anyone try the Mackie Control Universal?

[Richard Dee]

I should probably write this up as a formal review, and I may very well when I get the Mackie back from repair.

I bought a used Mackie Control unit and had it in my system for a day before returning it to Mackie for a sticky fader. I had been playing extensively with the Behringer BCF2000 hoping that a $200 flying fader solution would work. The Behringer worked quite well when writing initial keyframes on an audio clip with no keyframes. The problem comes however, when you want to extend a fade, for example and there is no touch sensitive faders (like the Mackie has) where once you touch the fader FCP begins writing new keyframes over the old ones, no matter if you change the fader or not.

The Mackie really worked quite well, though sometimes when overwriting keyframes at the begining of a clip, there can be small issues about the new keyframe not “taking” right away, and you getting a partial fade up for example when trying to make the fade up occur later.

The Real surprise for me was how extremely well the jog control worked. Much better and faster responding than my shuttle pro.

Turn the dial and by the time you hit the detent, you are at your next frame. There is simply no lag, like you experience with Shuttle pro (and I do like the Shuttlepro.) Rapidly spin the dial, and you are are going 3 or 4 times normal speed. This was with the M-Audio Uno midi USB device, which has it’s own drivers, Though I can’t be sure, those drivers may have slowed down FCP playback from stop. (I’m running Tiger)

I returned the M-Audio and picked up and Edirol unit since I read it has no drivers and used OSX’s build in midi. This could make for even tighter integration, but I won’t know until I get the Mackie unit back next week.

The pan controls and mute/solo seemed to work well. The Play button worked, but I seem to remember an issue with rew/ff- but it could have been my unit. Incidentaly, I bought the Mackie used because the seller described is as having only a few hours of use. In researching the unit, it seems quite a few people have had trouble with sticky faders, so I would only consider biting the bullet and buying one new at $1000, with full warrenty.

Incidentally the Tascam FW1082 (i believe that’s the model) supports FCP5 as well and has audio monitor control, and analog to FW i/o. It sounds like a great combo, but I will probably wait for someone to come out with this same combo of control surface, audio monitor and multi channel FW ad/da that also fully supports 5.1 at a reasonable price.

The Mackie unit is quite large at 17″ x 17″, so you’ll need to really find a place for it, as well as an analog mixer for monitor control, etc.

ANother great use is quickly settting an overall level of a clip in the viewer before putting it in the timeline.

The large LED displays timecode from the timeline or source timecode from a clip in the viewer. This is a great feature for clients who want to make notes on clips, cues, etc, as well as you the editor when mixing. The rolling TC numbers also screams “Pro edit suite.”

The LCD displays the tracks names in FCP (which unfortunatly can’t be named) but they can in soundtrack pro, which is nice as well.

Though I didn;t try it, the faders will also work to animate a parameter in Motion.

Unfortunatley faders couldn’t be mapped to sliders like the 3 way Color Corrector. I hope Apple writes in the hooks for FCP to eventually use a control surface like this or better yet one of the trackball color control surfaces.

Overall I consider it essential to any online FCP suite.

[Ron Thompson]

[deadhead] “Though I didn;t try it, the faders will also work to animate a parameter in Motion.

Unfortunatley faders couldn’t be mapped to sliders like the 3 way Color Corrector. I hope Apple writes in the hooks for FCP to eventually use a control surface like this or better yet one of the trackball color control surfaces.”

With more MIDI/USB implementation, I would love to see a FCP keyboard with knobs and dials that can be mapped to FCP functions. The online demos at the Apple site show a MIDI keyboard also controlling Motion parameters. Maybe Bella, Post-Op (EZKeyboard), or some other third party company can design this type of keyboard combination. Using a Mackie for Motion or Soundtrack is nice, but it would cool to see all of these FCP Suite functions all in one place…why not a MIDI keyboard?

Thanks for the mini review…you definitely get what you pay for.

Ron