A Full Nektar Panorama CS12 Review

The Nektar Panorama CS12 is a fascinating piece of hardware that promises to elevate music production to new heights. With an innovative approach to controlling DAW environments and a host of features aimed at enhancing workflow, it has caught the eye of both amateur and professional music producers. Let’s dive into a thorough review of what the CS12 has to offer.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Unboxing and First Impressions

As any music production aficionado will tell you, the unboxing experience can set the tone for your relationship with your new piece of kit. Upon receiving the Nektar Panorama CS12, the first thing you notice is the sturdy, thoughtful packaging. Encased in a custom fitted foam for added protection, the CS12 seemed secure and well-protected against any possible handling damage during the shipping process.

Lifting the CS12 from the box, the heft of the device immediately communicates quality. While weight does not always equate to durability, it often suggests the presence of high-quality internal components. The external casing is a sleek, matte black plastic that gives a streamlined, professional aesthetic. Accented with color-coded controls and a bright, crisp TFT color display, the CS12 has an undoubtedly contemporary feel that would look at home in any modern production setup.

The layout of the CS12 is noticeably intuitive, even from the first glance. Each section is logically divided, with the pads, faders, and keys each having their defined, adequately spaced area. What catches the eye are the 12 motorized touch-sensitive faders, each with an LED display.

Upon powering up the device, the brightness and resolution quality of the display are impressive, distinguishing it clearly as an advanced feature of its league. The device greets you with the Nektar logo, before brilliantly illuminating the various buttons, pads and faders scattered across its face. An initial visual cascade indicates the setting of parameters and presets, both exciting and captivating, immediately drawing you in for a closer interaction.

In hand, the controls feel solid, providing satisfying tactile feedback. The pads respond to touches accurately, hinting at their touch sensitivity and feel moderately soft, encouraging rhythmical beat-making.

Overall, the initial encounter with the Nektar Panorama CS12 leaves a strong and positive impression, promising a delightful blend of power, sophistication, simplicity, and functionality. The careful packaging, impressive build quality, the visual appeal of design, thoughtful layout, and the tactile feel of the controls – all contribute to an appealing first impression that beckons you to dive into a deeper exploration of the CS12’s allure.
Design and Build Quality

The heavyweight champion of Nektar’s current range, the Panorama CS12 has a robust presence and aim to fit into any studio. Measuring 32cm deep on average, 84cm wide, and about 7.5cm high at the rear, it’s a reasonably hefty device. Although it might consume a significant part of your workspace, its full-featured control surface justifies the space.

The exterior is made of a rugged steel chassis, making it sturdy for both studio and stage work. Around the back, it’s refreshing to see generous, well-spaced connections that ensure no undue bunching of cables, even when everything’s plugged in.

Moving on to the business part – the knobs, sliders, buttons, and keys – the CS12 feels solid, like a soldier ready for an ultra-long life of heavy use. Its recessed sliders are incredibly smooth, providing ample resistance for precise fading. The rugged rotary encoders give an exceptional, tactile feedback, with a good degree of resistance. This level of attention to detail, enhancing the quality and user experience, is observable across all the controls on the CS12.

The velocity-sensitive semi-weighted keys feel great under the fingers. Their feel is on par with many dedicated MIDI keyboards, and seasoned pianists will appreciate the authentic touch. They offer the right resistance and complexity that make delicate licks and thunderous chords equally enjoyable to play.

Despite its bulky appearance, Nektar designed the CS12 with an elegant aesthetic approach. Contrasting sharp, clean lines with sleek curves and a predominately black chassis with white accents, the CS12 has a design that is both timeless and minimalistic. The device is both a workhorse and a showpiece, slotting in seamlessly beside other high-end studio equipment.

