Do you prefer a mouse or controller with your DAW?

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Mouse for almost everything. I read up on those single motorized faders but apparently they're all kludgy hack jobs that only work with the one DAW they were designed for. There's no way to natively support auto-banking with the HUI or Mackie protocols, so you end up having to manually bank to the active channel rather than just being able to click on it to instantly control it with the fader.

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Cubase: 80% KB/Mouse, 20% Controller. Can be up to 40-50% Controller if I decided to get a 1st party support controller wiht a good MIDI Remote Script in the box (Arturia, Novation).

Studio One was the same -^

When I used Samplitude Pro X, I used Avid Control for a lot of stuff. It was almost like a StreamDeck built into my iPad, because it had pages of functions that you could organize. Almost no latency. Really made it easy to get things done. I think that counts as a controller :-P

Maschine: 90% Controller (Maschine MK3), unless I need to play in melodic content, where I opt to use my MIDI Keyboard Controller. Don't really need to even look at the PC if you have a MK3 or Plus.

MPC: 65% Controller (MPC Studio MK2), 35% KB/Mouse

Another thing that can affect how someone uses a controller is their physical environment. If the controller isn't sitting in front of you, then it really becomes a bit of a PITA to tailor your workflow around that hardware. It's just easier to just use the KB/Mouse for almost everything except the functions that are important when you're playing things in and sitting in front of the controller.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:00 pm That you also need a mouse, and you could do all with a mouse means nothing. With a faderbox you can control several faders at once.
I can control 50 faders at once with my DAW, it's no big deal. Plus I have 10 point multi-touch on both my laptop screens which means I could control more faders, more easily than with a hardware controller if there was any benefit in doing so.
I prefer the tactile physical feedback of a fader vs. a touch screen, which would be the second best option… (leave BONES in his bubble…) You could operate a controller blind, close your eyes and just listen…
You can do the same with a scroll wheel, or even with the mouse itself, and when you get close you can press the CTRL key and get even finer adjustment. A fader is so crude, it bumps up and down in hard to control increments. Subtlety is completely lost, even if on the longest faders. On the kinds of faders you tend to get with controllers, it's much worse. It's like taking an axe to something that needs planing.

All that said, I find the need for precision when mixing very rare. If something is too loud or too quiet, I'll normally adjust the level by at least +/- 2dB and 95% of the time I will enter a number into the value field, rather than move the slider. When I do move a slider it is with the mouse wheel wherever possible, I only click and drag when I have to.
rod_zero wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 3:30 pmFor mixing a mouse, what I find really useful is that the DAW and plugins respond to mouse scroll wheel. That actually infuriates me about Live.
Are you saying the fact that it reacts to thescroll wheel infuriates you or the fact that Live doesn't? Using the scroll wheel to adjus tparameters is soemthign I discovered in Discreet/Autodesk Combustion about 20 years ago. It's a wonderful thing that feels almost magical when you first start doing it.
CrystalWizard wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 6:44 pmProper tools for the task. i use a controller with faders for live mixing, knobs on my controller for effects and synth parameters, but i use a mouse for most of the "clickey" stuff like menus, drop downs, knobs that i haven't mapped and other stuff. It's often the difference between playing live and "producing."
If you're interacting with the mixer, then it's producing, no matter how you do it.
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BONES wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 12:39 am
If you're interacting with the mixer, then it's producing, no matter how you do it.
OK BONES, thanks for setting me straight on that wording. Glad someone came to the rescue of the semantics of my post.
:lol:

i thought my point was pretty obvious...
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if this post is edited -it was for punctuation, grammar, or to make it coherent (or make me seem coherent).

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I have a controller (Nektar Impact LX88+) that can be set up as a mixer, but even though that's relatively easy to do in Cubase 12 because of Quick Controls, I prefer the mouse as I'm quite used to that. Interestingly, I had bought the Nektar about two years ago for its plethora of controls but haven't explored it much. Maybe this is the incentive to get cracking on that.
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I’ve had a few attempts to get controllers setup for my DAW. None of them took. What can I say? I don’t like a mouse though, I use a Kensington Expert Mouse, which oddly isn’t a mouse at all, but a trackball. I really like it. I do have a Machine, which I use basically like a MIDI pad controller. I’ve got plenty of synths, but even those I often default to using software editors.
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Mouse, much it prefer it to knobs or faders

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BONES wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 12:39 am
Tj Shredder wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 2:00 pm That you also need a mouse, and you could do all with a mouse means nothing. With a faderbox you can control several faders at once.
I can control 50 faders at once with my DAW, it's no big deal.
Each of the ten faders I can grab could move to different levels… I guess your 50 faders are just grouped, which of course is cheating and also possible with a fader box…

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With 10 point multi-touch, I can also move 10 faders at once, independently. And in Studio One I don't need to group faders to move them together, I just need to SHIFT/CTRL-select them. Quick and easy.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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Where do you place your ten fingers on a mouse to move ten faders in ten different directions? I guess you mean on a touch screen not a mouse…
First selecting and then moving is certainly not as quick and direct as just moving the faders… As long I am constructing in a DAW it doesn‘t matter, mixing live without faders or a touch screen is close to suicide…

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Mouse

Too lazy to bother mapping hardware even though I have iOS devices (ie the Studio One controller app) and plenty of hardware knobs.

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vitocorleone123 wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 3:29 pm Mouse

Too lazy to bother mapping hardware even though I have iOS devices (ie the Studio One controller app) and plenty of hardware knobs.
Some cotrollers map pretty much out of the box with supported DAWs. There are some that require manual mapping, though.

Ideally, you'd choose one that doesn't require this extra work.

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Mouse and key commands 99% of the time, occasionally when I remember to get out the Launchkey I might use the knobs for fader movements and the transport buttons, but thats mostly just to play instruments.

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I do use my Touch Block for start/stop/reset sometimes but it's a bit hit and miss, the spacebar is just as handy most of the time.
Tj Shredder wrote: Thu May 19, 2022 6:08 am Where do you place your ten fingers on a mouse to move ten faders in ten different directions? I guess you mean on a touch screen not a mouse…
I mean on either of the screens on my laptop. I don't actually do it, of course, but the option is most assuredly there.
First selecting and then moving is certainly not as quick and direct as just moving the faders…
Thatwill depend very much on where your faders are, physically, won't it? You'll either hav eto reach for them or reach for your keyboard or something else. It's like a Wacom tablet - it's in the way more than it's actually useful.
As long I am constructing in a DAW it doesn‘t matter, mixing live without faders or a touch screen is close to suicide…
"Live"? As in on stage, in front of an audience? That must be exciting for them.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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Always both (actually mouse + kb + knobs + faders + pads), except for my tinkering with the iPad.

Me personally, have never used and will never use a mouse live. Not that there’s anything wrong per se with doing so. Just doesn’t appeal at all.

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