Pour la petite histoire …
I (and a handfull of other people) had a first meeting with the Yamaha engineers in a hotel room during AES Vienna in 2007.
They had all kind of sections and parts cut out of carton, and they asked everybody to assemble, mockup and “specify” their ideal controller. The Yamaha lead engineer on the job was the man who designed the O2R.
Fredo
2007 ?! That explains why it is so nicely designed…
Congrats for having participated to it !
For those interested I am continue using Mackie Control with two extensions since 2004. No fault. For me this is the controler correctly priced.
For less than $5000 you have 24 motorized faders, transport, plugin controls and compatibility between Nuendo, Cubase, ProTools and Vegas.
Grundman, I think that’s a great point, and exactly the problem Yamaha / Steinberg would face. How can they compete with that.
In addition, for anyone who only wants 8 faders there’s now the Behringer that will be cheaper (probably slightly less good quality), and the Icon Qcon Gen 2 which will also have extenders (ugly, but same price or cheaper than Mackie). All of those have the same protocol / functionality.
So how can they compete?
The only thing I don’t like with all controllers is that they have a large gap between groups of 8 faders. That’s why I liked the way the 12-fader WK controller was laid out. 12-faders laid out right next to each other, instead of having groups of 8. I typically never have a set of tracks larger than 12 channels, but I could have more than 8. For music it could be a drum kit, where with a more extensive micing you could end up with more than 8 mics. Kick front/back, Snare top/bottom, 3 toms, HiHat, 2 Overheads - 10 channels…
Lydiot and Grundman, I take it that you never saw or try a nuage setup neither an Euphonix (now Avid) Mc (artist) serie controller.
Nuage is much, much more advanced in integration with Nuendo than Mackie control PROTOCOL. So is the Eucon protocol.
Nuage comes in a bank of 16 faders while the Artist series comes in bank of 8 with a small gap beetween packs of 8 faders on both. Nuage talks directly to Nuendo using the Steinberg controller sdk. Mackie control is limited to… A protocol ! 
The Eucon protocol is more advanced than Mackie control as well.
While Nuage is expensive, it is a fabulous controller !
I agree we need something middle ground price wise. I personally think it is feasible to have a good Yamaha developped control surface cheaper than what Nuage costs.
But dismissing something one can’t afford is cheap and counterproductive.
Nuage and Mackie control are apple and coconuts.
Dude, where did I dismiss Nuage?
I totally agree that it is, or seems to me to be, an awesome controller. I fully trust the opinions of the users of it.
I’m totally agree with Lydiot. We are not comparing Nuage with Mackie Control. We are talking about a mid-price and professional MIDI controllers. Like the subject of this thread: Pro Tools Dock. For me it is more adecuate Mackie Control for my kind of work with Nuendo.
Hi,
Nuage is probably the best for buck you can buy to control Nuendo.
The S3 works very good also. And the S3 dock with iPad for sure will work. Steinberg are really onto the Eucon still.
S6 works GREAT, but you for sure have to be sure you need it. Budget is huge. If you must have a great controller that controls a lot of DAWs, then S6 or S3 is the choice.
If you are only Nuendo, then Nuage.
Pål
Sure, but personally I’d like every opportunity to stay away from Avid (let alone the ethical & moral considerations of buying from a company like that); Nuage is indeed gorgeous and up to the standard I’ve seen from Yamaha consoles more broadly for many years now. However, is way too upmarket for me (and many of us I suspect) in the ‘home producer’ work room; on the corporate side, sure.
Again: (say) an 8 or 16 fader /banking and transport set up, v-knobs etc are now de rigueur; perhaps throw in an iPad dock for channel focus. Yamaha could nail this if they wanted, and I suspect a substantial 21st century independent /home studio market if priced reasonably (eg: the lesson from SSL Nucleus). ~USD$5k? From personal experience with a number of commercial systems: I would totally want to avoid any EN protocol; go USB 3.0, more than enough power and speed there; friction-free set-up one would hope. I would also avoid ‘all in ones’ eg: mic press, monitor sections etc. Just a great surface. Damn shame the TASCAM US-2400 went away …
Seems to me odd that there is such an enormous gap in the product range between Steinberg IO (small muso things) then the quantum leap to Nuage and/or other digital consoles.
My 2 cents anyways. Peace. Another Xmas wish.
There might be something coming…
Might there? I asked point blank at AES and I got the very distinct impression that the Yamaha guy there knew absolutely nothing about something new.
I see the tags “legacy”, “throwback” and “prototype”. When and where is that image from?
Never mind, I found it.
Guillermino posted this on gearslutz :
Hello all,
If you have a closer look you will see it has the old Steinberg logo in it. It is a 15 year old picture of a prototype that we found while cleaning up the basement, so we decided to digitalise it and share it with you.Best regards,
GN
Guillermo Navarrete, Product Specialist
Steinberg
Hamburg, Germany
Check out Steinberg on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook!
It’s actually an old dropped project…
Which explains the tags.
So, seems to me nothing is coming any time soon.
From what I know - and I most certainly do not know everything that is going on- there are no plans for another controller than Nuage.
Fredo
I’ve sold my MC for years and work with mouse again.
For me, there are only two ways. Either Nuage, to have the full(!) control over the DAW or my mouse. Between is only a compromise, like MC. Nuage is to expensive for me (I’m not a pro), so there only remains my mouse …
Well, I’m mostly interested in accessing fader rides. With a mouse I can control exactly one fader at a time, and that’s not particularly convenient many times. In addition to that I like to be able to layout faders in such a way as to have them be “instantly” recognizable. So I know that (in Pro Tools) layout X has my VCAs next to each other, or groups/auxes, or whatever. So I always know that when I grab a fader I know exactly what it does. With mousing around I get one fader at a time, and if the visual representation changes on screen I have to find that fader as well.
So that’s why even a “cheap” controller giving me 8 faders is a benefit over zero faders. And I don’t care about transport (spacebar/num. pad) or panning. All of that I can do with a mouse and keyboard, but not fades (as described).
So to me there’s great value in the Artist Mix as well as the various Mackie controllers. For those wanting fader control primarily as well as a small footprint they’re great.
I should add that a lot that “needs” to be done was possible before, before they messed up window focus and key commands. A “cheap” programmable keyboard would get you quite far. Now it’s mostly a hassle. Disappointing.
What I need is a good wheel to control transport, trim, crop, move… MC transport is the best I’ve found but Eucon protocol is not smart for me. So I’d like something like Pro Tools Dock but made by Steinberg, a developed Houston maybe.
Fader control is easy to get by MCU, Behringer… they’re pretty and work fine.
I’m working actually with a Yamaha DM2000 as fader control (and many other features such EQ control, sends, cues…) and a Contour Shuttle Pro 2, but a better wheel would be nice for me.
