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Old 05-25-2019, 10:06 AM
rogerogrant rogerogrant is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2017
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 3
Default Noob control surface questions!

Hi y'all!
There doesn't seem to be a "3rd party control surface" area and I'm a rank beginner, so this seemed to be the most logical place to ask these questions, but please move this to the appropriate sub-forum if I'm mistaken....

As stated, I'm a novice with regard to Pro Tools. I actually use Media Composer professionally, so I have some passing familiarity with aspects of PT, but no hands-on experience until now. So with "hands-on" being the key phrase, I'm researching control surfaces.

My ideal choice would be an S3, but although I could sort of justify the $5,000 price tag insofar as I could use it with MC, that's still a pretty hefty chunk of change. I'm a little hesitant about an Artist Mix for two reasons: the first is kind of trivial but is part of my decision making process nonetheless - my spidey-sense tells me that Avid may be revamping it in the near future and I'd totally have buyer's remorse if I dropped $1,000 on one only to have a new and improved version released shortly thereafter. The second is that I've had some issues with Eucon in the past when using an Artist Color. Now, admittedly, that was a while back on an older Media Composer system, so it may be irrelevant, but it's still in the back of my mind...

I'm looking at the Icon Qcon Pro G2, and it seems like a pretty great compromise between price, features, and size (bearing in mind that my Pro Tools work at the moment is strictly as a bedroom hobbyist). My only reservations about it are that it's USB-2 and some uncertainty about how tightly it will integrate with PT.
I currently have a 2016 Macbook Pro running OSX 10.12.6 Sierra. I think it's sort of an open secret that there are problems with USB-2 devices and that version of OSX, and I've experienced a few myself (specifically with USB-2 hardrives falling offline, and a wireless mouse that connected via a USB-2 dongle not working properly). I haven't updated to the current OS because I haven't gotten around to verifying that all of my applications are qualified on it, but I can do that if it helps resolve those problems. I haven't managed to find any info online about whether or not that's the case though.

At any rate, does anyone have any experience with that Icon surface, or any other recommendations?

Thanks so much, and I'm glad to be here and have the opportunity to learn from you all as I begin my Pro Tools journey!

-Patrick
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