Overall, the Nektar Panorama CS12 boasts a brilliant balance between practicality and aesthetics. It’s durable enough to withstand endless stroking, poking, and sliding, yet beautifully built to suit a professional studio set-up. This synthesis of design and build quality put the CS12 in a league of its own in the MIDI controller landscape.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Key Features Overview

One of the noticeable strengths of the Nektar Panorama CS12 is its feature set. This fully integrated MIDI controller comes with a 61-note velocity-sensitive keyboard, nine 30mm faders, sixteen encoders, twenty-four buttons, and twelve pads that offer an impressive amount of control for any producer. Each feature has been designed to contribute vitally to the Panorama CS12’s considerable adaptability and performance.

If you enjoy a realistic keyboard experience, the CS12’s semi-weighted keys will not disappoint. These keys deliver excellent responsiveness with a satisfying tactile feedback that recalls the feeling of playing on a traditional keyboard. The keys are also velocity-sensitive, adding subtle nuances to your playing as they react to the speed of your keystrokes.

The pads on the Panorama CS12, in addition to being velocity-sensitive, provide aftertouch, which is an excellent feature for dynamic beat-making and launching clips. The dynamic nature of the pads allows for expressive playing, as the volume and effect parameters can be controlled by pressure and touch. This can add an extra layer of depth to your performances.

The faders, encoders, and buttons on the CS12 cover a wide range of controls that can be mapped to various functions on your DAW, offering ample room for creative expressions. From setting levels and pan to adjust EQ parameters and browsing through plugins, these controllers perform flawlessly, allowing you to focus more on creativity and less on tech.

Of course, one cannot ignore the centerpiece of the CS12, which is the high-resolution TFT color display. This detail-rich screen offers a fantastic visual feedback system, showing various parameters and levels in real-time, from your DAW. Effectively, it serves as your command center, providing an overview of your tracks and creating a hands-on approach to music production.

In summary, whether you’re tweaking synth parameters, drum programming, navigating through your DAW, or performing live, the Nektar Panorama CS12’s features seem to have every operation covered. The sheer versatility of controls makes it an inspiring tool for music creation and manipulation.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Integration with DAWs

The integration of a MIDI controller with various Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) is a critical factor to consider – it’s essentially what determines the versatility and adaptability of the controller in different work environments. The Nektar Panorama CS12 doesn’t fall short on delivering in this department.

The CS12 proudly boasts compatibility with a slew of popularly used DAWs such as Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Cubase, Reason, and more. This is particularly enticing because many controllers in this price range offer less comprehensive DAW integration. It’s a testament to Nektar’s promise for delivering hardware that encourages user creativity without being stifled by technical limitations.

To test its plug-and-play capabilities, we took the CS12 for a spin with Ableton Live and Logic Pro, with impressive results. The hardware quickly recognized by both DAWs without requiring any additional drivers, delivering a seamless setup experience.

The CS12 steps it up a notch by offering intelligent mapping straight out-of-the-box. With Ableton Live, for instance, the CS12 automatically assigned its faders and knobs to Ableton’s mixer and device parameters. This invaluable feature can potentially save hours of manual MIDI mapping, allowing producers to focus on what they do best – creating music.

In Logic Pro, the CS12’s display was able to pull up all relevant parameters for Logic’s stock plugins, transforming the CS12 into a dedicated hardware interface for software instruments. This level of integration gives producers a feel similar to working with tangible hardware synths and effects units, adding a tactile dimension to the music production process.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Workflow Enhancements

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Nektar Panorama CS12 is how it streamlines music production workflow. Given that the CS12 was designed with the user’s comfort and ease of use in mind, it’s only appropriate that we highlight how its unique design features contribute to an enhanced and efficient workflow experience.

To begin with, the CS12’s layout is optimised for quick and intuitive control over every aspect of one’s DAW. The mixer section, located in the controller’s centre, offers a hands-on approach to balancing your mix. With nine faders, each paired with a rotary encoder and an LED button for solo, mute, and select functions, you can easily control the volume, pan, and other mix parameters of your tracks. Switching between channels is a breeze thanks to the bank buttons, reducing the need to reach for your mouse continuously.

