[ToneLux]

There are several problems with the interface. I'll go through each one and tell you how I resolved them:

1 Moving the fader on the screen moves the fader in the DAW for level control.

This works well, but you have to come out of a PRE FADER output into the fader, as there will be double attenuation from moving both faders if you come out of the POST or DIRECT fader out. The only way out of Pro Tools is using a send and making it PRE, then snapping it to zero. You can also assign the first 32 faders as just faders and slide them off the screen.

2 Bank Shifting

Problem-This goes away, because once the audio is going though moving fader, you can't shift the faders, as the data from one fader will be controlling the audio of another...

Solution-You could have a bypass within the fader, or a trim pot that bypasses the audio so the fader was acting just like a controller, but then you would have to change the automation setups, so the static external trim fader would see the moving automaton level changes, then you would have to change it back when switching to the analog faders.


3 Tracking

Problem- Making sure the fader tracks the internal fader. Why is this important? because if you have a guitar coming out of a channel, and you use an internal send in post fade to send out to a delay, moving the outside fader will adjust the volume one way and the send to the effect will not track it. If you were using a summing setup, this would always be the problem.

Secondly, when trimming groups or drawing fader moves, or trimming a fader, the dB scale doesn't track, so when you move the fader down 10 dB on the screen, the actual level may be 6 or 15. If you don't care, then it will be fine, but any group moves will not always track and level errors within the group will occur.

Solution-You could use a lookup table in the controller's computer if you has access to the code, and alter the relationship so the fader analog track would jive with the internal fader levels of the DAW. BUT, I tried this and the main problem with it is that the HUI spec, which is the only one the outside world can use with Pro Tools, has only 512 steps from the top to the bottom of the fader. Depending on the fader's scale, you can as much as a 2 dB step between bits when the scale is stretched. I experienced this with the ALPs fader really bad and in several places, and not as much with the P&G, but enough to make it not worth it.

The only real solution is to have a custom fader made with a custom fader scale that matches the HUI scale. Tonelux did that with ShadowMix. We have a custom fader scale that tracks the HUI scale within .3 db. This solution works very well. Of course, having a custom taper made on a fader isn't cheap, either.

We are also selling them for about $625 per fader, which includes the midi controller, CPU and the faders/panels.