How do I choose a new MIDI control surface?

[danielmarshall]

Right, I have a new job. YAY! Time to blow it all. There are stacks and stacks of MIDI controllers out there - but my god, which one? Can anybody direct me to a place where I can see a good comparison of what's out there? I'll gladly pay for your help with sex if you're female :P

Thanks guys (and hopefully girls!)

EDIT: By the way, I don't mean a "MIDI keyboard", I mean something like a Phatboy (but not a Phatboy... what a ripoff)

[thetonewrecka]

The firefly is coming..I'll be testing it next month. Hold on to your cash.

[danielmarshall]

Gotta... save... money... trying to resist... can't hold on... for much longer...

[findthesolution]

UC33e is a nice one for the money.

If you want something that will serve most of your purposes, ditch your current midi keyboard and spring for a novation Remote SL

http://www.novationmusic.com/pictures/SL25_Front_Large.jpg

[danielmarshall]

Wow, having LED's telling you what each knob does would really help.... I likey. They're around AU$800, so they don't come cheap, but still good value from what I can tell. Sounds like a winner so far.

I'd love that new Allen & Heath Xone:3D for DJing, but I have to be realistic :(.

[loopdon]

i have an uc33-e. i wish the knobs were á little further apart, though. there's so much variety nowadays, i'r really wait and check what's there before rushing to buy...

btw, the last one posted looks the niceness!

[rounser]

Here's an alternative you might want to consider; a digitizer. It's a combination monitor/graphics tablet, so you draw directly onto the screen instead of using a mouse, tweaking pots and faders directly, and drawing sequencing directly.

I got a Wacom DTI-520 last week; 15 inch LCD, cost $1650 australian, but wow is it fun to use. I have a ReMOTE 25, but think I'm going to sell it now; it's too much of an abstraction to map real pots to pots on the screen when you could be manipulating them directly.

The only downside is that you can't manipulate more than one pot or fader at a time....small price to pay for moving your PC into "almost feels like hardware" territory IMO.

[danielmarshall]

That's a pretty cool idea since I'm considering getting a tablet for work anyway. Wasn't planning on spending quite that much, but I'll check it out for sure!