I admit that I have a bit of a love hate relationship with control surfaces. The love part is usually directed at the faders and transport controls, which require almost no brain power to master and which ALWAYS make life easier. The "not love" (hate is such an ugly word) comes when I start using knobs, the functions of which change more often than Lindsay Lohan's hair color. Half the time, I never know what the hell they're supposed to be doing, and so I end up using the mouse instead.
Enter the Euphonix MC Control; instead of using a small display with cryptic information about every knob, it has a touch screen that actually spells out words. I gave it a brief spin with Logic Pro, and got the hang of things pretty easily. In addition to making common tasks like mixing and transport easier, the soft buttons let you access functions that would normally take some serious menu wading—and also simplifies some tasks that have always been annoying in Logic. For example, you can see all the available tools and choose one with a button push, instead of having to use the mouse/escape key combination. Even better, you can modify the behavior of the shuttle wheel to do things like move—or adjust the length of—the auto punch area, something that is always a bit of a pain using a mouse. Operations that require a custom key-command setting are also available via a clearly-labeled button. One of my favorites is "pick up clock," which moves the selected material to the current playhead location, sort of a poor-man's spot function that's buried in Logic's Key commands; with MC control, it's right there in front of your face.
I'm still learning my way around; I've figured out how to open menus, but have not discovered how to "enter" or "cancel" a command. Maybe you need the mouse/keyboard for those. Or maybe I should open the instructions file. But that fact that i got this far without it is a great sign.
More to come, along with Cubase (version 5 is now supported), DP, and Pro Tools.
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