Adjacent to the mixer, you’ll find the transport controls. With buttons for rewind, fast forward, stop, play, and record, you’re given tactile and immediate control over your DAW’s sequencer. There’s also a dedicated loop button, letting you isolate areas of your project for focused editing or repeated practice takes, which comes in really handy when you’re deep in the creation process.

Perhaps my favourite workflow enhancement lies in the CS12’s comprehensive control over plugins. The plugin mode displays the parameters of your active plugin on the screen and automatically maps the eight encoders to control these parameters. It is far more intuitive and immediate than using a mouse – it’s almost like having the physical version of the plugin in front of you.

From my personal experience with the CS12, workflow enhancement is evident in the reduced reliance on the computer mouse. The convenience of everything being within hands reach, coupled with dedicated and customisable controls, boosts efficiency and allows for a more immersive and tactile music creation process. It’s like an instrument in of itself, facilitating creative expression in an intuitive and seamless way.

The Nektar Panorama CS12 significantly contributes to a more logical and productive music production routine. By facilitating direct and tactile interactions with key DAW functions, it not only speeds up the process but also makes it more enjoyable. It’s definitely one of the leading devices in its class when it comes to workflow enhancements.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Performance and Usability

The Nektar Panorama CS12 is an instrument that keenly excels in terms of performance. From the moment we laid our fingertips on its keys to the extended studio sessions, this powerhouse of a controller hardly faltered. The real-feel keys provided satisfactory feedback, with velocity sensitivity adding extra nuances to our play.

The knobs, buttons, and faders were just as responsive, providing the precise control we desired over different parameters. The full-sized semi-weighted keys have a smooth and sturdy action that blends just the right amount of feedback with playability. The pitch bend and modulation wheels rubbers grip, making them a pleasure to twist and turn.

From a usability perspective, the CS12 had an intuitive layout that was straightforward to master. While it might seem a bit overwhelming at first glance with all its controls, the reality is that everything follows a logical order. The main groupings of controls are clearly labeled, so rather than blindly wading through a sea of knobs and buttons, we found we could locate exactly what we needed quickly and easily. And for those intricate tweaks? The high-resolution TFT color display came in handy, showing us precisely what we were adjusting in real-time.

The CS12 does admittedly come with a learning curve, especially for those new to controller-based workflows. However, Nektar provides a comprehensive manual and tutorial videos on their website, which should prove valuable in helping users get up to speed. In addition, Nektar’s proprietary software allowed us further customization of its controls and settings, which we found handy for tailoring the CS12 to our specific needs.

In extended studio sessions, the Panorama CS12 demonstrated it’s not just about bells and whistles, but genuine functionality and durability. Its premium build quality truly shone through, as it stood up to hours of continued use without any hint of performance degradation.

In summary, the Nektar Panorama CS12 delivers impressively on both performance and usability. Its logical layout, combined with its robust performance, make it an excellent ally in any studio environment. But take note, beginners might need some time to acquaint themselves with the abundance of its controls and seamlessly integrate it into their workflow.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Pros and Cons

Every piece of equipment has its strengths and drawbacks, and the Nektar Panorama CS12 is no exception. Our comprehensive testing and exploration have resulted in an enriched understanding of where the CS12 shines, and where there is room for improvement.

Starting with the positives, the stellar build quality of the CS12 is a clear standout. It’s solidly built with a premium feel, perfect for those who value durability and tactile satisfaction in their MIDI controllers. Further, the integration capabilities with popular DAWs are top-notch. The controller effectively eliminates the need to frequently toggle between the DAW and the hardware, which significantly enhances workflow.

Moreover, the high-resolution TFT colour display is a nice touch. It provides clear, bright, and colourful feedback that’s great for at-a-glance referencing and improves the overall user experience. Lastly, the abundance and quality of control elements, including keys, pads, faders, encoders, and buttons, contribute significantly to the overall playability and user experience.

