there is no affordable way to be completely mouse free when ITB. things like the digidesign icon are designed for this purpose and are aimed at high end comercial facilities. in the real world your likely going to have to use a mouse to at least open a pluggin. there are two products made that i know of that are meant to control plugins, the novation nocturn [
="http://us.novationmusic.com/midi-controllers/nocturn"]Nocturn | NovationMusic.com[/
], and the mackie c4 [
="http://www.mackie.com/products/c4/"]Mackie - Mackie Control - C4[/
] . i own the nocturn and for 100 bucks it's a good buy. i've got minor complaints, (slightly wobbly knobs, and no lcd scribble strips), but i would gladly buy another, or pay 3x as much as the the asking price for a 'bells and whistels version'. mackie also makes a control surface [
="http://www.mackie.com/products/mcupro/"]Mackie - Mackie Control Universal Pro[/
] . this will allow you to control the virtual mixer veiw in sonar w/ your hands. you would need 2 to get 16 faders. the mcu, then an expansion which is just the faders, ie, no transport, shortcut buttons ect.
your other option like boswell referenced is to use a digital mixer that has built in effects and perhaps motorised faders/daw control, and basically use the the daw as a tape machine. i use a mackie D8B sort of like this. some things you will find you like plug-insbetter, but you can use sort of a combination of both. so maybe on lead vox you use some heavy plugins, and on the high hat use the board eq/compression.
One more thing - what's a good reason for keeping signals digital after recording as opposed to analog mixing? I'm a bit lost here, sorry!
there's so many opinions on this so i'll try to be objective. one of the main reasons to 'keep a signal digital' is to not undergo an
unnecessary/undesired digital-to-analog conversions, or analog-to-digital conversions. with the thought being it would 'degrade' the signal, by perhaps introducing noise or other artifacts. whenever you take an analog signal (guitar/vox) and make it digital you turn an e;electrical impulse, into 1's and 0's (binary code). some people believe that the less math (1's and 0's) the computer has to deal w/ the better. it also depends alot on the quality of the ad/da converters. basically, i think most people would say you should have a reason to reconvert, whatever that reason is, is purely up to the recordists.
there are plenty of reasons to mix a digital signal thru an analog chain. be it tactile control, taking the load of the cpu by using analog gear (eq's, compression, reverbs). a subjectively improved sound is usually the goal, and i personally feel there is truth to this, although, i stick firmly by there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way. basically the consensus seems to be that you can achieve add a sort of fullness, or 'glue' to tracks by running them back thru analog gear. whether track by track, or in 'groups' or 'stems' like say a rythym section thru 2 channels, lead thru another, backups thru another 2 channels, ect.
if your happy w/ the sound quality your getting, i'd personally focus on sontrol surfaces, because i prefer hands on control of multiple faders, and for me it makes a much more enjoyable mixing experience. wheter a control surface, or a digital mixer, completely depends on what you want/need.
