Manufacturer	M Audio
Website	M Audio Oxygen 8
Price	£50
Rating	Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome Your rating: None Average: 3 (1 vote)

The Oxygen 8 is the baby of the USB Keystations series designed by Midiman In the 3 models, the Oxygen 8 is the smallest and most portable (42 x 23.7 x 7.62cm / 16.5 x 9.35 x 3 inches, 1.4kg).
It's a great controller when you have to move all your gear and want to save room without giving up on the midi control. One of the Oxygen 8's key features is its built-in 16-channel MIDI interface. There's no need to purchase an extra box (such as Midiman's Midisport) because you can connect it to a computer via USB. There are two MIDI outs to control other hardware as well.

On the front panel: You can control the Oxygen 8 with the following keys: "Pitch Wheel", "Modulation wheel", "Data entry" slider, "octave Up/down", "Midi select", 8 knobs, and the 25 regular keyboard keys"
One really good feature of the keyboard is that the 8 knobs are assignable.

Most key have a double fonction, by pressing "MIDI select" you can acces to the second fonction (MIDI channel, velocity, program, a numeric pad…) When a value has to be entered, the numeric pad or the "data entry" slider can be used. All the "regular keyboard keys" are velocity sensitive and the sensitivity can be adjusted very easily.

On the back panel: you have the USB plug (which can be use as the power supply at the same time), a plug for an external "wal mart" power supply, two midi connector (labeled "Midi out keyboard/USB") and a sustain jack (to connect a foot switch).

The lack of MIDI In may be a downside for some user, the only way to get MIDI information into your computer with the Oxygen 8 is with the Oxygen 8's keyboard.

Positive Points

• USB power
• Battery power (if your USB is not powerfull enough and you don't want any "wall mart" transformer.)
• Size
• 8 assignable knobs>
• design

Negative Points

• I already lost 3 times the "data" slider (I was lucky it was everytime in my office), but with some glue it should be fine.
• USB plug doesn't look very strong (low quality ??) (I had a bad usb connection after the 3rd day I was using the keyboard (maybe I was just unlucky) and I had to send the Oxygen 8 back to the shop to get a new one)
• Only Midi out