Our friends at Studiospares have created this video with James Ivey, a confirmed control surface skeptic, for an in-depth look at the new UF8 controller from SSL.

Many companies have released small desktop control surfaces. 8 faders seem to be the sweet spot between having a useful number of faders and having something which can sit on your desk rather than be your desk. Some designs dispense with a fader altogether, the Softube Console 1 being an obvious example. We have the single fader surfaces, one fader being infinitely more than none after all. The PreSonus Faderport and the Avid Dock spring to mind. Then we have a range of options all, in the region of around 8 faders. The PreSonus Faderport 8, the Behringer X Touch, the Mackie Control Universal Pro, and the Softube Console 1 Fader. There are far more options than these, particularly when you look at lower-cost MIDI controllers, which are effectively the MIDI control faders from a MIDI keyboard but packaged without the keyboard.

Integration With Host DAW

However, when these controllers are actually lived with day to day, they often end up under-used because of a lack of deep integration with the host DAW and because of shortcomings in the connection protocol used. Basically, what we hear again and again is that they are useful for fader moves and automation passes but come up short when facing more complex tasks such as plugin control, often because of a lack of visual feedback forcing the user to refer to the DAW on-screen to interpret what the control surface is doing. Not ideal.

This isn’t only the fault of the surface designers, it’s usually a consequence of the limitation of the technology being used to communicate with the DAW. HUI is the basis of many of these surfaces and HUI is nearly as old as MIDI! It’s a remarkable achievement how much mileage designers still manage to get out of it but in spite of double-precision faders, the 128 values available in MIDI limits the usefulness of these controllers for parameters with a large range of values such as EQ frequency.

Visual Feedback

The other hurdle such controllers have to overcome is the extent of the information shared between the DAW and the controller. Basic visual feedback such as truncated track names and there being no way to share the track colour between  DAW and surface make the amount of visual feedback presented by many control surfaces less than ideal.

There are, of course, notable exceptions and the situation varies depending on which DAW you are using with which surface. Pro Tools is the worst offender. Avid have Eucon, which shares deep integration between Pro Tools and Eucon enabled surfaces and understandably Avid are going to use their proprietary technology to drive sales of Avid control surfaces. If you are a Studio One user then the Faderport surfaces integrate beautifully. However, if you’re not using Studio One some of these features aren’t available.

Does The UF8 Deliver?

The UF8 is trying to achieve the impossible - to allow deep control over a range of DAWs, including Pro Tools using HUI. Pro Tools is very much a case in point here as the obvious competition in this space is the Avid S1, which as an Avid product is Eucon enabled. As such, in terms of integration with the DAW this isn’t a fair fight but as James illustrates in his video, the UF8 and associated 360 software puts in an impressive performance. Double precision on the faders, a really friendly interface with plenty of visual feedback from these OLEDs and the use of colour in the illuminated buttons.

We particularly liked the master encoder which can be used for anything from session navigation to a “point and twist” system of plugin parameter control. The programmable soft keys above the channel strips display their named function in the channel screens allowing your eyes to stay on the UF8 rather than the DAW screen. There’s a lot to like here. Find out all about the UF8 by watching the video or head over to Studiospares to decide for yourself. Would you have this over an S1?