MOTUnation.com

Hello all, created a new account since my previous one was associated with an abandon email address.

My Mackie Control (the darker grey model) has become too glitchy and I'm in the market for a new controller. Not a fan of touchscreen for fader moves, so Slate is out. I primarily use my control surface for fader moves/automation, pan and transport.

The Presonus Fader 8 doesn't blow me away and I've heard mediocre reviews so I've been waiting to see if there's anything more DP friendly. Am I correct that Softtube's Console 1 fader doesn't control fader moves in DP? If that's the case then I have no use for it. Anyone have any new suggestions that don't involve the word Behringer? Even considering the newer Mackie Control (light grey model). Any help is greatly appreciated and I would echo the call to MOTU to produce their own hardware controller. I'd happily pay top $ for that kind of reliability.

I just got an Icon M+ and love it. If all you're looking for is automation via faders, pan and transport it will meet your needs with one exception (and not being a MIDI CC programing guy I have no idea how easily this could be solved). Out of the box, you will be able to do everything except use the M+ to return to the beginning of your session. It's a minor annoyance for me. Granted, I've only had the M+ for a few weeks now, but it's just been fabulous. I know Icon products (most of it centered on the QCon Pro series) have received some negative reviews (seems like with good reason) but the M+ seems to have escaped much of the negativity (likely due to the fact that it doesn't try to do too much).

Probably important to note that I also got mine on Reverb.com for about half of the new price, so at that price point my expectations were also rather low.

I'm so happy with my M+ that I'm now hungry for more functionality, so will be following this thread as well.

Thanks for that info CFW. I was actually just looking at the Icon stuff yesterday and wanted to find out how it played with DP. It still amazes me that MOTU won't create something of their own and solve this problem for us. It's not like they don't produce hardware.

I'll add the Icon M+ to my very short list of options. Although, I will say even my old Mackie control can get me back to 00:00 with just one click.

I'm going to work on using the provided mapping software to map getting to 0:00 to an available button. I've also considered adding a B+ (it's an extension that essentially provides more buttons for controlling various parameters) and reached out to Icon earlier this week. The reply I received indicated that they are working with MOTU to make the Icon products fully integrated with DP. As you said, it's a bit hard to understand why MOTU hasn't created their own controller (which obviously could then be used with other DAWs as well). There have been reports of serious flaws in the Icon products that use displays; if they can fix those issues I would think it would be wise for MOTU to partner with Icon.

FlikPat wrote:Am I correct that Softtube's Console 1 fader doesn't control fader moves in DP? If that's the case then I have no use for it.

Yes, Console 1, nor Console 1 Fader controls DP's faders, mute, solo, and sends.
I've been trying to get that functionality for a few years now starting with Console 1.
From what I understand, the ball is in MOTU's court due to some software handshaking that has to be done on MOTU's side. If you were using Studio One 3 or 4, it works just fine!
I personally love to use Console 1 and the fader pack with DP and wish that MOTU would fix this already. For now, I leave all my DP faders at -3 db for headroom and do all my fader moves in C1. Although the C1 mutes are automatable, I still use the mutes in DP for visual purposes.

FlikPat wrote: Am I correct that Softtube's Console 1 fader doesn't control fader moves in DP? If that's the case then I have no use for it.

Of course we'd love the full implementation...but even as it is now, it's still really great... I'd encourage you to not be too put off by what it doesn't do (yet). What it does do far outweighs those for me

Just watched a YouTube video that mentioned the M+ uses the "mixer" button for return to the beginning of your track. Not sure how I missed that the first time but it works like a charm.