@johnnym I bought a CME VXv2 a while back but had issues with the motorised faders and had problems with mapping the control surface with Cubase and Reason, robust being metal cased but quite a heavy product also expensive for what you get. The 88 key 2/3 years ago was appox £800 . I swapped it for the Novation Remote 61 SL (half the price of the CME) now NOVATION REMOTE 61 SL MKII) and never looked back. The automation mapping is a godsend and worked seemlessly with Cubase, Reason and Ableton Live.

The Novation products are great for the price and the Remote 61 can run off USB or 4 x C batteries for street performance. IMO a great starter studio product.

The 61 Key pad is light weight, so portable and gives sufficient key range to play live (coupled with a sustain pedal), Key play is good, Some keyboard keys are noticably, flexy and the key springed response is reasonable with a good dynamic response for mapping accurate velocity.

ControlTOUCH keyboard controllers are designed for the modern day musician who requires traditional keyboard controller features along with a video display and touch screen controls. ControlTOUCH allows you to concentrate on your music creation or performance and less on the technology behind them. ControlTOUCH instantly transforms your laptop or desktop into a full-blown keyboard production station.

ControlTOUCH 61, The 61-key version provides the following controls and features:

• 8 velocity sensitive trigger pads,
• 2X Assignable Pedal Interfaces,
• 8X Assignable Faders,
• Pitch Bend Wheel and Modulation wheel,
• 6 Buttons for MTC,
• Master Volume Fader,
• 8 double Function button with shift, providing 15 functions like (PROGRAM, CHANNEL, CURVE, OCTAVE, TRANSPOSE, BANK M, BANK L, DUAL, SPLIT, MUTE, AFTER TOUCH, CONTROL ASSIGN, etc),
• 10X numeric pad with +/- buttons,
• Built-in Memory, which can store/load 6 groups of user's parameters,
• MIDI/OUT, and MIDI/IN.

http://www.musiccomputing.com/controllers