Do You Use a Control Surface With Reaper?

[Muddy Tbone]

I'm seriously considering adding a control surface to Reaper, to make things hopefully easier and faster for me.

Just curious as to have Reaperians use a control surface? Which one? Do they interface well with Reaper?

Thank you.

[karbomusic]

I use a Presonus Faderport along with an extended Reaper extension for it...

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=91053

There are some other control surfaces others use who will also hopefully chime in. MCU and AlphaTrack come to mind.

[G-Sun]

Faderport here as well.

Motorized fader is very important to me.

[Diego]

Avid Artist Mix and Avid Transport.

[mccrabney]

launchpad and bidule

[mickmacneil]

Originally Posted by Diego

Avid Artist Mix and Avid Transport.

How do you get the artist mix working with reaper? I have two of them linked to protocols, but would love to use them with Reaper.

[Geoff Waddington]

Originally Posted by mickmacneil

How do you get the artist mix working with reaper? I have two of them linked to protocols, but would love to use them with Reaper.

You can either use the native approach: https://stash.reaper.fm/v/18477/EuCon%20Beta.zip and the map editor : https://stash.reaper.fm/v/17210/EuCo...p%20Editor.pdf

Or you can set up the mix to Mackie Control protocol and use:
The stock MCU
Klinke's MCU

Also, you can use the pre alpha version of CSI -- see sig below for thread.

[Muddy Tbone]

Originally Posted by G-Sun

Faderport here as well.

Motorized fader is very important to me.

Why is a motorized fader important?

[karbomusic]

Originally Posted by Muddy Tbone

Why is a motorized fader important?

Several reasons, easiest example is when switching between tracks you always want the physical fader to follow or you spend a lot of time trying to reset faders to where they were.

[cereboso]

I just got the Behringer X-Touch Mini and I love it.

[nightscope]

Originally Posted by Muddy Tbone

Why is a motorized fader important?

If you have a, say, an 8 fader controller without motorized faders and you have a project with more than 8 tracks when you bank, that's moving from, say, tracks 1-8 to 9-16, and make adjustments to a track fader in bank 9-16, when you go back to tracks 1-8 the faders will be out of alignment on the controller compared to the actual positions in the DAW. Motorized faders adjust their fader and other parameter positions, pans, auxes, etc, to automatically mirror the fader positions in the DAW. Like wot karbo sez.

If yuh catch mah drift.

I use one of these:-



It is ab fab, and Reaper's integration with it is one of the primary reasons that I use Reaper. There are some great DAW's and some great controllers available these days. But that doesn't necessarily mean they work well together, if at all. Controllers that support MCU[Mackie] protocol usually work OK with Reaper and all the main DAW's. Most of 'em.

ns

[Muddy Tbone]

Originally Posted by nightscope

If you have a, say, an 8 fader controller without motorized faders and you have a project with more than 8 tracks when you bank, that's moving from, say, tracks 1-8 to 9-16, and make adjustments to a track fader in bank 9-16, when you go back to tracks 1-8 the faders will be out of alignment on the controller compared to the actual positions in the DAW. Motorized faders adjust their fader and other parameter positions, pans, auxes, etc, to automatically mirror the fader positions in the DAW. Like wot karbo sez.

If yuh catch mah drift.

I use one of these:-



It is ab fab, and Reaper's integration with it is one of the primary reasons that I use Reaper. There are some great DAW's and some great controllers available these days. But that doesn't necessarily mean they work well together, if at all. Controllers that support MCU[Mackie] protocol usually work OK with Reaper and all the main DAW's. Most of 'em.

ns

Great explanation of why the motorized faders are mandatory. Mackie protocol is very useful as well. Thanks much for the insight.

[Curtis]

I use Notation Launch Control XL and Launch Pad S

[Stews]

I've tried various units over the years and always sold them on, much preferring the mouse. This was even when I was using Cubase and had to click and drag the faders.

Then when I moved to Reaper and could use the mouse wheel with the modifier keys for fine tuning I can't imagine anything being better for my tastes.

Possibly because I've got so much experience using a computer that I prefer this; perhaps a musician who isn't overly fond of computers would be much happier with faders.

[BoogieBear]

Just added a Behrnger X-Touch to my studio
Seems to work quite well over USB and is happy working with the PreSonus Faderport connected as well
(Useful for me to keep that on my keyboard rig and the X-Touch in front of the PC monitor
Can't get all the functions in the master section to work but I'm not too good at this side of studio tech!
Anyone else using X-Touch yet, it's a nice solid bit of kit
Cheers

[crgn]

Panorama nektar specifically integrates with reaper. It's great.

[donchilcott]

Faderport

[V'ger]

Tried one, but no controller for me. I find a normal qwerty keyboard is really the best controller together with mouse. A separate controller would just be moving the hand away from the qwerty to do things the qwerty and mouse would normally do, so a superflous time-waster really. I should add the qwerty is slightly enhanced with a macro program (Autohotkey).

It might be cool with knobs to write automation like synth filter etc, but there are anyway some on my MIDI keyboard. But then I usually end up correcting the automation writing with a mouse, so in reality could have done the whole thing there.

[swiiscompos]

Using school's hardware. Most of the time I use an Artist Control, it works quite well with the beta Eucon plugin release a few years ago.
Sometimes I also switch to the bigger consoles. I haven't been able to use the SSL duality with the MCU protocol yet so I use it in HUI mode which works well even if it's not as complete. I also use the system 5. It's also a Eucon console but it doesn't work as well as the Artist Control. Automation works well but transport for example doesn't work. If you start deleting and adding track you start having problems. But I think it's a problem with the console itself.

[Alxi]

Novation Nocturn to control my go to plugins. Never had any issues with it.

My faderport got thrown into the wall ( by me ) Reaper wasn't always picking it up and the pan knob never quite worked. It proved to be a pain in the arse to work with.

I mostly control faders with my mouse wheel so it's not a big lost.
maybe someday i'll get something else.

[overbe]

Nektar Panorama P1-P6

[donchilcott]

Faderport

[Leopold]

Works great in Windows 10, even though it hasn't been supported for a while now.
Had to mess about to force it to load the Windows 7 driver when my PC was running 8.1 but when I upgraded to 10 there were no complaints about an unsigned driver.

I'd be lost if it broke, I don't use the motorized fader an awful lot -just to tweak the mixes - but the transport and macro buttons are indispensable, especially as I have the unit on a long USB cable. This enables me to control Reaper from the studio live area.

[woogish]

good luck with this