Keyspan Remote - Quick Review

[Emeric]

banm33 mentioned this device in the "recording alone sucks" thread. Anyway, I ordered one up yesterday, got it today. It's a neat little device. Plugs into a USB port and allows you to control any (almost) keystroke/shortcut that your application uses. It's an IR device and in my small studio, had no problem operating from 20' away.

"Almost any keystroke", the only problem I ran into was with the Enter key on number pad, it doesn't like to map that. The other problem I had was with my stripped down 98lite, kept giving me a few errors when launching the program. Copying mfc42.dll to windows/system (from a different, full blown windows install partition) solved this problem.

So, for Cubase I set it up as follows.

* button is record in Cubase, on the remote I mapped it as 'select'

Spacebar is stop in Cubase, on the remote - 'Stop'

CTRL and Backspace is 'Delete data permanently' on a track that you have just recorded. Mapped that to 'menu'

Cubase also prompts you at this point whether you really want to do this... and to confirm you hit enter. Mapped this to the 'down arrow' on the remote.

So, the only drag is I can't listen back to a take without using the computer or mouse. But it will be great for laying down vocal tracks, rough drum tracks. No running back and forth from a drum kit or mic stand, tripping over cables etc...

All in all well worth the $50

http://www.keyspan.com

[Capt. Snazzy]

the reason i ask is that it would be stupendous if i could run the cable into the sound room and have rough control over my cakewalk setup from there. also, does the ir reciever get its power from the usb port or does it have a seperate power supply. Thanks for the review, sounds good.. Cap'n

[Emeric]

The USB cable is 6'. But it wouldn't matter you can get a 10ft extension cable for $10 and get 16ft. This does exceed the specifications of USB though. The other option is to plug it into a USB hub and extend it to 16ft. I'll try it with my setup and let you know whether it will handle the 16' with extension.

It gets it's power from the USB port. The remote runs on 2 small watch battery/lithium's.

[Slackmaster2K]

Bummer! Remember my old joystick "remote control" thing I was working on last year? It worked very similarly to what you're describing. My software would allow you to map any key to any joystick button or event.

However, making a controller out of a joystick is dumb, and also ties up the MIDI port on most soundcards....so I stuck it on hold and have been keeping my eye out for cheap MIDI controllers to do the same thing.

However, if I can just buy a nifty device for 50 bucks...I might as well cancel that idear

Good review!

Slackmaster 2000