M-Audio Axiom 61 USB MIDI Controller

A Subjective Product Review

©2007 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs

A low-cost and feature-laden 61-key MIDI keyboard that quickly catapulted me to something more robust.

A huge disclaimer is necessary up front: I am not a MIDI keyboard expert, nor even an accomplished player. I am early in the piano learning curve (although I have played the flute for 30 years). I am thus not equipped to publish a comparison of this keyboard with competing units, nor even address the extent to which it lives up the promise of its extensive feature list.

When I decided to start learning piano in late 2006, I did quite a bit of research and ultimately chose this for its svelte size, excellent suite of controls, and low street price of about $300. I already owned another piece of M-Audio gear (the M-Audio MobilePre USB Interface with Microphone Preamp), and was happy with it. In addition to all that, I was having thoughts of eventually integrating a keyboard into the console of the Nomadness trimaran, and this would both fit well and be easy to hack without committing the sacrilege of tearing up a high-end unit. All good.

I quickly started having fun with it, using Apple's excellent Garage Band (with the amazing Symphony jam pack) as my synth and production environment. For 3-4 months, I used it for bluesy noodling, taking piano lessons, and practicing simple classical pieces like the Bach Prelude in C from Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1. Functionally, the Axiom 61 always did exactly what it should, which is send MIDI events from a flexible and responsive user interface.

It is also pretty, shown here with the iMac, an MXL 990 condenser mic, the USB audio interface, and the Soundsticks speakers:

Rev 1.0 of my music studio... shortly afterwards, I moved the Axiom 61 to a ProLine X-stand that was at a much more comfortable height.

So, why the reserved tone of this review?

Well. It didn't take long for even my newbie fingers to start getting annoyed at key adhesion from one end of the board to the other. Whenever a key hadn't been pressed for a while, it developed a sharp hysteresis... requiring a bit of extra effort to release it with a little -click- before it would work smoothly. Thereafter, it would be fine for a while, then the stiction would return within a couple of minutes. This quickly started driving me crazy, especially where a pianissimo touch was required.

Searching the forums and contacting M-Audio turned up nothing, and even the responsive and friendly dealer from whom I had bought the unit was surprised to hear about it. Tech support said I was the first to ever report such a thing, yet I was increasingly seeing it as unusable (and my piano teacher agreed strongly, scowling when she would enounter the problem herself). Vigorous jamming was just fine, with the machine responsive and quick, but being gentle with it was nigh impossible.

Realizing that I was more or less on my own, I decided to tackle the problem myself. I had visions of lubricating a rubber landing pad with silicone (a friend recommended Armor-All), or maybe gluing little bits of felt under some pads. So, keeping a careful inventory of screw locations and taking my time, I took it apart:

Inside the M-Audio Axiom 61

I would not call the internal packaging impressive, but hey... this is a budget board, and besides, the loose interconnects would mean easy repackaging for the boat. So despite wrinkling my nose a bit at the cheap-import feel, I unplugged the cables and removed the key bed.

Aha. Every key had a molded-in cage that moved relative to a cylindrical rubber sleeve, thus constraining its motion in all axes. It's a clean and simple design, but the problem is fiendish: the rubber bumper meets the plastic at a line, and the slight side-loading causes the light silicone lube (I'm guessing) to gradually migrate away from the zone of highest pressure. The result is adhesion, whether from the slight vacuum of a void surrounded by a seal of lubricant, or from the inherent stickiness of the rubber itself. Whatever the mechanism at the micro level, the effect is completely obvious when you look at it up close... nudging the key sideways breaks the seal with the identical little -click- that is noticeable during playing:

Close-up of the source of key stiction... it is necessary to break the seal where the rubber pad meets the white plastic key cage, whereupon it moves freely as long as the surface stays wet. After it sits for a few minutes and the low-viscosity lubricant migrates out of the tiny junction, the cycle repeats.

In my opinion, the presence of the lubricant suggests one of three things: the company (or its Asian manufacturer) knew of this problem and attempted to address it with the wrong lube, or they didn't know of the problem and lubricated the parts on general principles... but failed to think through the voiding issue. But if the keys were not side-loaded, this would probably not happen, so a third possibility is that all the keyboards are like this but mine just happened to have a consistent mis-alignment along its entire length. That would require all the keys to initiate a sliding action when pressed, rather than just lifting off a surface. The more I think about it, the more likely this seems, as it would also explain the comment that they had not heard of this before as well as the scarcity of commentary in the always-outspoken user forums where people are not at all shy about complaining. I believe it is most likely that I did indeed end up with a fluke.

Corroborating this, I had the chance a few weeks later to feel a demo unit at a local Guitar Center. I could just barely sense the effect... it was nowhere as strong as it was on mine and was too subtle to be considered a defect. The feel was a little light and "plastic," but since I had just been going back and forth between the Roland RD-700SX and the Yamaha S90ES synthesizers, that is entirely subjective; there's a price difference of about 7X, and comparison is unfair!

Overall, I still think the Axiom is a nice product, at least in terms of the control flexibility for such remarkably low cost. USB plug-and-play is a good thing, and the board is very easy to use. The happy footnote to all this is that after I sent a video of the key adhesion, M-Audio graciously offered to replace it and my dealer offered a full refund. I accepted the latter and moved up to something at least an order of magnitude beyond my current needs.

Hopefully I will grow into it... and will write a review once I get past the initial learning curve. In the meantime, I'm maintaining a page that summarizes the components of the new system.

Additional Resources

Click the picture to buy one over at Zzounds:

M-Audio Axiom 61 Keyboard MIDI Controller

And here are some currently on eBay (including the 25- and 49-key models, as well as the 61 discussed above):