Roland A-800 A very nice keyboard controler

Its been over 20 years that my Yamaha KX76 has served me. I have always liked Roland products so I decided to try the A800. Glad I did. Talk about lots of features and easy set up. Wow! It took less than 10 minutes to connect it to my computer and sync to Sonar X1. Keys are a good feel considering their non weighted.
I was also impressed with Sweetwater.

Excellent Board

I really like a synth-action keyboard and this fits my playing style perfectly. I'm one of those guys that actually likes the Roland style joy-stick thing. It feels very similar to my old D-50 keyboard which I loved. Can't speak to other software but it interfaces with Reason\Record without any hassles. I would have preferred endless encoders instead of 270 degree knobs but that's a minor niggle for me. Excellent!

Really nice Keyoard, Love controllers

Very light keyboard controller, Was exactly what I needed. The keys are nice, possible a little narrow for my larger hands, but not enough to really be a problem. (I'm not a piano player, I can play enough to enter parts into my recordings.) The controller connects with Sonar without any problems. You do have to make sure the controller is on before starting Sonar. And a weird little hickup, if you start Sonar with the keyboard off, the realize it, exit Sonar turn it on, then restart Sonar, you have to go into the Controller/Surface options and reselect the input/output port for the A-800. Thats about the only reason I gave it a 4 instead of a 5. And that is probably more a Sonar problem then the A800-Pro's problem.

Reason users stay away

they keyboard is great to play on and with 12 velocity curves you can really have it fit your playing style. intergration with reason is non exsistant. while you can assign controlls to some basic functions, you can select devices or load patches remotely to the devices like you can with the MPK series. they have reason support or the older pcr-800 and if you use that profile you can get a glimspe of what can be done with support, you can select devices and load patches (it not formated properly but you can tell it can be done) i called Roland and they stated they have no plans for reason support which is a shame becuase this board can do it, only if you know how to program reason's lua codecs...