Just thought I’d weigh in with some good news, at least to me.
I’m running N6.5.30 here on Win 7 64 and a pair of Artist Mix. Working very well. Smooth and nearly trouble free. On the occasion when I lose connect (mostly when loading a new title, but not often) I just select the Restart All Eucon Applications option from the Eucon Icon in the Taskbar (right click) and within about 5 seconds everything is happy. No crash on exit here.
After reading all the negative Eucon posts, I expected some grief, but I picked these up anyway. I have to say I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I’m not looking for all manner of controller to replace the mouse and keyboard. Touchscreen will leave those dedicated physical controller functions in the dust soon, IMO. Just tactile slider and knob for fader and pan primarily. These are working very well in that capacity and the 10 character display gives you enough info to be useful if you name tracks with a thoughtful system.
Speaking of which, if you’re a PC user with a Win 8 touchscreen laptop, you probably already can see where touchscreen will take us soon, once these apps upgrade their API and GUI for multitouch. I think maybe Mac users will be slower to realize what’s coming in that area since Apple has not pursued touch on laptops (yet). But once I got a touchscreen laptop and played with Nuendo on it, even though I don’t use a laptop for production, it became obvious that touchscreen will change the way we work on our DAWs within the next year or two. Slate Raven is just the beginning prototype.
I suspect Avid and Steinberg may be slower to adapt their DAWs to touchscreen, due to their vested financial interest in selling their hardware controllers, for obvious reasons. Avid/Euphonix and Yamaha/Nuage. But the pressure from many other DAW developers, who will begin to implement multitouch awareness because they have no hardware controller infrastructure, will force SB/Avid to match or lose out.
In this sense, Apple is behind the curve, oddly. Not sure why. For what we do with a computer, multipoint touchscreen is inevitable.
Well, didn’t this turn into my little techo-philosophical soapbox? Guess I’m feeling chatty! Kinda dead in here. Maybe I was bored?