Where Have You Been All My Life?

I just recently integrated the PreSonus Faderport as part of my studio set up. All I can say is “Where have you been all my life?” This thing is a great piece of kit to have around. I’ve only done a little bit of tracking with it and so far so good. One of the coolest features I’ve found so far is the Rewind and Fast Forward buttons move a measure at a time on a single press. If you want to go back to the beginning or “RTZ” as it’s labeled you can press Shift + Rewind or press Rewind and Stop simultaneously.  This allowed me to keep one hand on the Edirol PCR-M30 I have on one side of my computer keyboard and one hand on the Faderport. I never had to touch the mouse or the computer keyboard for the hour I was working on a track. Splendid! I’m sure this little device will greatly enhance the mixing process too. Tactile feel of a real fader is the way to go. You can close your eyes and just use your ears as you adjust levels. It also has the ability to both read and write automation control as well. You can use the Fader  to record any number of controller parameters you want to automate. There are also Arrow Left and Arrow Right buttons for selecting tracks while mixing or recording. All in all this has been a very good addition to my DAW of choice which happens to be Sonar X3. Getting it set up to run under Sonar was a little tricky but you can find clear instructions online. The buttons are nice and sturdy and sound off with a resounding click when you press them. This is definitely the next best thing to s full surface like the Behringer X32 (which is on my list) or something from Mackie to have some tactile control while tracking or mixing.