M Audio’s new Hammer 88 is an affordable, fully weighted, hammer action keyboard for professional and semi pro players or students looking for a realistic grand piano feel to use with virtual instruments or sound modules. It features fully assignable MIDI buttons, pitch bend and modulation wheels, sustain pedal, secondary pedal and expression pedal inputs—while providing a clean aesthetic for players more concerned with compositional accuracy than editing and tweaking. Hammer 88 is USB powered, class compliant, and supports USB MIDI connectivity. Plus, Hammer 88 supports iOS connectivity with the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit (sold separately), enabling you to perform and compose with audio apps on your iPad and other iOS devices. Please note that when you press a key on the keyboard, you will not hear any sound. This is because pressing a key causes the keyboard to send out MIDI data. MIDI data gives instructions on how a sound should play, but in order to actually hear that sound you need to configure your music software to read the MIDI data being sent from the Hammer 88 and play the sound back accordingly.