It most be the most overlooked product ever. This thing is even better integrated than Artist Mix! Do some searching and see for yourself. Don't be fooled by the older design, it's great! Even the plugin parameters are much better arranged than on the UF8 or any other HUI controllers. Not limited to 4 at the time. You have access to them all. Only 8 faders though and of course, display not as nice as the newer ones... The key here is integration with Pro Tools. No hardware, no matter the quality, will be better than the HUI limitations, which is terrible and just not acceptable. Not for Pro Tools. Sorry for being old and bitter, and off topic... Hehe.

Hi, do you you know what is the plugin parameter limit of the full MCU implementation?

Maybe we can feature request Presonus

I've been using mine for 2 days now. THIS THING IS GREAT. The feature i have fallen in love with is being able to assign my own key commands to the soft keys.

the build quality is great. the integration is cool ( still HUI in PT)

and it is SUPER EASY TO GET TO THE TRANSPORT on the top row

best
-b

A feature request was submitted years ago. Still nothing.

I don't know what the MCU plugin parameter limit is.

seems that there's pages for plugin parameter , is it and exclu for hui , @ tomtama can you verify in mackie mode if you can do that ? @ 11 min

If it can be done , can we cosyumise parmaters in each pages ?

Can anybody from SSL answers time to time our questions around here ? people actually want to buy your stuff ....

Using MCU (Mackie Control mode), within Logic the limit is determined by the plugin itself (there is no limitation that I have experienced). In fact it's the opposite problem. As an example, on the Nucleus in MCU mode, if I select "PlugIn" and it opens a plug in such as FabFilter Pro Q3, it gives me (20) Nucleus pages of (16) parameters each, so (320) in all!. I will use a mouse until I get into custom programming the parameters in User Mode or get into deep editing if the .plist file, so I have only the ones I really use a lot displayed.

The pedigree of Mackie Control was originally Emagic Logic Control and it was written to work with Logic with a very deep integration. The limitations highlighted here within other platforms working with MCU/HUI seem to be DAW-specific. Hope that helps.

Cdlt

So, would you say that the best DAW integration possible, is in Logic? Full plugin mapping etc? It will work in Cubase and Studio One, but not as good as in Logic, because of the MCU protocol, originally being developed for Logic?

Guyz i do think we have all pages in all daws ... the real questions is are we able to manage those values ... this is the daw specific area imho ...

It's really easy to edit a plugin's parameter ordering (for Logic) in a text editor:



You can even put blank entries in to align your parameters to particular pages etc...

Thanks for the video, enjoyed it.

For me it only confirms what I suspected, too much functionality lost vs Mackie or X-Touch or if its there its hidden under a shift/double press.

In the video I think you map your quickkeys to shift/option/cmd - on X-Touch they are already right under you fingers and clearly labelled. As well as that I have the 8 function keys that can be mapped as I want which is more than 3.

As for the transport having it at the top of the controller and having to make sure I have the correct button engaged to display them is so less convenient than having a dedicated section not hidden under any secondary press buttons at bottom of controller. As well as dedicated jog wheel.

Im sure I could get over the transport thing or make a workaround if the controller had other compelling features but the more im watching the first hands on videos the more I think I would struggle/lose functionality coming from current controller.

Will be good if some of the early adopters can report back in a few weeks to say whether after a few weeks of usage; recording, producing and mixing, are they finding it to be a workflow enhancer or inhibitor or neutral. Especially once the shiny new toy feelings, and any cost justification have died down.

Thanks, I was actually going to ask you since you seem to know. Unlike some other posters my problem is too many parameters displaying, mostly non-essential in seemingly no particular order. There may be 12-15, 20 frequently used, the rest are a distraction.

I actually went looking for the CSParameterOrder.plist file but I notice that in the ~/Library/Audio/Presets, all of the subdirectories are for older 3rd party plugins and I do not see the new ones. Also none of them contain the CSParameterOrder.plist files?

Then again in /Library⁩/Application Support/⁨Logic/Plug-In Settings⁩/, the .plist files are there - but only for the Logic stock plug ins. I am in Mac OS Catalina, I suspect they moved the file location? Would you know?

