Strange Tales - musings of a sound monkey

I’m having a truly miserable time with Mackie DAW control surfaces. my long serving MCU is now back in for repair yet again and mackie seem utterly incapable of finding the EPROM in china that they need to repair it quickly (actually they HAVE the chips, they’ve just lost the security codes, genius!). so… that leaves me with a problem, the new Mackie MCU is now financially non-viable as a replacement at well over £1300; same with the undeniably lovely but limited life Euphonix system (OLED display reckoned to last only 2-3yrs). the cheaper alternatives (ProjectMix & Digi-series) just don’t offer comprehensive enough control for Digital Performer. And the AlphaTrack seems to be having delivery problems at the mo.
but… a while ago I tried a couple of transport/fader wireless controllers that use MidiBridge via the iPhone and was surprised how well they worked. one of the AC7 is now working really well with good DP support via MCU emulation. it’s really fast and tracks nicely. bit tricky to set-up but ok. however, Saitara Software have just released AC7Pro for the iPad for about £10 and it’s fantastic. full transport, unlimited faders in banks of 8, solo/mute/arm controls plus lots of useful single button controls etc. all for a tenner with free bridging software. the iPad was released in the UK this week and even the 32Gb version is still less than £500. which is arguably a lot for what many consider an overgrown V-Tech My Little Notebook, but this myopically challenged souls just don’t get the real benefit. i use my iPhone an insane amount everyday in my work, but less than 10% as a phone apx. due to being a platform for 3rd party apps, I have a raft of really useful audio tools (from delay calcs, metronomes, time calcs, to track identifiers) that I use all the time. none of these came with the iPhone, nor was its usefulness on launch measured by what it was likely to be used for. and its likely to be the same story with the iPad. those battering it, are those who don’t have a legion of ideas about what it could be used for, exploiting its multi-touch capability brilliantly. fortunately, many developers have and Saitara have just run with it and produced the insanely good AC7Pro. so, with the iPad running at £500, and AC7 at s tenner this is fully functioned daw controller rivalling or bettering the Mackie or Euphonix for function and design. £510 vs £1300 for 8 mackie channels, £800 for every 8channels after that, the iPad makes fantastic financial sense! so…………