Yes, you’ll still get the wooden accents, but they’re far more subtle - and, dare we say, classier. While that looked great, it’s well and truly time for Arturia’s controllers to evolve, and the MiniLab MKII is the embodiment of that. Arturia has gone a slightly different route than previous MIDI controllers, which far more heavily featured wood - in fact, the entire side of the keyboards was made of wood. The installation of all of those pieces of software is very straightforward, and they’re all downloaded from your account after you register. That’s not a bad little bundle, especially considering the fact that it all comes with a controller that costs less than $150. With the MiniLab MKII, you’ll get Arturia’s Analog Lab Lite, as well as Ableton Live Lite, the UVI Grand Piano, and Arturia’s MINI Control Center. If you don’t already have an Arturia account, you’ll need to create one, after which you can simply enter in the registration code and and “unlock code” to register the device to your account. Setting up the MiniLab MKII was actually quite a breeze.

For this review we’re using a 2012 Retina Display MacBook Pro and Pro Tools 11 - so just keep in mind that the setup may vary a little depending on your setup.

Arturia uvi grand piano