Mechanical parts and manufacturing cost far more than DSPs and electronics, after all. Look at an £1800 synthesizer like the Matrixbrute, and you'll find a lovely, fast, light and controllable keyboard very different to the offerings on £400 models. Though cheap, Behringer's synths rarely have keyboards, Many more of the affordable softsynth alternatives (Roland's prepackaged emulations, for example) have minikeys, or no aftertouch, or just feel a bit nasty to play. It's also worth considering what that hardware is actually adding - when so many softsynths (including Arturia's own Pigments) go far beyond the capabilities of a classic analogue or digital synthesizer. There's always a pressing argument to get more hardware, but - all that hardware is built to a price.

Giving up real synths is getting even harder now there are so many cheap, fun synths coming out from all manner of manufacturers - including Arturia themselves with the 'freak and 'brute models, to Korg, Behringer and Novation. The Arturia Keylab Mk II is the latest in a relatively long line of hardware keyboards - MIDI controllers designed to support Arturia's softsynths - but it does a lot more than that, particularly if you're trying to quit the hardware habit,

Arturia are known for two things, pretty much - softsynths and recreations of classic synths in software (occasionally running on bespoke DSP hardware), and MIDI controllers.

Arturia analog lab lite crossgrade