kmetal, post: 426594, member: 37533 wrote: http://www.behringer.com/en/products/x-touch.aspx

Hey, all. My cousin is looking for a control surface for his rig. He had a digi command 8 which went with his old system. This looks pretty decent for the price. 3 year warranty, is reasonable, if it lasts the whole 3 years, he get his money's worth. Otherwise it would be an artist mix, so far. Still snooping, but this caught my eye with its price and feature set.

I use the Mackie mcus at the studio but they are overpriced at this point in time, for what they are, and I like them but wouldn't buy them at this point withi the newer alternatives being similar or cheaper.

I think Mackie controlers are not overpriced, they just work great which is not what you can say of all others available. I've tried a lot of them and they are the only ones I enjoyed...
You can get a used one for about 500$..

But hey that's just me ;)

Everyone I've ever talked to who used a Mackie controller has said that they like them - the main reason being that they work.

Which is saying something, because you definitely can't say the same thing about a good number of Mackie's audio consoles. LOL

I don't know when or why, but mackie decided to offer affordable products and you get what you pay for with them. But call them happy mistakes if you want, they have some gems in their lines ; Some of their powered speaker, the HR studio monitors and the MCU are of those I found to be their best products ;)

I'm with the others. And as an owner of an MCU pro an extender pro and a C4 pro, combined awesomeness. However just a newer MCU pro with the alps faders, amazing. And they do just work.

My experience w the mcu s has been a bit different. I like mackie I have the hr8 mk2. We have 42ch worth and they have worked, but not without dead faders and shaky power connectors and their own set of buggy things. The pluggin controller is good in theory. So yeah I'll say 'it works' most of the time.

Now. The real complaints I have and why it's not worth it's asking price to me.
It's pan pot readout is useless for anything but intermediates marks between lcr.
It uses midi protocol which is not state of the art for control surface communications and midi is on the horizon
It doesn't have a strong sturdy feel to the transport and faders themselves.
There is a distracting latency on pause mute ect, which is mmc code (? Ugh would have to check my book, I should know that one)

Its better than nothing but that's about it. And when its in the same price range (new) as some of the others, I think it's not the best value overall, especially considering it's a pt/Apollo system.

Oddly the command 8 was the best feeling standalone controller I've used so far. Go figure, the only price they made that nobody talks about, and it was their best imo.

I don't mean to bash the mcu it is what it is, I just don't see it as a good investment for the next 5-10 yrs, something more refined with an id staffed protocol I think would be better. Unfortunately like I've been saying for a while, there aren't a lot of options?

Any other ideas? The ssl offering didn't get great reviews in Sos and the preamps wouldn't be my first choice, so not a selling point for my cousins rig.

I wish uad made a control surface that controlled their software mixer and plugins, in addition to daw control. If your gonna get locked in it may as well at least be a complete system.

This is a rough one.