Akai Max49
 

Wow... I just saw this. I might have to pick one up when available. Just wonder if the touch faders work as well as they look? Having several of my fingers on one hand working different parameters or mixer faders at once seems like panacea to so many things. Are there other controllers that do this I already missed? And will the pads feel like a true MPC? Might have a winner here.

http://www.akaipro.com/max49

Only thing I don't like is I'd like to have at least 4 knobs because I'm used to them and need to graduate into the new world slowly. I still like mechanical switches on things despite also appreciating touch.

The touch faders make me think of TouchOSC on the ipad - it really is SO much more intuitive having a visual display sitting at the exact parameter setting, being able to see audio signal amounts as well as fader level settings etc when your tabbing through menus or mixing stuff live. We use TouchOSC wired in to Ableton to do all our live looping and mixing of multiple laptops/synths/vox for Lilt and i definitely rate it.

If the responsiveness of those touch faders is as good as a multitouch tablet or phone, I'd probably be quite happy with this. The MPC pads would be a welcome addition to -- I've got 8 pads on my Novation controller but they are pretty useless as drum pads go.

Agreed, the novation pads (if your talking the SL) are bloody awful to play :)

Yep, the one in question is a Remote 49 SL Compact that I've had for many years. Its a nice controller overall, but I gave up on the drum pads the first day I owned it (comparing it at the time to the Akai MPD16 I was using). The other thing I don't like about the Remote SL it is the tactile feedback (incremental clicking) of the knobs, I prefer smooth knob action like the modwheel moves. Minor beefs that somehow matter a lot to me, so I'm always looking for my perfect controller. Automap software is very cool though, it looks as though this new Akai controller has something similar.

I have a Novation Sl MK II 61 and I make my own templates for external sound modules and skip the automap alltogether as it's just not intuitive for me at least. Wanted to chime-in on the pads, which I ONLY use to trigger an already set-up arp, sample, etc., but not for any percussion. I DO wish Novation would have kept BOTH 144 character displays and is odd because that second display is on the far right but just not utilized...anyone else find this odd?