Buy Mackie MCU Pro 8-Ch. Control Surface with USBMackie MCU Pro 8-Ch. Control Surface with USB Product Description:
- Proprietary Mackie communication protocol for seamless music production software integration
- 100mm touch-sensitive optical Penny + Giles motorized faders
- V-Pot control over software, plug-in effects and virtual instruments
- More than 50 dedicated push-buttons for fine control of software parameters
- Full meter display with track names and parameters
Product Description
The easily expandable Mackie Control Universal Pro control surface completes your music production software to give you ultimate hands-on control of your mix.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Finally a control surface I can love
By Orion Burdick
I've owned a Mackie HUI and a Tascam FW-1884 and had frustration with both. The HUI was earlier technology and the two-way transmission of data never worked properly. The Tascam had a faulty firewire connection so it would fail to connect to my computer about 90% of the time. My recent experience with the Tascam led me to accept that it was better to go for a device that was a controller only, and have a separate audio card. The Mackie was the answer.This controller has worked perfectly for me every time. Reliability was my main concern and this finally did the job. I love the look of it, and the digital scribble strip is a really nice way to see the track names and settings without having to have an onscreen utility (like the Tascam had). It comes with overlays for different software, so I put on the Cubase one and that's a big help.I've been surprised how useful it is for controlling plugin settings as well. I use the UAD powered plugins, and it's easy for me to take control of their parameters using the MCU so I can adjust knobs without using my mouse.Pros:- Reliable and easy to set up. Window and Cubase never have trouble detecting it or staying in sync with it.- USB connection. This really sold me on the latest model, since you no longer need to connect it via MIDI. Just plug in the USB cable and Windows auto-detects it as a standard MIDI controller and uses standard drivers.- V-Pots have a nice center detent indicator light so you always know when your tracks are panned to the center.- Nice-looking and not bulky (I was surprised how much smaller it was than the Tascam, though of course that device was also an audio interface).Cons:- High price, considering the lack of an audio interface.- The fader motors often make noise even when sitting idle.- I like the ability to switch from Bars/Beats display to Minutes/Seconds. But this setting is not persisted so I have to switch each time.[Follow-up posted 9/20/2011]I upgraded to Cubase 6 and Windows 7 64bit a few months back, and ever since the MCU would not sync when Cubase is first opened. None of the controls would work until I went into the Devices control panel and reset the MCU about 5 times. I read that others had this problem and worked around it by switching to the MIDI ports instead of using the built-in USB MIDI interface. I tried this and it fixed the problem for me, though now I have to use a separate interface and cables (which negates my point #2 of why I loved the USB connection on this newer model). It would be great if Mackie would release a firmware update or something if this problem is on their end.
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