Thu, January 13, 2011 at 10:25 AM When Akai Professional brought out the SynthStation25 with integrated iPod Touch/iPhone dock we were desperately scouring the Internet for hacks that would allow a dock extender to work with our iPads but most reports were that the full functionality was not going to work this way.
But worry no more, Akai have just announced at NAMM 2011 the iPad version with a larger keyboard to match, the SynthStation49 (with 49 velocity-sensitive keys as opposed to the 25 keys of the smaller version).
The SynthStation49 is iOS CoreMIDI compatible so should act as an interface to pretty much any App using MIDI but it also has an onboard USB connection so that you can hook it up to your computer / DAW and control that too.
We think this might just be what live gigging musicians have been waiting for to use some of the awesome iPad apps in a real context.
The iPad is charged when docked and can be adjusted to different viewing angles so it looks like they have put a lot of thought into the iPad integration.
We hope that Akai have addressed the latency issues that some were reporting with the SynthStation25 but we are sure we will hear about that soon enough!
You can read more details and a full description of the features on the SynthStation49 webpage, but here are the main ones from the announcement:
If this is just what you have been looking for or you have any thoughts about SynthStation49 let us know in the comments.
Akai Professional, DAW, Keyboard, Live, Midi, Musician, Phil, SynthStation49, iPad, music | in Accessories, Music 
Reader Comments (3)
That actually looks really nice. I' m a guitarist myself, but I've been thinking of buying a MIDI keyboard for composing on my PC. And this one also adds the iPad compatibility!
Is there any info about the cost of the thing? And do many apps support MIDI input? maybe you could write a post about those! =)
@pinta_vodki Hi, no info on pricing yet. The smaller iPhone version is around £79 and there are some extra features on the '49 as well as the size and extra octaves, so we can only guess at the pricing for now.
There are lots of apps that support MIDI on iOS and now that iOS supports CoreMIDI it will be easier to interface with for developers. If you do a search on the App store for MIDI you will see what we mean
Thanks for the post suggestion, we are a bit more acquainted with the guitar ourselves to be honest, but we will add that one to the list!
@pinta_vodki As soon as we had posted our reply, we were emailed a link to pre-orders for the SynthStation49 at £164.99! A bit more than we thought actually. Here's the link to the supplier here in the UK.