- Best Control Surface For Ableton Live
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Actually, the only control surface I would consider if Steinberg did not release a new control-surface this year, is the Mackie Control Pro with possibly one or two extenders. Well, I'm kind of optimistic that Steinerg/Yamaha will release a new control-surface during 2015.
- Best control surface for video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro? Technology Trends • Published 3/11/16 • Last Activity 2/5/18. I'm hoping other members could suggest great current video control surfaces that they are using in conjunction with Adobe Premiere for video editing. There are quite a few choices out there.
- Best Gaming Mouse Pads 2018. By Marshall Honorof Sep 18, 2018. Best Overall N/A. And you'll find a coarser surface that enhances fine control for precision genres like FPS and racing.
We've seen plenty of DAW-centric keyboard overlays before, but Logic Café's ControlSkin is slightly different in that it actually redefines the shortcut keys to turn your QWERTY keyboard into a creative control surface for Apple's Logic DAW.
Designed primarily for making beats on the fly, ControlSkin uses colour-coding rather than heavy wording or symbols so that you can see what you're doing at a glance. The idea is that you can then enjoy an Akai MPC/NI Maschine-style workflow without the need for any additional hardware.
In order to use the ControlSkin, you simply have to attach it to your keyboard and install and select the supplied patch file.
The ControlSkin is compatible with MacBook, MacBook Pro and Apple wireless keyboards and is available now priced at £29.99.
Logic Café ControlSkin official info
Make Music wherever you are!
Best Control Surface For Ableton Live
The ControlSkin is designed to make creating music with Logic Pro as intuitive and hands on in a similar way to using dedicated music production hardware such as the MPC or Maschine. Simply, place the ControlSkin over your MacBook, MacBook Pro or Apple Wireless keyboard, install and select the included patch file for Logic Pro and your computer becomes a dedicated control surface and MIDI keyboard!
Visible Caps Lock Keyboard: No Need to Carry USB Controllers Everywhere You Go
The ControlSkin sits on your MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air 13' QWERTY keyboard even with the lid down so if you have your Mac, you're ready to make music as soon as you open the lid. With the Caps Lock Keyboard visible, simply select an instrument, press Caps Lock and you're composing in seconds!
Turn Logic Into a Loop Sequencer
With the dedicated cycle section, repeat section functions and Record Toggle features, you can create music intuitively as the music plays, never forgetting that killer synth line or phat bass groove!
Dedicated Transport
Best Control Surface For Mixcraft
More than a Shortcut Skin The ControlSkin uses colour and a redefined Logic Pro keyboard layout to provide an intuitive interface with a dedicated transport section for optimum creative efficiency.
Record Audio on the Move
Record audio and capture moments of inspiration wherever you are using the built in mic or line input of your Mac. Arming your tracks to record couldn't be quicker with the dedicated Record enable track toggle button
Slice audio with the touch of a button
The ControlSkin allows you to slice and chop recorded audio and audio loops with the touch of a button, instantly slicing your audio and transferring it to the Caps Lock Keyboard for performance.
Protect your Mac
The ControlSkin is made of high quality, durable Japanese silicone and can help to protect your Mac against dust and spills
ControlSkin Overview
The ControlSkin from Logic Cafe brings total control of Logic Pro to your fingertips. Features include:
- Visible, playable caps lock keyboard
- Organised transport with the ability to toggle Record for intuitive beat production
- Dedicated Record enable tracks button
- Record audio using the built in mic and chop it on the fly with the sampler section
- Gain full control of the cycle feature with Set and Swap L/R at your fingertips
- Tap tempo added as a function
- Mixer/Sample edit/Piano Roll etc. tabs organised into a tabs section
- User definable keys
Turtle Beach Large Drift Fast Premium
Runner-UpSteelSeries QcK Gaming
Best Dual-SidedCorsair MM600 Mouse Pad
From the multiplayer mayhem of Overwatch to the thoughtful single-player escapades of The Witcher, a great gaming PC can be your first and last stop for digital entertainment. If you're going to invest $50 or more the best gaming mouse, it couldn't hurt to plunk down just a little bit more for the best gaming mouse pad to go with it. While mouse pads aren't the absolute necessity they were back in the days of ball mice, they still provide a comfortable, streamlined surface that won't wear down your mouse or get it too dirty over time.
