BERKELEY, California – September 6, 2012 – Keith McMillen Instruments, creator of the most responsive and flexible controllers for human-to-machine music making, announces new Drum Pad Emulation mode for the QuNeo.

QuNeo, the world’s first 3D Multi-touch pad controller, can now approximate the feel and response of popular MPC-style drum pads such as the Maschine, Akai, and Korg, as well as others.

“All other drum pads have a mechanical switch that does a one-time detection of when the pad is hit, so the feel of the pad is largely determined by the type of switch and where it is located,” explained Keith McMillen, president and founder of KMI. “QuNeo continuously senses the varying pressure and location of the player’s gestures, so we can acquire the displacement, velocity and acceleration data of the hit to generate pretty much any response and feel.”

Electronic music performers such as Mochipet and doseone are enthusiastic about the performance capabilities of QuNeo. “These pads are super responsive,” said Mochipet. “With the multiple contact points—pressure and corners—you have an amazing amount of control in a very small amount of space!” According to doseone, “All my music pals want one the second they see it, and even more so once I show them how to have fun with it.”

QuNeo’s Multi-touch, X-Y location and continuous pressure capabilities give it a unique advantage over traditional MPC-style drum pads. Each of the four corners of every pad can be programmed independently, enabling grid-style clip launching. Also, performers can trigger and hold a note, and then retrigger the same pad with another finger. Two rotary decks, nine VU sliders, and 17 pressure sensitive switches make QuNeo a complete controller solution. 251 responsive LEDs allow the performer to focus on his playing and not on the computer.

For immediate out-of-the-box usability, QuNeo ships with presets, templates and scripts for popular music software including: Ableton Live, Serato Scratch, Traktor, Apple Logic, Mixxx, Reason, Battery, BeatMaker for iPad, and Korg iMS-20 for iPad.

QuNeo is the most powerful and affordable pad controller available. It allows users to replace their grid-style launchers, DJ decks and drum pads with a single, portable iPad-sized device. QuNeo’s ease of use—combined with the most advanced sensor, display and editing software—marks a new generation of musical instruments: Controllerism 2.0.

QuNeo has a street price of $199.00 USD, and is available now at leading musical instrument retailers worldwide.

About Keith McMillen Instruments

Keith McMillen Instruments develops innovative hardware and software technologies that allow musicians to interface with computers in exciting new ways. Based in Berkeley, California, KMI’s products provide today’s modern musician with the tools needed to bring new dimensions of expression and control to their performance. We believe when a computer is played as a musical instrument it should feel and respond like one, with all the nuance and sensitivity that makes an instrument musical.

KMI’s other products include: QuNeo, the first 3-D Multi-touch pad controller; K-Bow, a Bluetooth sensor bow; SoftStep, the first USB/MIDI multi-touch foot controller; 12 Step, the first chromatic keyboard foot controller; StringPort, the first computer platform for stringed instruments; and Batt-O-Meter, the first musician’s battery tester.