Disable CC121 motorized fader

Cubase
1

I am really enjoying the CC121 control surface, except for one thing: I would love to have the option to disable the motorized fader. This is particularly needed when tracks have a lot of ramp up/ramp down volume automation, and the noise that the fader makes is really distracting when trying to do a mix.

I know I can just pull the power cord, but I really don’t want to be plugging things in and out every couple of minutes as I move through my mixing workflow. That’ll just eventually wear out the cord/plug.

2

I don’t think there’s a built-in or elegant way to do it, but if you’re a tinkerer, an inline spst switch on the adapter cord would do the job.

3

Something Like this: (the image is a link)
image

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4

Ah, thank you! It’s a bit clunky, but better than ripping out the power cord every couple of minutes :slight_smile: Really hoping that Steinberg dusts off that driver and enables this functionality. I bet I’m not the only person who would be very happy. Until then, an inline power switch it is.

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5

Great Hack Idea!

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6

That’s a cool way to do it. I’d probably just go about the cheap and fast way, buy a power strip just for the CC121 power supply. Flip the switch as needed… :slight_smile:

7

If you connect the CC121 via USB but do not connect the power supply, I believe it will get enough bus power to operate, but not enough for the motorised fader to work? I seem to remember mine behaving like that. Maybe not healthy. Worth a try?

8

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus here on how to do this. Can’t really speak to how “healthy” this is for the machine, but I guess if the power plug just cuts power to the fader, and the rest of the circuit is bus powered, that should be OK.

9

This is actually outlined in the manual, so it’s ‘official’

no worry needed,

10

There are many ways the CC121 could be improved via software but, for some reason, Yamaha/Steinberg are not interested.

11

Great, thanks!

12

Perhaps they’re investing in a next generation control surface instead. That would be a nice surprise!

13

They’ve been "investing’ for a while. The CC121 hasn’t had a firmware update in 10 years, and it still doesn’t even do what’s shown in the marketing images led-button-wise.

14

As @steve said. Been using it this way for year’s

If using alongside an alt control surfaces e.g. UF8, Xtouch etc, it’s a good idea to swap out the CC121 fader knob for a non capacitive one to avoid any accidental selected channel fader changes.

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15

Got myself an inline switch, and it works like a charm! Thanks again to everybody for their insightful and useful feedback!

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16

I know this has been solved, but really the way to get around this without spending money is to just set automation globally to “trim” which will put all tracks that follow global automation to that mode.

The fader then jumps to the middle position and won’t move. Can be assigned to a key command.

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17

Ah, that’s a clever solution as well - thanks for sharing!

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