Of the models I tested, I liked the Turtle Beach Drift the best. It's unpretentious, elegant and, best of all, cheap. However, models from Logitech, SteelSeries, Razer and HyperX performed similarly well.
Best Gaming Mouse Pad: Turtle Beach Drift
The Turtle Beach Drift is the best gaming mouse pad that I've tested so far. Its beauty is in its simplicity. This microfiber mouse pad is smooth up front, with embroidered edges and a resistant back to keep it from moving around. There's a pleasant red Turtle Beach logo to give it a little zest, but other than that, it's pretty straightforward — just pick the size that's best for your setup, and let fly. The Drift worked well across all genres I tried, and the embroidered edges always let me know when I was running up against the edge of the pad and had to reset my hand.
Best Control Surface For Machine In India
Turtle Beach Large Drift Fast Premium
Material: Soft
Size:Variable
Thickness:0.1 inches
Size:Variable
Thickness:0.1 inches
SteelSeries QcK Mouse Pad
If you like having a lot of options, the SteelSeries QcK Mouse Pad is a good place to start. The standard version of this mouse pad is small enough for a desktop and thick enough to support a wrist, but with no embroidered edges and only a small, white SteelSeries logo in the corner. You can get it in a variety of sizes, shapes and thicknesses, which should fit your setup no matter how much space you have. I was able to play at the top of my game for Titanfall, Heart of the Swarm and Assassin’s Creed Unity, thanks to its smooth surface, and choosing the right size for my desk made a big difference.
Material: Soft
Size: Variable
Thickness: Variable
Size: Variable
Thickness: Variable
Corsair MM250 Champion Series
The Corsair MM250 tends to work best with Corsair mice, but it's a good choice for those who need a large, square-ish mouse pad with plenty of room for low DPI mice. With a soft surface, a huge 17.7 x 15.7 footprint and a reasonable price ($23, when not on sale), the Corsair MM250 could prove useful to FPS gamers who prefer dragging a mouse across a long surface rather than losing precision by upping their DPI levels. It's resistant enough to facilitate most gameplay styles, and if you have a Corsair mouse, you can even tune your peripheral to match the surface perfectly.
Material: Soft
Size: 17.7 x 15.7 inches
Thickness: 0.2 inches
Size: 17.7 x 15.7 inches
Thickness: 0.2 inches
Razer Firefly
Best Control Surface For Mackie Protocol
The Razer Firefly is an electronic mouse pad that features a hard surface and LED lights around the edges, with full Chroma capabilities (16.8 million colors). The mouse pad syncs with other Razer Chroma peripherals, like the DeathAdder mouse and BlackWidow keyboard, to display intricate color patterns. The LEDs looked gorgeous (although I didn't spend very much time looking at them during gameplay), and the hard surface let the mouse glide across it with very little resistance. I appreciated that the Firefly facilitated both comfortable gameplay across all genres and a method of visually spicing up a gaming nook.
Razer Firefly-Hard Gaming Mouse Mat
Material: Hard
Size: 14.0 x 10.0 inches
Thickness: 0.2 inches
Size: 14.0 x 10.0 inches
Thickness: 0.2 inches
Best Control Surface For Sonar Platinum
Logitech G240
The Logitech G240 is one of the simplest gaming mouse pads out there, which, in my estimation, also makes it a contender for the best gaming mouse pad out there. The entire apparatus is a slip of black cloth with a little resistant fabric on the back to prevent it from slipping. With no embroidered edges and a blue Logitech G logo near the bottom, the G420 is exactly what it appears to be: a soft surface for your mouse that should help your peripheral glide across your desktop as you play. I used the G240 for the longest of any mouse pads we tested, and have played dozens of games on it over the course of many months. So far, I have no complaints about the way it handles any titles.
