The great thing about exhibitions like IBC is the fact you get to see new products and talk to the guys behind them. This happened with Euphonix and the MC Control. Here's my constantly updated rolling review.

Euphonix have a good reputation in my industry, I've seen their professional range of mixing desks installed in OB trucks and the sound mixers who use them swear by them. Now I'm no live audio guy, but their major product innovation was separating the control surface away from the audio processing by a data link, so all the audio was handled in the mainframe.

Now, spin forward to 2008 and why would I be looking at a Euphonix product? Well, they have bought their skill in control surfaces & software to us Mac users with MC Control. What I hope to do is do a bit of a running review of this product as I kindly have the use of a demo model and I'm sure you will see this is a really flexible product. What really sparked my interest was the touch sensitive control panel. This changes depending on which application you have favoured on your Mac. So for example, in FCP it gives you all the FCP shortcuts, swop to finder and it will give you finder commands.

Now, here is the really clever thing that sent my brain into orbit with the possibilities. You can write macros and store them beneath a custom button on the touch panel. I cannot tell you how many times I've wanted to be able to stack up keystrokes in FCP! You can of course configure the multiple pages onscreen with single commands and 'out of the box' the unit comes pre-programmed with application button layouts.

So first part of the review!

I unboxed the MC Control and put the machine in front of my second edit station screen as you can see from the rather poor iPhone photo I've uploaded -better next time I promise. It requires a power source and an ethernet connection to the Mac you wish to control. I'm not too sure at the moment if it has to be a direct connection or if it would work on a private network (Could I control my machine remotely with a static IP address LOL!) I certainly wouldn't plug it into the metadata network of a SAN. It also has a foot-switch connection which I can see for music applications but I'm wondering how that could be used with the FCS apps. If you send me any clever suggestions I'll try them out.

Software installation was pretty easy although there wasn't a disk in the box, but most people install the latest version of software from the internet right? The machine requires two types of control for FCP, EU control which uses a custom application that also does the config and standard Mackie control for the faders which has to be initiated in FCP control surfaces.

It didn't take long to get up and running and I have to say I'm pretty impressed so far. Not only is the build of the unit up to a high standard, but you can see the thought that has gone into the design and the software. It does make my standard white keyboard look a bit out of place, one of the new aluminum flat keyboards would match the angle of the panel.

I got to use the panel for a few days before having to get on a plane for a weeks work with the BBC. The MC Control would have been perfect as it is a quick turnaround sports job and shortcuts or even dedicated keyboards all help. One big problem though, I was already up to my 20Kg limit with DigiBeta's & hard drives tucked in my luggage, so it had to stay behind.

More to come.

Of course after publishing this I realised I'd not posted a link to the product page, so along with the clickable link above here are a few more pages:-

MC Control Online Tour/Overview
MC Control Video Overview High & Low res on that page
English Brochure
Wikipedia Entry for [[Euphonix]] Having a read of this, I discovered that Yello's Dieter Meier owns Euphonix. Don't know who he is? yes you do!

22nd October 2008
I got an email from George asking how big the unit was. Officially it is 20 inches wide, but hopefully these better pictures might help:-



26th October 2008
A few things happened over the last few days. First off all I got told off for using the term "Flying Faders" which is a trademark of another company, you might have noticed the headline change. Well I suppose it at least means people are reading this!

Secondly I came across this rather nifty video of MC Control in action on YouTube.
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