S3 MAJOR design flaw

[Sonopolis]

Yesterday I had the chance to play around with the S3 to try out a couple of things that I had questions about. As expected, the S3 is much more solid than the Artist series controllers, especially the rotary encoders are of better quality, you can actually use them to adjust EQs, Compressors and Pan. Still I'd like to have the ability to set the acceleration of the knobs.

That being said, the S3 software seems to be in early Beta stage. Some severe bugs, lots of illogical choices and inconsistencies. Even worse, so many not implemented features and so much wasted possibilities like blank encoders and green-only multi-colored LEDs. Not to mention the cumbersome Eucon software with its late '90th interface.

Well, so far I saw a chance to have a really nice mid-class controller, if they'd get the software right someday.

But when trying out the automation one thing struck me that makes it basically impossible to use this controller as a professional mixing desk. It's been mentioned before that the placement of the Select and Rec/Auto keys is unfortunate. I know that this was designed as a live-mixing console, but these buttons between the faders are absolutely essential if you don't want to use a mouse. The problem is, it is definitely impossible to use these buttons without touching a fader. So when you're in Latch mode and want to drop out of Automation-Write on a channel or select that channel to view a plug-in window, you will always touch a fader and write automation.

I really don't know what to make of this. For me this makes the S3 essentially useless. The only possibilities I see, is to swap out Mute/Solo with Select/Rec via a preference or - maybe better - to introduce an Automation Mode in the lower row of encoders.

But with all the already missing features can't see this happening.