Looking for a midi control surface.

[bonesinc]

I don't know if this is the right forum for this (if not, please move it to the right one).

I'm looking for a reasonable priced midi control surface with good sized, motorized faders. I would like the faders to be touch sensitive so that during playback I can immediately correct things without re-recording the volume changes entirely. I have no experience with midi control surfaces yet so I'm asking you experts for suggestions.

I know that the Mackie Controls are really good but they are way too expensive for me. So are the CME Bitstream 3X or Novation ReMoTe ZeroSL any good at all? Or are there other (cheaper) options around? I know of the Behringer BCF 2000 but this one is not fader sensitive (if I understood correctly). 8 Faders would be nice with a minimum of 60 mm.

In the end I would like to use it with Adobe Audition 2.0, maybe some time in the future with Cubase and love to use it with Final Cut Pro on the Mac.

Matthieu

[richiebee]

I don't think that the Novation Remote Zero even has motorized faders, never mind touch sensitive ones.

To be honest, I'd say touch sensitivity is a luxury that would be hard to find in a real budget unit. I'm also not sure you need it. I don't know how Audition works, but with Cubase there are numerous automation modes, and you don't have to re-do a whole track to add fader events in a particular place.

Whatever you decide, make sure its compatible with Audition. Some won't be, for sure.

[bonesinc]

Originally Posted by richiebee

To be honest, I'd say touch sensitivity is a luxury that would be hard to find in a real budget unit. I'm also not sure you need it. I don't know how Audition works, but with Cubase there are numerous automation modes, and you don't have to re-do a whole track to add fader events in a particular place.

Oh, that's good to know. Can you enlighten me a bit how to do fader events in Cubase with a non-touch sensitive controller? Let's say I'm playing some track with previously recorded fader events. So the faders are moving up and down according to the events and suddenly I decide to lower the level on my track. Can I just pull the fader down and will Cubase record that? What if I let go of the fader? Will it just move up to the next keyframe (or how do you call it?)?
If it works that way, the Behringer might be a reasonable choice.

Another question. What use are non-motorised faders with a DAW?

Matthieu

[richiebee]

In Cubase, the simplest way is to turn off automation playback for your channel and turn on automation record... your new data overrides the old. There may be a jump afterwards, I don't remember (I don't do a whole lot of automation to be honest), but you can clean up in the main window.

Non-motorized faders? Well, they're useful for synthesizer control features. They'd all be better if they were motorized, but they're not useless without motors. Just not particularly useful for mixing.

[bonesinc]

Ok, that's clear.

After reading a lot on the net about the Behringer BCF2000 I think I'm going to buy it. I'll post my experiences about it if anyone is interested.

Cheers,
Matthieu