More than 1 FD unit - Useful or confusing ?

Steinberg Hardware
#1

I love the FD unit. Can’t believe half the griping I read from people that don’t own one whilst researching these. Just buy one. They’re stupid good. I am almost instantly considering buying another 3… :blush:

That said, my question is this;

If I have a single unit, then it’s pretty obvious which slider is controlling which of the 4 highlighted channels on the mixer. However, if I have 4 units then pretty much my whole mixer display is going to be highlighted… whilst this is theoretically cool, does it simply become impossible to work out what slider is what ?

Anybody out there got more than one FD unit running ? Is it useful or just plain confusing ?

Discuss… :smiley:

#2

I use four units and would not consider less (I started with 8). If you have numerous tracks there is less banking involved. I would make one suggestion however which I find helps a lot: If you’re running at least two monitors, dedicate the mixer to the monitor on the side where the FDs are positioned. Furthermore, use folders and experiment with the viewing agents :wink:

#3

Hi BriHar,

You mention that you started with 8 … Steinberg state that you can have a maximum of 4 … can you really have 8?

#4

I have 2 FD units (8 faders) and have not maximized all of them yet at once. I do miss seeing the LED channel name above the fader as I had on my Houston. Makes for a lot of second guessing at what I’m actually looking at now. I find myself selecting the channel needing work using the mouse and using my Channel Controller instead of the FDs. I’m still very much in “re-learn” mode with the CMC units, but most likely will go down to just one FD at some point.

#5

Sorry, bit of a screwup there between units and faders - I mean’t I started with 8 Faders (i.e. 2 Units) then expanded to 16 Faders i.e. 4 units total :wink:

#6

I have four units but i find it awkward to use because you can’t really know just by looking at the faders to see which channelfader is going to move, i.e which is selected. Having to look at the monitor and actually put you fingers on the strip and possibly ruin a good mix is a bit ridiculous.

If the developers at Steinberg thought of making these more optimized for what they are supposed do and found a way to make the LED’s on the strip slightly visually different to the selected channel it would’ve been a totally different game… Now i havent use them since half a year because of forementioned reason… Instead i got an 27" Acer 10 point multi touch monitor which i found more convenient to work fast with…especially having the mixconsole enlarged having the faders hands on and more precise i don’t think i will be using the FD’s for controlling faders again. Multitouch support for the mixer would be a blast.

Just want to add, as my post might look a bit negative, the FD’s are really great and does the job really well but they could have been optimized for a more convenient workflow.

#7

I agree with you Lundin.

The 16 faders with no labels are very difficult to mix with in real terms. I even created Scrabble labels that I was to change on every project … but it’s very impractical.
cmc-banner.jpg
Even if they were different colours or something … and the mixer indicated the colours with more than just a tiny white line it would be an improvement.

I’m looking for a new solution myself.

#8

Lol! sweet idea with the scribblestrip’s If you’re looking for another solution, take a look at the ipad solution and the Neyrink V-control software with the new V-Window function… V-Window give you hands on access to all windows, plugin effects and instruments as well as multi touch in the mixer

http://www.neyrinck.com/v-control-pro-features

#9

I have my faders pretty much in line with the mixer (width etc. saved) on my leftmost monitor, generally I have no problem with orientation, but I suppose with a huge number of tracks…
This why I hoped that they might include an agent which would always show the tracks being controlled with midi faders (the white strip beneath proves that the software can track this).

#10

I just purchased an ipad Air and both the Liine Lemur and V-control apps… Both are using the mackie Control script but the V-control is very nice when sitting behind the drums and trying to record to a project… Not having to lift my ass off the throne is really great. V-Window is VERY nice… to directly being able to delete tracks and do other stuff you’d normally have to sit behind the workstation to do… some fiddly bits though to be perfect but it’s working really nice.

I hope Steinberg will develop even better integration with these units though because i see so much potential here that they haven’t utilized to it’s fullest yet.

Hell… an Austrian friend of mine reverseengineered 2 of the units (CH and TP) and made them work with Reaper… in 2 weeks he managed to pull together a full - 100% userconfigurable - implementation in C++ that worked as good or even better than that in Cubase… not any GUI config but the functionality were astonishing… Too bad Reapers API and overall look/feel still has a lot to wish for

#11

I have a CMC-CH & CMC-FD

I would like it if the 1s’t fader of the FD didn’t duplicate the CMC-CH…

#12

That’s why

#13

Go for 4 x FD while you still can get them.

#14

Yeah i’m gonna keep an eye out for some stock ends