"Analogeezer" wrote in message
om...
Well besides a mouse and a keyboard g

Almost two years ago I bought a used Yamaha 01V as a control surface for
Samplitude when it became clear using my 02R was more of a hassle than I cared
to deal with. Since then, I've been tempted by the SAC-2K, the Mackie, and even
the new Tascam. But I'll stick with the 01V. It's set up and I'm used to using
it. No complaints. You can get a used 01V for around $600 and it works as a
control surface for many DAW software packages.


Just for grins I hooked up an old JL Cooper Fadermaster to Sonar and
was playing around with it and thought "man this beats the **** out of
controlling the software mixer with a mouse, maybe I should get a
control surface".

The shot heard 'round the world. g A control surface beats the snot out of
mouse/keyboard for me.

John

I've got a SAC2K and I love it. I saw a couple of them for around $600 on
ebay a couple of days ago.
I use PTLE, and it controls every parameter that I can think of. It also can
control other programs like softsynths while inside of ProTools.
I am still waiting on the monitor section Radikal has on their website. They
also say you can get up to 3 fader expansion banks, if you need more than 8
at a time.
BTW, it is USB1.
--
Mitchell Benson
OKC Backup
405.728.7005

The thing is, so many of these devices (especially the older ones)
work via midi, which seems like not such a great thing.

Why is this not a great thing?


Scott Fraser

I hear that the new Yamaha series mixers (O2R96, DM 1000 & 2000) will
allow you to control a variety of DAWs from their surfaces - anyone tried
'em out yet? Price tag will of course be high being as how they are new
etc... - I was thinking this might be the beginning of a trend? I know
this begs Analogeezer's question but I was kinda wonderin' about that
myself - as far as I have found, any of the control thingies out there
are somewhat incomplete and was thinking that the solution would be to
build the interface into a console - old fashioned thinking perhaps but
I'm not all that young anyway.

Gary

Analogeezer wrote:

Well besides a mouse and a keyboard g

I've been toying with the idea of getting one of those newfangled DAW
control surface things, but I'd like to hear what people are using and
what their experiences are.

I realize that the software interaction component is more important
perhaps than the hardware itself but I'd be curious as to what people
are using and how it's working for them.

Just for grins I hooked up an old JL Cooper Fadermaster to Sonar and
was playing around with it and thought "man this beats the **** out of
controlling the software mixer with a mouse, maybe I should get a
control surface".

The thing is, so many of these devices (especially the older ones)
work via midi, which seems like not such a great thing. I'd think that
Firewire or USB 2.0 would be a better way but not all control surfaces
are doing this yet.

I know of the older (as in a year or two old) units, the Radikal can
use USB I believe but not sure if it's 1.0 or 2.0.

I see a lot of Firewire/USB 2.0 devices coming out but they all seem
to think that nobody owns any mic preamps or a control room interface,
they want to sell me a bunch of crap I don't need.

The Mackie control would appear to meet my needs/wants the best, but
it's "midi only" right?

Let's here what you are using and how you like it, what are the
upsides what are the downsides...

Analogeezer

p.s. Besides the Fadermaster, I also have a Peavey PC-1600, which are
pretty cool because they have buttons and faders, but mine has a burnt
out LCD so at the moment it's kind of a bitch to program

These things don't use the MIDI protocol, they just use a hardware MIDI
interface to send their proprietary control protocol. Probably chosen by the
designers since the MIDI interface was fast enough and everyone had one. USB
2.x and Firewire are both capable, but in fact probably over-qualified
unless you are also sending digital audio.

I would consider only a moving-fader controller (Mackie Control, SAC-2K,
etc.) if you will be doing serious mixing and can afford them.

--
Doug Osborne

my day job: http://www.martinsound.com/
recent DVD-A Review:
http://www.surroundpro.com/2003/may-...feat2-fm.shtml
recent SACD Review:
http://www.surroundpro.com/2003/may-...software.shtml


"Analogeezer" wrote in message
om...
Well besides a mouse and a keyboard g

I've been toying with the idea of getting one of those newfangled DAW
control surface things, but I'd like to hear what people are using and
what their experiences are.

I realize that the software interaction component is more important
perhaps than the hardware itself but I'd be curious as to what people
are using and how it's working for them.

Just for grins I hooked up an old JL Cooper Fadermaster to Sonar and
was playing around with it and thought "man this beats the **** out of
controlling the software mixer with a mouse, maybe I should get a
control surface".

The thing is, so many of these devices (especially the older ones)
work via midi, which seems like not such a great thing. I'd think that
Firewire or USB 2.0 would be a better way but not all control surfaces
are doing this yet.

I know of the older (as in a year or two old) units, the Radikal can
use USB I believe but not sure if it's 1.0 or 2.0.

I see a lot of Firewire/USB 2.0 devices coming out but they all seem
to think that nobody owns any mic preamps or a control room interface,
they want to sell me a bunch of crap I don't need.

The Mackie control would appear to meet my needs/wants the best, but
it's "midi only" right?

Let's here what you are using and how you like it, what are the
upsides what are the downsides...

Analogeezer

p.s. Besides the Fadermaster, I also have a Peavey PC-1600, which are
pretty cool because they have buttons and faders, but mine has a burnt
out LCD so at the moment it's kind of a bitch to program

On 23 Sep 2003 15:46:05 GMT, (ScotFraser) wrote:

The thing is, so many of these devices (especially the older ones)
work via midi, which seems like not such a great thing.

Why is this not a great thing?


Scott Fraser

I have used a few digital mixers for control surfaces, and it
depended on the application and mixer as to what kind of results I
would get through midi connections.

For example, I hooked up a tascam tmd 1000 to a computer via midi,
and it worked ok with cubase, although had some latency.
When using the same mixer in Samplitude, if more than 1 channel fader
was moved, it would slow the computer down to a crawl. I do not know
if this was the fault of the software, mixer, or midi interface, but
it was totally unusable.

Randall

In article ,
"serious fun" wrote:

These things don't use the MIDI protocol, they just use a hardware MIDI
interface to send their proprietary control protocol.

No. The either use standard controllers or they use Sys Ex which is
standard protocol.
The only device I remember that tried putting its own protocol on MIDI
hardware was an Akai switcher and that caused so many problems it died.

MIDI is plenty fast enough to handle a control surface. The trick is to
scan the controls at the right rate, not too fast and not too slow, and to
noise filter the controls. Not all examples do this properly though and the
blame is put onto MIDI rather than the poor software inside the box.