about the templates and using Reason 's MIDI learn function to assign controls as you see fit.
The main advantage of this is that learnt MIDI controls stay active regardless of which device is armed for MIDI input, so you can control key parameters on various devices at once.
However, this can introduce the problem of overlapping controls, due to Reason 's preset remote mappings. The best way around this is to avoid MIDI channel 1 for your controls, as Reason's built-in control mappings default to channel 1.
The X-Station's control layout allows for some streamlined templates. Now that the layout mimics many of the clusters of controls found on the synths, it's easier to use. You no longer have to memorise which knob or fader is mapped to which parameter, or keep having to search the overlay card. This is particularly useful for live applications, where it's likely to be too dark to read the front panel. Even so, the X-Station isn't an instant improvement on the mouse, as it takes a little time to learn how things are mapped, and even though there are an unusually large number of hardware controls available, the Reason synths still have more parameters than can be addressed at once.
The X-Station gets around this by using some of its buttons to toggle controls between different functions. With a little practice, the system works well. Some controller sets are split over two templates, such as the Redrum and Reason mixer. This became viable with the v2. However, the keyboard octave range resets when switching between templates, which is annoying.
The v2. This solves the age-old problem of parameters 'jumping' suddenly when you move knobs or sliders. The X-Station's controls strike a successful balance between dedicated ones for the onboard functions, and assignable ones for other uses. At the time of the original Remote 25 review, Novation promised an on-screen editor, which has not yet materialised at the time of writing. To be honest, it's no big deal if the same happens for the X-Station, as the template-editing system is pretty easy.
Many aspects of the controller side, including the template editing, remain the same as they were on the Remote The whole thing only took a few hours, and worked perfectly for more detail, see the Pro Tools Notes column from May this year.
The simplest way to think about the audio side of the X-Station is as a separate two-in, two-out, bit USB audio interface that just happens to be built into something else.
My test applications, Cubase SE, Logic Express, Reason, and Live, were able to 'see' the X-Station in their setup pages, with the usual latency controls, and everything else you would expect. There are two inputs, with the dual-format quarter-inch jack and XLR connections that are becoming so common.
The inputs can accept line-, mic-, and instrument-level signals, with a continuous, wide-ranging gain control rather than switches. Phantom power can be switched in and out individually on the two channels.
The Input button selects which input is being addressed by all the controls, or you can link the inputs for stereo operation. There's a two-segment LED meter for each input, with green to show the presence of a signal and red to show clipping. This might not seem like a lot, but it's more than you get on many small USB interfaces. There are separate level controls for the line-outs and headphones, all of which are on quarter-inch jacks. Zero-level latency direct in-out monitoring is accommodated with a pot that mixes the input levels with the output from your software.
However, for this method to work, your software has to have a 'disable direct monitoring' option so that you don't hear your inputs twice with a delay. The sound quality of the input preamps is pretty good, but I had an on-going issue with the output from software, where I had intermittent clicks, pops and glitches.
This seemed to be unrelated to buffer sizes, and I suspected it was an issue with the drivers. Novation suggested that my test computer was underpowered, as they recommend a minimum 1GHz G4. This is a whopping requirement for a two-in, two-out audio interface — my Digidesign Mbox and M Audio Quattro have no problems running on my MHz iBook. In fact, they run fine on my ancient MHz blue-and-white G3! In any case, I duly tried it out on a 1.
That wasn't all, either; the Mac would also freeze about every third time I connected the unit via USB, and sometimes Cubase SE would see two units in the audio setup. All this led me to develop a lack of confidence in the quality of the Mac OS X drivers, letting down the audio-interface side of the X-Station for Mac users. A bonus with the audio side of the package is the inclusion of built-in effects on the input path. There are two separate multi-effects units for independently treating your input signals.
The implementation of this feature has been thought out well, allowing flexible use. Each input's effects routing can be switched to choose whether the signal is recorded with or without the effects.
This is really useful, as you can, say, record dry vocals, using zero-latency monitoring, and still hear reverb and delay to help your performance. The distortion effect is of the guitar overdrive pedal variety, giving you the same luxury when plugging your guitar directly into the interface. There is an issue with recording mono inputs with effects though, which becomes particularly apparent when you're using the built-in synth, as you'll see in a minute With the first version of this product, the Remote 25 Audio, our review would have stopped here.
However, the X-Station concept was born when Novation realised they could use the DSP chips in the unit to add a hardware synth to the feature-list! In other words, it's a pretty decent analogue-modelling synth, and by no means a toy or gimmick.
The synth is eight-part polyphonic, monotimbral, has three oscillators, and a multi-mode filter. It has frequency modulation, pulse-width modulation, two LFOs with single-shot mode , ring modulation, and envelopes: it even has effects. There are plenty of what seem like dedicated synth-editing controls, and of course they can be used in this way, but they can all be reassigned if you wish by editing the templates.
The synth is accessed by pressing the top 'Play' button, which toggles between synth and controller modes. There are preset patches accessed from the Data controller, which are in fact the same as the factory presets on the 'K' synths.
User patches must overwrite the factory ones, as memory is a little scarce with all this stuff crammed in. Sound-wise, the best description is that it sounds like a Novation synth, and of course in particular a K-Station or V-Station.
By this, I mean that the sound is clean, rounded and creamy, and to my tastes, a little too polite. While basically modelling an analogue subtractive synth, it has more in common sonically with basic dance-orientated sound modules, reminding me of my Yamaha CS1x. This means that it's perfect for pop and anthemic dance music-type stuff. In addition to the normal oscillator waveforms and noise generators, there are several more characteristic waves, such as 'Organ', 'Rhodes Piano', and 'Analog Bass' all of which get a good look in throughout the presets.
Luckily, programming patches is dead easy given that you've got so many knobs, and I was able to start replacing the presets with some nastier sounds! While ingenious, the synth functionality comes with some compromises.
For a start, the synth takes over input 2's audio and effects hardware. This means that while the synth is activated, you can only use input 1. This does not affect the audio-output side, which can be mixed with the synth by positioning the monitor knob halfway between the input and output positions.
An extremely cool feature is that the audio from the synth can be routed directly into your host software via the USB connection, because it's effectively behaving the same as an instrument connected to input 2. However, there's one flaw in this plan, which is that as with any other mono input you can't record stereo effects, and the synth leans quite heavily on the effects. Launchkey Mini. Launchkey Mini [MK3]. Launchpad App. Launchpad Arcade. Launchpad Mini. Launchpad MK2.
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V Station. Automap Pro. Bass Station Keyboard. Bass Station Rack. KS Rack. Launchpad MK1. Nocturn Keyboard. Nova II Keyboard. Nova Laptop. NSP 1. Super Bass Station Rack. Supernova II. Twitch Carry Case. Downloads Downloads for X-Station. Click here for more details: This download contains all available templates for the X-Station including learn files and default arrangements.
X Station Template and Learn. X-Station Template Editors. Click here for more details: The Latest template editors for Windows and OSX, these can be used to load templates for any Novation product and load them into the X Station.
Apple Mac: X Station Editor. X Station OS update. Click here for more details: Released January
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