Cdlt

You can just reorder the first couple of pages worth, then the rest don't matter as you'll never move to those pages in the control surface. You can remove them if you want but I don't find the extra ones get in the way. ymmv.

Logic generates these files for you. Choose any plugin, and in the plugin header menu, choose "Save As Default". Logic will write a CSParameterOrder file for that plugin with all it's parameters as reported by the plugin. You can reorder this, then remove and reload the plugin from the insert slot, and Logic will present the parameters to the control surface in your defined custom ordering.

Third-party plugin patches (and the CSParameterOrder file) are stored in:
~/Library/Audio/Presets/*company*/*plugin*

(That's the Library folder in your user home directory, or the full path will be along the lines of:
/Users/*you*/Library/Audio/Presets/*company*/*plugin* )

i'm using HUI. opening fabfilter multiband gave me 65 (!) pages of controls

A) I love that picture
B) Seeing those extra buttons missing from the middle actually makes me like the idea of chaining them together since I now have more buttons that can either be duplicated between the units for quicker access or different on the units but effectively permanent functions that I don't need to "shift" in and out of.

I cannot speak to the other DAW's I'm sure there is some great functionality available but certainly the Mackie Control was originally developed for Logic. Perhaps more important is the fact that these controllers, yes come with default mappings, but everything is programmable. The Logic profiles I built for the Nucleus were from the ground up, the defaults were wiped in favour those shortcuts that worked for my personal use case and workflow. By the time I was done, the device and it 's workflow scarcely resembled the original configuration.

Theses devices are a kind of blank slate - a tabla rasa. As such you can program what you want where you want it (within the limitations of those SoftKeys that are programmable). You don't have to have things like SHIFT, CMD, ALT etc in one specific place. Within the 360 app - you can build this controller to work as you like, create key macros and as mu:zines has suggested, leverage both User Modes and order plug parameters as you like via the CSParameterOrder.plist file.

None of the limitations of Mackie Control ever held me back. I had multiple Euphonix devices and Eucon. Sure it was more powerful, but so much stuff there I never needed. Of course YMMV.

Cdlt

Spent the afternoon on one UF8 , didn't managed to get pages of parameters in Studio one ....just the 8 first parameters , can anynody confirm PLEASE ...i had to install Studio one free in the shop and tried woith presonus plugin th' had nothing more , so i can't say it's presonus plugins or UF8 , i skipped and went back with a faderport to marry it with console 1

But if somebody can confirm we get pages under MCU in studio one , i'm getting back tomorow to get it !!

Build quality is exellent , pots same resistance , frame (front) super sharp as i was affraid ... , smaller and lighter that i though
Sends and other stuff working , didn't mamanged to get to choose witch insert to control via plugin selection and numbers

Studio One only provides 8 plugin parameters using the MCU protocol. You can access all plugin parameters with PreSonus' proprietary FaderPort support.

yeah i went for a faderport V2 , wanted to get the 8 but the lmack of knobs is a deal breaker , can't see myself doing eq's and all with fader lol ...am i too snob ?

If i recall Euphonix managed this problem thks to their own protocol , nope ?

You can also do this inside Cubase with the control editor

Nice.

BTW Various people have built graphic utilties of varying degrees of slickness for editing the CSParameterOrder files for Logic, but I've always found it quicker and more productive to use a text editor, so that remains my preferred method...

Can t believe people have to do this in 2021 ...

Not quite.
It supports as many parameters as you have V-Pots connected to it.
1x UF8 can map 8 parameters
2x UF8 can map 16 parameters.

This is a StudioOne thing.

Looks like I have to get another UF8.

Have to do what? No one *has* to do anything.

If you have a plugin with 60 parameters, and 8 hardware controls, the choices are:

- Use the 8 knobs to control only the first 8 of those, whichever are the parameters the developer decides to put first

- Use the 8 knobs to control only the first 8 of those, and have buttons to page up/down in sets of 8 to use those knobs to control further parameters

- Use the 8 knobs to control only the first 8 of those, and have buttons to page up/down in sets of 8 to use those knobs control further parameters, with the *option* to re-order the parameters of any plugin/s into a particular way that suits your needs

- Don't control plugin parameters at all

- Have some other system where you have one knob that controls what the mouse is pointing at (so, you can only control one parameter at a time, you still have to move the mouse under visual guidance, you have to have the plugin open that you want to control, and other less than optimal solutions).