However, the CS12 isn’t without its drawbacks. Notably, the abundance of features and elements on the CS12 may present a steep learning curve for beginners. New users might need some time to familiarize themselves with the vast array of controls and how they integrate with their chosen DAW.

Furthermore, despite the wide range of integration with different DAWs, we found some minor issues with specific DAWs, requiring manual mapping. That said, basic functions worked perfectly straight out of the box, and Nektar’s customer support was helpful in resolving these issues.

Overall, these cons don’t overshadow the impressive functionality and features of the CS12 but rather present aspects for potential improvement and user considerations. Nektar’s Panorama CS12 is a competent controller with the ability to revolutionize your music production journey, provided you’re willing to fully engage with its extensive features and embrace its advanced controls.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Comparison with Similar Controllers

In the interest of a truly in-depth review, let’s see how Nektar Panorama CS12 stacks up against other controllers in the same arena. Key contenders we’ve identified are the Novation SL MkIII and the Akai MPK261, both revered in the industry for their features and performance.

Starting with the price point, the CS12 does fetch a higher price tag than either the Novation or Akai offerings. However, as we’ll see below, the depth of native integration it offers can justify the additional expense for many.

When discussing features, the CS12 shows its worth with a plethora of control options that readily exchange blows with the competition. It brings to the fray 61 semi-weighted keys, 12 velocity-sensitive pads, 9 faders, and a push-encoder. The Novation SL MkIII shines in this area as well with a sequencer and CV/Gate outputs on top of similar control features, while the Akai’s strength lies in its 16 MPC pads and 8 assignable knobs, switches, and faders.

The CS12’s vertical color display, however, is a distinct inclusion that clearly sets it apart. This display gives detailed feedback from your DAW right on your hardware, pushing the boundaries of what these controllers can deliver.

Ease-of-use is a crucial factor too. While the CS12’s deep level of DAW integration and the subsequent control it offers could potentially intimidate novices, it’s arguably no more complex than the Novation’s sequencer or Akai’s multiple zones functionality.

That said, for those looking for simpler control or perhaps running on a tighter budget, the Novation SL MkIII or the Akai MPK261 might prove worthy alternatives. These controllers offer a well-balanced mix of features without requiring quite the same investment.

In summary, the Nektar Panorama CS12 holds its weight well in this competitive space, outshining in certain areas while yielding in others. The choice, ultimately, boils down to specific user needs, preferences, and budget.

Nektar Panorama CS12 Conclusion and Recommendations

After spending considerable time with the Nektar Panorama CS12, our verdict is clear: the CS12 is a potent tool packed with features, that’s adeptly designed to navigate through any music production challenge. The build quality, enhanced workflow capabilities, and seamless DAW integration collectively add profitability to this robust controller’s appeal.

Although it may be slightly overwhelming for beginners due to its myriad functionalities, the CS12 certainly boasts of being an excellent investment. The higher-end pricing of the CS12 is justified when considering its extreme adaptability and rich feature set. However, it’s not just about the comprehensive options this controller provides, it’s about how intuitively and efficiently it allows you to use them.

This controller is ideally suited for professionals and experienced producers who need full command over their digital audio workspace without getting tangled up in a maze of menus and sub-menus. Additionally, it’s an excellent controller for those who value build quality and long-term reliability.

For those on a tight budget or beginners who are just dipping their toes into music production, cheaper, less complex options might be more appropriate. Also, for those with space constraints, the considerable size of CS12 might be a drawback, and smaller models like the CS6 or CS8 could be a better fit.

In summary, the Nektar Panorama CS12 is an exceptional product in its class, providing unparalleled control, customization, and integration capabilities. It stands as a testament to Nektar’s mission of enhancing the link between musician and technology, and we wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that meets its profile of an ideal user.