Mackie MIDI Control Surfaces

I used to have one of these for about two years before the mackie control universal pro came out. When this one came out, it was the best thing on the market. Mackie really knows what people want in the control surface market which is still surprisingly very bare considering the potential demand. While the new Pro edition of this product is definitely better in most respects, there are a ton of these going around for sale via used music equipment avenues, so this is a relatively inexpensive alternative to the nicer Mackie control Pro that those with the bigger budget should go for. This control surface has a lot of features that make the Mackie line superior to any other company's offerings. First the faders are top notch quality, made by Penny and Giles who make the best automated faders money can buy. This unit also has an LCD readout along the top that says a few characters of the track names that you have labeled in your DAW. That makes it way easier to keep track of which faders are connected to which tracks in your DAW without having to constantly check back and forth. There are pan pots for each of the 8 channels on this unit, which are normally set to control panning but in most DAWs you can change what they do, for example I have a friend who uses those to control input gain trim instead of panning. There is also a whole section of transport buttons including rewind, fast forward stop and play. Each track also has a solo, arm, and mute button which cuts down on mousing around time. There is a readout of the Now time in the top right to let you know where you are in the song at all times. This surface is also compatible with most major DAWs, and the menu buttons on the right half of this unit will be different for every DAW which is nice as well. These are pretty cheap now, so it's definitely a very good value to pick one up, but again I do recommend getting the Pro version if you can afford it.