Hi all,

Looking to swap out my APC40 mk2 for a control surface with touch sensitive motorized faders. They're all I care about in the entire world. I don't care about clip launching, penguins etc.
Budget: £200-£450.

Presonus Faderport 8 seems great, but I'm skeptical about the Mackie Control Universal integration... read somewhere they introduced beta support for Live a while ago but... there's F-all about Ableton compatibility that isn't from dated forum posts circa 2008.

Icon Qcon XS from NAMM 2017 seems appealing depending on price, but from reviews the faders on the Faderport seem of better quality, and I prefer the LCD scribble strips way better.

Behringer X-touch / X-touch compact seems another strong contender, but again, the integration seems a very murky area.

Does anyone have any experience with any of these or similar?

I'm not interested in Behringer BCF2000 - fader noise and build quality seems to be a bit of a downer from what I've heard.

Many thanks!

 

i just bought this:

it's pretty awesome.

 

Asparion D400?

https://www.asparion.de/en/electronics/d400.html

Looks good but a bit over your budget i think

 

Behringer MOTÖR looks seriously decent, good purchase!

I'm overflowing with pads, rotary encoders and keys, and for the price of the 49, 60mm faders just doesn't cut it for me. Cheers for the input though realitybytez.

Asparion D400 is pretty close to the mark, but you're right Spirit - the D400F requires the D400T to function so £899 is too much. Much appreciated though!

Such a shortage of Ableton motorized fader control surface users on this forum, honestly you'd think it was a niche topic or something! :P

 

http://iconproaudio.com/product/platform-m/

 

Do you have any experience with it yourself? I have read a fair number of reviews that say the build quality is sub par, e.g. faders having too much adjacent jiggle, being noisy etc.

And with a modular LCD for another ~£124...

I'd really like to like this controller!

Otherwise I'm holding out for anyone with a Faderport 8 to get back to me re:Ableton integration, or failing that an X-touch! Anyone?

 

I have a mackie control universal that works with ableton with no problems. I can control everything, plugin parameters and all. No problems or workarounds here. using the MCU protocol. It didnt come with the fancy overlay and I had to print my own (found here http://freelancesoundlabs.com/images/ArticleImages/Hardware/mcupro_ableton_overlay.png ), and tape it to the unit but hey it works. You can get fancy and print it on magnetic backed paper and not use tape too

 

Last edited: Feb 28, 2017

I worked on Ableton scripts, python, controllers and such for years, for my personal usage

Faderport (being single or 8 version) use Mackie Control in Ableton
Behringer X-touch use Mackie Control in Ableton
Behringer BCF2000 use Mackie Control in Ableton
Icon Platform-M use Mackie Control in Ableton
...
You see what i mean ?

You can watch ANY video on Youtube about their setting in Ableton, you will see they use the SAME exact Mackie Control setting.
As far as Ableton integration, they will work THE SAME WAY, using the same protocol.

So now, you are back to quality, functions, buttons and such.

Mackie Control emulation is a no-brainer in Ableton and most DAW : it works as expected.
It even works in FL Studio

 

The only problem Ive ever had was in reaper v4 and had to use Mackie Control Klinke v0.8 as a workaround. But they fixed it in ver 5 and it works right out the box as expected

 

I am going to get one soon. In the mean time, watch this:

 

Not motorised but pretty awesome: just hover the mouse over ANY control and twist the nob: http://nobcontrol.com