Quote:
Originally Posted by philbone  The Tango is capable of controlling any software that allows control through an external protocol. Having said that, there is no support for Sonar and may other possible softwares, but as soon as the mapping software is written it will be possible.
The beauty of this device is that it is a constantly evolving and growing controller that can continue to grow purely through software updates!
Phil |
The beauty... not so sure. Software always has bugs, and this Tango thing seems pretty complex not to have any bugs. A device that's pure MIDI is future proof, but a device that requires drivers and updates is not. If support is dropped, and it will be dropped because nothing lasts forever, should a new DAW come out it probably won't work with it and then all that's left is a pretty piece of hardware.
Is the master fader on the back of the unit? It seems to me that all DAW controller manufacturers keep missing some really basic aspects. Before designing a new product it is always worth skimming through the thousands of threads about similar existing products that don't quite cut it.
I think most of us don't need so many bells and whistles, but we do need something that works as expected and is future-proof. I owned the Mackie Control Universal for 1 year from new. After the first 15 minutes of use, the leftmost fader jammed and wouldn't move, and then the power supply fried. Got a replacement from the shop and then it worked OK. However it worked terrible with Cubase becasue Steinberg have the worst implementation of MCU out there. Worked stellar with Reaper, Reason, Live, Tracktion and FL Studio. Then it was also too big to sit in the middle of my desk, where the computer keyboard and so many other things belong. If you put it in the middle, then you've got too many things in front of you and the displays end up being too far, so I couldn't see the screen clearly. If I put it on the side it was not good for mixing because one must sit in the middle while mixing. I ended up selling it on eBay and now I mix with the mouse.
I will consider buying something small like the AVID Artist Mix as it is well built and is small enough to sit on my desk.
Another thing that really bothers me about controller manufacturers is that they don't support Reaper and Studio One, which are in many ways way better than many of the 'big' DAWs and are likely to become far bigger in the future (particularly Studio One IMO).