Given the reasonable price, and its lack of rivals, this is a bit of a no-brainer for longtime FL users, despite any limitations. The ability to chain up to four units is a nice touch too, letting those who want more expansive control create a single, multi-unit control surface. These can also control basic channel and mixer parameters.įire isn’t an all-encompassing DAW controller, and has its weak points, but it’s still great to have a proper FL-focused MIDI controller. Note velocity, pitch and length, can be edited easily using the four rotaries along the top, though this isn’t labelled on Fire’s interface. This is limiting, but given the smaller pads it’d be hard to be very precise anyway. Fire’s pads are velocity sensitive, but there are only two velocity levels available - for standard or accented notes. As a result Drum mode feels cramped and doesn’t make use of much of the control surface.Ĭompared to controllers such as Push or Maschine, Fire lacks access to features like quantise settings or beat repeats/rolls, leaving Drum mode feeling a little shallow. In this mode the left-hand 4x4 block of pads is used to trigger FPC’s sample tracks, but this leaves the remaining 24 pads unused. I totally missed back in May that they finally rolled out the Mac version, now heres a 199 controller (with Fruity. The Fire’s pads are small, and can feel fiddly for precise playing.

The finger drumming-focused Drum mode is less successful.

Akai fl studio controller