M-Audio continues life on the cutting edge with the introduction of the Keystation Pro 88, a USB-powered MIDI master controller keyboard with 88 velocity sensitive keys, a piano-like keyboard design called Hammer Action, and a collection of knobs, levers and buttons sufficient in quantity to populate the control panel of, say, the spaceship Challenger.
The Keystation Pro 88 also doubles very nicely as a full-featured MIDI remote mixing surface, equally viable for use with a software sequencer's virtual "console", or mangling the parameters of a softsynth, with a set of faders that can also be used as drawbar controls of the many software "Hammonds" currently available. M-Audio's driver support is very inclusive and ambitious, and a backup software ed/lib program called Enigma is a useful utility, downloadable upon registration.
Finally, there is the issue of price, which for a controller keyboard with the capabilities and features of the Keystation Pro 88, is astonishingly low.