E-Mu Xboard 25 Review Manual

RECORDING JANUARY 2006

58

The USB MIDI controller market

has exploded in recent months. The

Xboards from E-MU occupy an inter-

esting niche: on the surface they

seem like ordinary no-frills keyboards

(and their prices would seem to bear

this out),

but hidden surprises

abound.

In the box

The Xboards come in two models,

identical except for price and number

of keys: the two-octave Xboard 25

(under review here) and four-octave

Xboard 49. The keyboard is made of

dense plastic, heavier than some

other models out there, with a reas-

suring solidity and heft. The keyboard

offers full-sized keys with velocity

and aftertouch sensitivity, and front-

panel controls include sixteen assign-

able knobs plus a master volume/data

entry slider, pitch and modulation

wheels, and a set of

12 buttons for program-

ming the keyboard’s functions.

The rear panel has a socket for an

optional DC power supply. The

Xboard can also use three AA batter-

ies but ran quite handily off USB

power on both of our test computers,

a dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac from

Apple and an Ozma-m 3.4 GHz

Pentium 4 laptop from Alienware.

The rear panel also has a power

switch, USB connector, MIDI Out, and

1

/

4

" jack for a footswitch or pedal.

There’s no MIDI In jack; the Xboard

doesn’t double as a MIDI interface to

accept data from external modules

and send it to your computer.

The Xboard comes with an installa-

tion CD-ROM that features several

important products: Windows and

Mac OS X drivers, a crossplatform

application called Xboard Control for

setting up the keyboard’s functions, a

Windows-only installer for the

Proteus X LE softsynth, and a

Windows-only ‘lite’ version of Ableton

Live 4. There’s also a printed Owner’s

Manual that covers the basics of all

the Xboard’s functions, and a PDF

manual on the CD-ROM.

On the desktop

Installing the software

from the CD-ROM proved to be triv-

ially simple on our test Mac: it’s a

straight Apple OS X installer that

doesn’t require a passphrase. It

worked perfectly on the first try. Our

Windows install was a bit problemat-

ic—even when we followed direc-

tions, the installed software couldn’t

see the Xboard. We used Add/Remove

Programs to clear out the install,

tried again, and had it work perfectly

the second time. (That’s Windows for

you.) 

On Windows, the quick-start litera-

ture warns that the Xboard hasn’t

been “signed” by Microsoft as a

peripheral, so you need to be sure to

install it on one USB port and not try

to use it on any other port (a common

glitch for many USB devices). E-MU

also warns that the computer will

expect the Xboard to require full USB

power even if plugged into a DC sup-

ply, so you can’t use it on a conve-

nience port like those found on some

computer keyboards.

Using the Xboard is quick and intu-

itive. The 3-digit LED display provides

basic information, like which preset

you’re set to and what MIDI message

a controller sends when you move it. If

this were the only user interface you

had, it would get tedious pretty quick-

ly, but the Xboard Control software

Affordability meets high quality in this USB controller

B Y   M I K E

M E T L A Y

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