Hi all brains here 
Just wondering does anyone know if multimedia keyboards can be used to control Cubase or is it too “pro”.
Greats 
If you are talking about play pause ffw rw ext that some keyboards have on them for windows media player, no this will not control cubase.
If you have a keyboard that has programmable keys that you can change to key assignments or key strokes then yes you could set that up for cubase.
hmm thanks
Makes me wonder why Cubase doesn’t have an interface for that in the generic remote feature or are they not standard commands between mac/pc etc
If you have a few extra bucks, get an XKey programmable keyboard. Here’s a shot of mine. Can’t imagine not having it.
Most of them use windows specific keys that cannot be changed (pressing the email button will always bring up the email program you have told the system is default), a few older models map into media player & Internet exploder and thus are not useful either, however a few use a driver/application that is reconfigurable and can be made to spew out commands to Cubase, Logitech multimedia boards usually are whardwired as well but do feature some extra programmable keys.
It might be a better idea to look for a keyboard with programmable keys, they are not that expensive
One neat thing is the Cherry G84-4700 it is a keypad extender for notebooks with 21 keys, but all of them programmable up to 24 characters per key so it can be changed into a tiny cubase controller, costs about 30 quid - 35 euros
Here is a program Key tweak that lets you re assign a multimedia keyboard to different key strokes
http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/
you should be able to get the keyboard to control the functions of cubase no problem with this.
Thanks everyone for the replies.
In particular ARS for recommending that app, it will come in very handy I think.
Now should cubase not be able to do this as well?
Keyboard input handling is more of a system function than an app function, Cubase already allows you to change what keys and key combinations do in Cubase which is about right for an application, controllers of any kind, be it keyboards or DAW surfaces should be handled by the OS or specifically written driver provided by the makers. The sort of system utility like in the link above makes more sense than asking app vendors to supply OS utilities, we would not ask Steinberg to supply defragmentation software even though that is a vital piece of kit for any music workstation…
You are probably right Reiknir.
One can only ask and it might be a nice addition to Cubase depending on how things are handled on the apple side I guess.
I have plenty of controllers but the kind of simplicity I’m wanting surely would benefit everyone.
The key tweak program I posted. Changes the keyboards key assignments and writes them to the registry. So its not a program that runs all the time, when you make a key change it restarts the computer and writes the key change.
I was going through the keytweak program and it appears keyboards (standard ones) assign (or windows assigns) different keys to numbers.
For instance A is #30 Q is #16 ext, For a multimedia keyboard with transport controls for windows media player there is a play/pause, next track, prev track, ext. The play/pause for WMP is control+P but the play pause button does not functions as that, it is instead #57344.
If play/pause functioned as control+P you could just change the spacebar key command in cubase to control+P instead on control+P opening the Pool in cubase
Anyways I hope this helps in explaining how this works.