by RBIngraham » Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:00 pm
I don't have any working Motormixes to test with unfortunately so I have not played with the MM implementation. (all 3 have died... including one that had been refurbished once already a while back.... which doesn't make me want to bother with those anymore... but that's another thread)
However what I can tell you is that AMP does allow you to "lock" a particular fader on any surface to a particular channel. So it won't switch if you bank around the console. I have not really explored how that fully works yet, if say you lock only one fader, can the other bank between channels. Since I never wanted to bank between multiple channels I haven't really played with any of that yet and the surface I have been playing around with so far (waiting till my BCFs are no longer on a show) doesn't really have any banking).
You can not map just any old button to any function you like in AMP on the fly, like you can in many DAWs, however each surface uses a template file similar to SAC except that it's an XML file, so anybody can modify the controller template file or create their own, unlike SAC. But most DAWs can not deal with on the fly mapping of controls from something like a Motormix either, since that has a fairly complex command set and it's fixed, meaning you can not reprogram your Motormix in anyway, unlike a BCF or BCR.
While anyone can potentially write their own controller template, I will warn you, that it does require at least a little bit of programming knowledge and all the structure of the code in the templates is in Binary, not hex. So while I consider myself reasonably savvy with working with the hex commands of MIDI data... working on or editing these template files is going to take some real work for me to wrap my head around and I don't think you're average user is going to be tinkering with their own templates. But at least it's possible for the user community to edit the templates and share them.
AMP also supports multiple control surfaces (each with their own template) within each GUI instance. So all those folks that wanted a series of BCFs for faders and a BCR for channel strip knobs should be able to get their wish I think. (but don't quote me, as I have not tested that!)
Overall the control surface support is MANY time more flexible than SAC ever was or every will be. And most important of all, the developer is not going to tell you that you don't need faders to do your job, or make insinuations that you're afraid to try new things simply because you have a need that is different from his own.
Richard