I was an early adopter of Dtouch for Nuendo and found it ultimately wasn’t working for my workflow so I put away the touch screen altogether, using just the mouse. At the time I was trying to use the touch screen for everything.
I am now trying out Dtouch version 2 and love it. I am using it as a replacement for the Mackie controls and I have now removed my Mackie Controls (except for one extender to make use of Dfader mode). I think the trick is to use two screens. I have a main screen for the project window, vertical, and the touch screen for the mixer, horizontal, with Dtouch. This seems to be a great combination and the best of both worlds.
Totally agree. Version 1 just wasn’t ready for primetime. Version 2 is great. Dfader is a really cool addition and comes in very handy for fine-tuning plug-in automation moves especially.
If you have a touch screen and and have not auditioned the trial version of Dtouch V2, I would highly recommend you do so. Honestly, the multi-touch mixer faders feel great even being touch screen and the touch scroll bar is a massive Improvement over scrolling left and right on the built-in mixers. Doing fader automation on the Dtouch is faster and more intuitive than doing it on the built-in Nuendo mixer.
Steinberg should consider licensing or buying that software and fully incorporating it
Yep, Dtouch is great.
Overlayed panner is awesome.
But with touch screen when I crab a knob on eq or some other controller, I have to move my finger slightly when tapping it or I’ll ger a small pop up that says something about cc commands or something.
But, basic audio editing isn’t very good with touch screens. Finger isn’t “sharp” enough for it.
Fader rides are and other automation stuff. And I have so many KC set up as buttons. Wonderful stuff.
I’m using the Dell 27 inch and it is perfect. The touch response to the Dtouch faders is instantaneous. I can swipe my finger across any number of mute or solo buttons and have everything work like it would on a hardware console. Better actually. Also, you can enable offset mode on the on-screen faders. This means that anywhere you touch the entire fader track from top to bottom, the fader will stay at its current position but begin to immediately respond to your finger movement. Basically, you don’t have to touch the imitation fader cap itself but anywhere on that track to automate in exactly the same way as if you had been real specific about pressing the fader cap itself. Sounds like no big deal but it’s brilliant. You can fly!
Audio editing is pointless and there are many things that simply work better with a key command or a mouse. But with the preset macros you can drag and arrange as you see fit and a number of other features including Dfader I think it’s worth the money.
I’m telling you that for riding fader Automation and scrolling left and right on the mixer it is night and day better than the built-in Steinberg mixers. Keep in mind that I have both Faderport single fader and an 8 bank of Artist Miix and I still feel this way about the Dtouch mixer.
Thanks for the info. I have a single Faderport and a Behringer X-Touch One. I work post, so I’m doing automation rides all day long and I’m constantly scrolling the Pro Tools mixer. I just switched to Nuendo recently and have been looking at touch screens.
Seriously if you are scrolling the mixture constantly you will not believe the difference. Just get the trial version and you’ll see what I mean. Probably worth the price of the whole thing if you work big projects and live in the mixer. Moving sideways in the mixer is like five times faster and more efficient. And the faders feel great on touch screen with obviously way more clarity that a fighter pack in terms of labeling.
Dang, I sound like a Salesman but I’m not. You can also configure the buttons differently in the Dtouch mixer including adding buttons like “Snap to zero”.
Dtouch faders work very smoothly and are very responsive. But to tweak plug ins is slightly different.
In those you use normal plug in windows and they react to start of the finger move with a small delay and ramp. No big issue tho. Once moving it is very smooth. Except the channel editors Eq. It is stuttering for some reason.
And to pan to video is soooo nice with overlayed panner <3
I agree that editing is too cumbersome on a touch screen which is why I have 2 monitors. I’m using a PQ Labs overlay on a 43" monitor laid horizontally in front of me like a console. I have a layer of tempered glass on the screen but I find it isn’t thick enough and the infra red PQ Labs sensors read my fingers before I touch the glass. I’m thinking of an extra layer of glass on top to fix it though I am getting used to it as is.
Did someone tried Slate Media Technology Raven MTi 2 or Raven MTX ?
How does it compare to Dtouch ?
Will those companies be able to provide long term support ?
The biggest problems with any control surface, hardware or software, is the long term support. Many control surfaces did not success here, or even disappeared from the market without source code available.
When support is broken, then it’s a big problem. No more updates means for sure compatibility problems with future DAW updates.
Something similar should be included inside Nuendo 11
Haven’t tried Raven. But is a great deal more expensive I believe.
Support has been just great with Dtouch.
With any controller the future is not ”safe”. History has showed this. But as Dtouch is relatively cheap it is not that big problem. And, if the sw goes out you can still use your touchscreens.
Devil Technologies are developing atm an unit with real faders and few knobs to work in full sync and alignement with Dtouch. So with that you end up with real fader together with touchscreen enviroment. The new unit is planned to be narrow enough to nicely fit in front of your touchscreen…
Raven is more expensive mainly because it does include the touchscreen monitor i think.
Anyway this is an interesting technology, because :
it’s really lower cost compared to hardware control surfaces
it’s fully reconfigurable
The bad news is that the faders do not seem as responsive as high end hardware control surfaces, there is a time lag we can see on demo videos.
The ideal control surface with actual technologies is probably a mix between touchscreens, hardware knobs / faders, keyboard and mouse.
A single 27" touchscreen seems small for DAW control. At least two of them seems necessary for most works. 32" or 46" monitors seems better for this use, to better replace hardware mixing consoles, specially if there is no hardware fader module completing the setup. Raven MTX is using 46" monitors.
I have no time lag. None. Every bit as usable as my Artist Mix and actually faster since I have all the information and labeling right in front of me as I’m moving the faders.
If there is lag it’s somewhere else in the system. Or maybe in the settings. I can mix quicker and more accurately on these touchscreen faders that on the artist mix sitting immediately to the right of the touch screen. Especially scrolling left and right to get to where I want to go. The bigger the session the more difference in being faster on the touch-screen faders.
Quick note. I started producing albums for record labels before automation existed. No I’m not that old, I started really young. But I’ve used every . automation system that exists on a recording console. I mean a real recording console like SSL, Neve flying faders, Euphonics S5, API, Etc
I only say that as a reference that when I’m happy with these touchscreen faders even I’m surprised. I think maybe people are having less fun because of some sort of lag or issue in the display itself or somewhere in their system. You cannot get more instantaneous than these things feel on my computer even when grabbing several at once.
I’m not having any lack either.
What comes to monitors and how many to use I currently have only one touch screen. The other is normal for video playback, metering, mediabay etc.
I am really wondering if I should by a second 19”. That would have most of the buttons in different ”layers”.
If the faderbank I wrote about will be priced ok, I’ll most definately will consider buying it…
