Hi all. i have asked this on another list but thought i would try here too.
I have quite a specific question about midi control surfaces. an example is the bcf2000 with motorised faders. my question is also linked with audio interfaces. I am guessing there has been a bit of discussion about how well this works with sonar or reaper etc. and i guess controlling a daw is mainly what the bcf2000 is all about. But what I want to know is whether it can be used to control the audio interface itself and it's direct mixing functions? The reason why i want to know is because quite a lot of audio interfaces are now being designed with digital control of the mic preamps and dsp on the device. some do have hardware gain controls but some, like the roland octacapture, has everything done digitally with a screen and menu system. But these devices are also controllable via software control panels. for example, roland octa capture has a software control panel, focusright scarlet products have a software package called mix control. these are all examples of non-daw control software for the interfaces themselves. So in the case of the roland control panel, you can control the mic preamp gain, compressor settings, high-z and phantum power options, and there is also a mixer control for patching ins to outs and setting up monitor mixes. this is all in software. i think the scarlet mix control also does a lot of this but perhaps not the mic gain settings since those are done on real pots on the device itself. I know presonus has their own home grown software which I don’t know much about re accessibility. I have not purchased an interface or control surface yet, so I have no idea about the accessibility of these bits of software that come with interfaces. but what I learn from this forum might help me decide. so i guess my question is in a few parts: 1. do people know of any audio interfaces where the control panel or mixer control software is accessible or partially accessible? 2. Do people know of any audio interfaces where the control software is midi controllable or partially midi controllable, and thus able to be mapped in and controlled by a control surface like the bcf2000? 3. Do people have a recommendation for a control surface that is any better than the bcf2000? for example, I understand there is an icon q con pro around now. As for interfaces, I am interested in the roland capture series or the scarlet series from focusright, maybe the NI komplete 6 or m-audio stuff. this is low to mid level budget. I guess people may appreciate that its not only the daw these days that needs to be accessible, its also the software that the interface uses. More and more of them are now being controlled or are controllable by software right down to preamp gain settings which can be stored and recalled later. Thanks all for comments. Mat.