Material: Soft
Size: 13.4 x 11.0 inches
Thickness: 0.04 inches
Size: 13.4 x 11.0 inches
Thickness: 0.04 inches
Razer Vespula
The Razer Vespula earns points for originality right off the bat: It's one of the few gaming mouse pads on the market with a wrist rest built in. The peripheral has advantages aside from staving off carpal tunnel — namely, a nonslip design and a reversible surface. One side offers a smooth feel, which is perfect for MOBA, RTS and other genres where speed is of the essence. Flip it over, and you'll find a coarser surface that enhances fine control for precision genres like FPS and racing. If you have a Razer mouse, you can use the Synapse 2.0 software to automatically calibrate your device to either one of the Vespula's surfaces.
Razer Vespula
Material: Hard
Size: 11.8 x 9.4 inches
Thickness: 0.2 inches
Size: 11.8 x 9.4 inches
Thickness: 0.2 inches
HyperX Fury S Speed Edition (X-Large)
If you've got a lot of real estate on your desk, consider the HyperX Fury S in its X-Large configuration. You can slap down your keyboard and mouse on top of it — in addition to a headset stand, a headset and a controller, with some room left over for knickknacks. Apart from its gargantuan size, the Fury S is also comfortable, inexpensive and helps your mouse glide around with ease, whether you're playing competitively or for yourself. The speed edition has an attractive red design in front, but you can also opt for the standard edition if you'd prefer a plain black design.
What to Look For
Before you buy a gaming mouse pad, you should know that you may not need one. Most modern gaming mice possess a feature known as surface calibration. Using this feature, the mouse's sensor will detect what kind of surface you're playing on and adjust its feedback accordingly. As such, practically any surface can be the best gaming mouse pad.
When hunting for a mouse pad, there are only a few major factors to keep in mind: material, thickness and size. Some companies, such as SteelSeries, offer sizes ranging from mini (9.8 x 8.3 inches) to XXL (36 x 18 inches), which suit gamers who either have limited desk space or play at very low dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivities and need much more space than the average user. Other users prefer enormous mouse pads so that they can rest their keyboards on them as well.
Other mouse pads, like the Razer Firefly, are unlike anything else on the market, and combine expensive electronics with otherwise-simple pads. No matter which one you pick up, you might want to consider using a wrist rest as well; gaming mouse pads facilitate the movement of mice, and aren't generally thick enough to make your wrist significantly more comfortable than it would be if you were to rest it on your desk.
Charging Mouse Pads
The Logitech PowerPlay system introduced a new kind of mouse pad: one that charges mice as you use them. Razer followed suit with the Mamba Hyperflux. We don't recommend either system without some caveats, but they're worth looking into if you insist on wireless setups.
How We Test Gaming Mouse Pads
Mouse pads usually require no setup (save for ones with electronic components, like the Razer Firefly). Just flop them down on your desk, straighten them out and you're done. As such, the only thing we evaluate is how well they perform in-game.
To test a mouse pad's game performance, we run it through a number of different games — including first-person shooters, real-time strategy titles and massively multiplayer online experiences — to get a feel for it across different genres.
Do You Really Need a Mouse Pad?
As discussed above, mouse pads are not as vital as they once were. On mice with surface tuning, a mouse pad is often ancillary, especially if you have a smooth, even, resilient surface underneath. Wooden desks can stand up to most mice, as can formica, stone, and other opaque materials.
On the other hand, if you play competitive games — or are simply rough on your mouse — you could damage either your peripheral or the surface underneath it. In cases like this a $10 mouse pad could save you from having to sink hundreds into a new desk. In my experience, the average mouse and desk surface are totally harmless to one another, but a good gaming mouse can last for years. If you're going to invest $80 in a top-of-the-line peripheral, another $10 or $20 will not hurt in the grand scheme of things.
On the other hand, if you play competitive games — or are simply rough on your mouse — you could damage either your peripheral or the surface underneath it. In cases like this a $10 mouse pad could save you from having to sink hundreds into a new desk. In my experience, the average mouse and desk surface are totally harmless to one another, but a good gaming mouse can last for years. If you're going to invest $80 in a top-of-the-line peripheral, another $10 or $20 will not hurt in the grand scheme of things.
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