At the end of the day, hardware control of plugins will always be imperfect because there will never be enough hardware controls or 1:1 mapping of every plugin you use. You have to use some design effort to improve this problem, and I certainly think there's room in the market for creative solutions to this, in various forms (I have plenty of ideas about this, and other people have different needs, ideas and workflows too).

Once you start laying out plugin parameters on large touchscreens or something, you are basically moving towards completely rebuilding a plugin's graphic interface on a different screen, which doesn't help anybody in the short term really. You might as well just use the plugin and a touchscreen or something.

I can't speak for others, but I can speak for me when the thing that really makes a difference is workflow. I don't need direct, immediate, hands on access to every possible plugin parameter at once, but I *do* need what I consider to be the important ones, and I don't want to have to go hunting for them.

And the fact that I can reorder them, if I want to, means I can control what parameters are important to me and where they should go.

(Note that this is very different to manual MIDI learning of plugin parameters, which I agree is an absolute non-starter in this day and age.)

A few minutes to reorder a new channel strip plugin's parameters once into my standard layout, and I can insert any channel strip plugin and quickly, directly, EQ/compress/etc, with no paging between parameters, via muscle memory, without needing to see the GUI, is much closer to the hardware control we'd all like to have. It's done once, and you get the workflow benefits everytime you load and use that plugin for the rest of it's working life.

That's a cost-benefit equation that works in my favour. ymmv.

@ Mel guiel said:

@ prog matic-Studios said:

This means that Logic Pro and Cubase can re-order plugin parameters with UF8. As far as other DAWs are concerned, this might be a problem.

Why does anyone assume they are entitled to get every function they want from a single controller regardless of which DAW they want to control? Even with a controller designed to work fully with a specific DAW, there are always items that are not available. There is simply no such thing as a controller that does anything and everything a specific user thinks it should be capable of doing.

From a design standpoint there is always going to be a tension between generic or specific functions. Protocols must be generic enough that manufacturers agree that they are necessary. Yet they need to be specific enough for a manufacturer to separate its product from the crowd. For years we had the original MIDI spec. Now we finally have MIDI 2.0. But it has been hardly adapted yet.

We have MCU (which started as Logic Control). We have HUI. We have Eucon. We have Console 1 / Fader 1 that uses Softube's proprietary protocol. To get a fully comprehensive protocol that improves on MCU, it's going to take agreement from most manufacturers just to talk about what's needed. And who knows how long that will take. Or whether there will be agreement on what should be controllable.

I have used Logic as my main DAW for years. I also will be using Luna. For MPE editing I will be using Live 11. So the UF8 looks really good from my standpoint. It covers those three DAWs. Also, as @ tomtama has said, the UF8 works really well with the UA Console 2 application with Radu Varga's MCU app for Console.

Sure there will be some extra learning curves. I am just now starting to learn Luna. Live 11 will be next. But I don't feel entitled enough to expect Logic, Luna or Live can do everything I want. I need to spend the time to both learn the DAWs that can do the specific items I want, as well as learn to program the 360 app to make my workflow work the way I want.

@ Jeezo , get a local crafts person to build you a curved edge for the UF8 if the edge is an issue for you. A piece of hardwood with an edge profile you like would be easy to make. I would cover the hardwood with a leather surface. I'd put foam between the wood and leather so it would act as if it were upholstered.

Is this for real, is he out of Beta with this? Have you actually run this with the UF8?

I am genuinely surprised UAD has simply not extended the UAD Console to MCU, but Radu's solution looked like a work around.

Cdlt

I've been using it for several days with the UF8. It works very well. I'm working on a configuration guide for it.

Being able to commit that sort of thing to version control also beats having it locked away in some proprietary format or odd registry entry IMHO.