Nuage Master Control with Eucon

Anybody here tried using a Nuage Master Control unit with an Avid S3/S1 or Artist Series Mixers? Would there be any conflicts. If not, that seems like it MIGHT be affordable way to get a “Little Nuage” system.

Any thoughts?

I don’t have the experience, but intuitively; wouldn’t it be better to do the opposite and get the Nuage fader unit and the Avid Dock instead? Just seeing that there are problems with faders following show/hide etc…

That absolutely will not work. The Dock is NOTHING without the tablet that sits within it. And what’s on that tablet? AVID CONTROL APP. The Dock is to that app what Nuage is to Nuendo. If the app worked with Nuendo, I’d have 4 S1’s and a Dock right now. But the Avid Control app causes Nuendo to crash if your track count goes to 40. The fact that that app works so poorly with Nuendo has cut off every path to an all Avid Hardware system. I can’t blend it with my Artist Series hardware. I can’t move forward with the S1 hardware. I can’t blend between the two because the S1/Dock paradigm is not backwards compatible.

But I MIGHT have a workable shot with Nuage brains to do all of the heavy lifting and some S1’s to give me the tactile fader experience I’m looking for, if there weren’t any conflicts between the 2 control protocols. Nuendo listens to Nuage and the faders listen to Nuendo.

Ok, but you’ve mentioned many times the problems with show/hide so I don’t really see how having the Nuage master section helps that, maybe I missed it. And so to me it seems it would make more sense to focus on the 16 fader unit instead.

What are you currently using the Dock for anyway / what functionality is it that you want from the Nuage master?

I DON’T have a Dock. Again, the Dock REQUIRES the app to work at all and the app doesn’t work with Nuendo. I’m using the Euphonix (branded) MC Control with two Euphonix Mix.

As to what I’m looking for from Nuage, that’s easy. IMMEDIATE RESPONSE AND CONTROL. The thing that makes me drool over that hardware is the OBVIOUS CONTROL AND FEEDBACK! You hit a button and the function you want is right there ready to go. You do that on the MC Control’s touchscreen and, if you’re lucky, you’ll just have to hit the button again because the touch screen is so lousy. I said “IF you’re lucky” because as often as not, your button push will select a completely different function altogether! Ex: I’m on the Tracks Page. I push the square to go to the Soft Keys Page. Instead of going to that page, the button picks the track closest to the Soft Keys Page button. :unamused: This is such a PITA, that I just started using a stylus to trigger the Soft Keys Page right at the star of a session and I never even bother to use the tracks page! :angry:

THAT would’ve been one of the things I had hoped to restore by using the App. I could have a functioning tracks page. But THAT page is the very page that causes the crash. You can use ANY OTHER PAGE with no ill effect. How’s that for irony? My work around was to write a macro that would let me use the jog wheel on the Transport to scroll up and down the tracks. So, right out of the gate, Nuage would be better, just by allowing me INSTANT access to the tracks I was looking for.

Now multiply that one little instance by a thousand more similar things and you can see how the Master Control Unit would be a big time saver.

I guess what I was thinking was that it might be hard to get around the show/hide/focus/select/whatever issues there are with the Eucon fader devices, maybe even impossible (?), and if that’s the case I was just wondering if perhaps it wouldn’t be better to get the fader unit instead of the master unit, since you’re spending a decent chunk of money.

Of course that leaves the ‘master’ functionality and if the Dock/Tablet/Software is out and you can’t buy the master unit as well then I was wondering what master functionality you actually use currently with a hardware unit.

In my case the main workflows are editing, premixing, mixing/render. And when I edit I use the trackball and keyboard exclusively. During premix I still stick to those two plus faders. The EQ-ing etc is dialed in using the good old trackball. And then for later stages it’s just all faders and transport which I trigger from the keyboard.

So in my case if I were to spend on one thing and not the other I’d probably spend on faders if I needed to do things like hide them and the Avid wouldn’t follow, and then make up for that by programming key commands, macros etc in Nuendo and on a programmable keyboard. Hardly ideal, but I’d certainly consider that solution.

Really I was just wondering what master-unit features you end up using a lot from the hardware controller. Curious about your workflow was all.

PS: I understand that you do music more so than other post work whereas for me it’s the exact opposite, so the way we work is probably fairly different.

That show/hide/focus/select/whatever issue is, apparently throughout the entire Avid hardware line. Even S6, Sys 5, S4 users are totally reliant upon the “Layouts” function to work around this simple omision. I can’t understand why anyone would pay up into the hundred thousand dollar range for a device that wouldn’t do that. Of course, it you’re using Pro Tools, then the problem doesn’t exist. The hardware and the DAW match perfectly move for move.

Before the Dock, The MC Control was the Master Hardware version.


For years, every upgrade would go directly to the hardware. When they came up with PT Control, those of us with MC’s expected to be able to just load it directly into the hardware, like any other update/upgrade. But Avid built it specifically for the Dock, which was slated to replace the MC Control. Pretty much everything that you can do on the Dock you were already doing on the MC Control. The big difference is the USABLE touch screen, particularly where track selection is concerned. On the MC PRO, the track page had a vertical ribbon, that allowed you to quickly scroll to the selected track. The Artist Series version had no such ribbon. Instead you got UP/DN arrows that advanced your track selection ONE ROW AT A TIME. Combine that with a poor insensitive touch screen and it was virtually useless.

Once you get off the tracks page, all the other functions (Soft Keys, Layouts, Surround Control, etc) were quite handy. ALL OF THE MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS to the MC Control are directly related to that Tracks Page. You can scroll on the app just like you can on your phone. You can load layouts directly from that page, instead of having to go into the settings to build a layout. You can Spill tracks from the app. They added Control/Alt Functions to the hardware and lots more. So that’s the appeal. BUT IT ONLY WORKS ON PRO TOOLS. The rest of us, on Artist Series hardware, are shut out from those feature improvements. I have seen a video where you could spill VCAs on an S3. I don’t know if that guy was using the app to facilitate that function or not.

Bottom line to your question. The Dock is the new version of the MC Control.

It’s pretty much the same in music production. I use the trackball and a bunch of 1 button shortcuts on my X-Keys. These same features are also on the MC Control. But, again, with that insensitive touch screen, you might have to hit the same “button” several time to get it to actually engage. Also there’s the menu issue that would require you to go back and forth between the Mixer page, Edit page, Layout page etc. So I use the X-Keys for that dedicated purpose which frees up the MC for other pages not required as much. In the Nuage Master all of those functions are in one place with no menu paging required. Everything but the trackball is there. So all of my editing,EQ, Dynamics and automation setups can be performed right there.

I don’t need faders until the mixing phase and even then, I pretty much limit that to “rouging in” the settings to get start and end points. Then I program the exact numerical settings by hand. This is not only faster for me, but it makes the really cheap and poorly built faders functional. I miss working on a real desk. If I were working on a full Nuage setup and got used to it, like when I worked exclusively on my desk, I’m sure I be using them a lot more. But as I only using them on the Artist Mix’s in the loosest possible way. The Nuage Master made more sense to choose between the 2. Plus, it’s smaller and I don’t need another PC monitor for it. You will note that in all the ads for Nuage, the project window is always over top of the Master unit. You HAVE TO HAVE THE MONITORS for the fader units in order to know what you’re doing.

So, anyway, our workflows are not that different. That’s just my logic for trying to work out some kind of a less expensive work-around. Theoretically, that combination should work. But, I’m certainly not even going to consider risking that kind of cash without the guarantee that would.