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Originally Posted by Nowak  Geez, I can't wait to check out the Tango. |
Well - if your location listing is right, you're in Sydney, which would put you in "SmartAV Central".
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Originally Posted by Nowak I need to ditch the ProControl before I can dive in.. |
You'd need to ditch Pro Tools too - unless you're willing to put up with plain-jane HUI emulation. Digi is all about selling their hardware, so they don't publish an API/SDK that goes "deep" into the inner working of the app like Steinberg, Emapple, Cakewalk and many of the other DAW software vendors.
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Originally Posted by Nowak How do the controls feel? do they feel they're actually doing anything? alot of the controllers feel like toys because the controls don't feel like they're actually "connected" to anything, I'd love to feel a little tension in the faders rather than them just scraping up and down like alot of the controllers out there. |
I know what you mean. One of the things I really liked about my TASCAM FW-1884 was the smooth, resistive feel of the faders, something that I consider to be critical to the real value of a controller. The FW's encoders and knobs were a bit light to the touch, though. It's one of the main reasons I was given pause when I demo'd the Euphonix MC Mix, the faders and knobs of their "Artist" series didn't give me a tremendous amount of confidence as to their long-term durability.
The Tango has great-feeling faders - very much in the mold of high end large format consoles. When the SmartAV rep in the US told me over the phone that it's as solid as anything SSL ever built (he rep'd for them for 20 years or so) I was a bit dubious - but two minutes after I got the console out of the box, I was a believer. The sliders don't have one bit of "play" - no unnecessary shift from side to side or up and down. Likewise there's no stiffness, drag, or any other kind of variability in the fader throw - just smooth travel end to end (and consistency from fader to fader). The best was I could describe it would be "silky" or maybe "oily" - very, very nice.
The encoders are similarly appointed. Aside from having resistance in that "goldilocks zone" (not too light, not too stiff - just right) the push-button detents have an authoritative "click" that has enough back pressure to make sure you don't activate it by accident, and gives you solid feedback that you've actuated the button portion of the control. The push buttons across the surface are similarly consistent, a tiny bit lighter to the touch than the rotary encoders, but still an authoritative "click". At the outset I didn't quite *get* the touch points for solo and "inject" (the latter is used to map a DAW mixer channel to one of the physical controller channels, among many other functions), but it didn't take long to get a grasp of the ergonomics behind that layout. It's kind of mind-blowing how quickly and easily you can move through a project - and the feel of the controls is so immediate that it feels like a natural extension to the DAW application.
As you can see - I can go on and on about this console. But I've got to get on with the morning routine (and the rest of the day). As I dig into the Tango, I become more and more enthusiastic about it - which hasn't happened in a long time.