Looking for users that have some experience with the latest touchscreen Intel machines and DAW integration.
- Are the onscreen controls all available to the ..ehm... touch..?
- Came across some Youtube info - not sure if this is the general experience .i.e. good to great

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C.LYDE
http://soundcloud.com/c-lyde

Your finger basically becomes the mouse, so yes, all controls are available.

SOME programs don't work with touch, though I can ony think of two right now and that's Nexus 2 and Ivory 1. Not having a right click can be a pain as it means going back to the mouse or with my monitor holding my finger on the screen for 3 seconds. Cubase works great with it. Not tried other DAWs but the screen is just using mouse commands. Be great to have a seperate mouse and touch interface but maybe that can happen in the future. If you are using it as a primary monitor you may want to change the OS setting to single clicking rather than double clicking to open files as constantly double tapping on the screen starts to ache after a while. Also be wary of positioning and ergonomics. I have mine on a adapted mic stand facing up at an angle, low to the ground.

What about dual monitor use? I'm thinking that with one screen dedicated to the mixer functions, it could replace the need for seperate controller? Especially if when opening a synth window one has instant access to knobs... lekka

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C.LYDE
http://soundcloud.com/c-lyde

I'm also interested in this sobject. I would like to set up a dual monitor configuration with primary monitor using mouse control and a touch screen secondary monitor. Is this a workable combo? Has anyone got any experience of it?

P.S. I'm using Cubase 5 at the moment.

Edited by Kes (09/02/12 12:31 PM)

What's the ergonomics like ?

Shurely you either have the touchscreen in a standard upright monitor position, in which case, continually working with arms held up in front of you (aka the gorilla position) soon becomes tiring.

Or, do you have the touchscreen lying down flat, which should be more comfortable for touching, but crap for viewing.

My plan would be to have the primary monitor positioned close to vertical and in a normal viewing position. The touchscreen, secondary monitor would be directly beneath and in front of this at an angle of around 20 degrees from horizontal (in the position where you would place a physical mixer or control surface like Mackie Control.) Keyboard and mouse would be on a slide out shelf underneath this.

Hi, yes you can use two monitors and set one up as touch sensitive, you can have two have two touch sensitive monitors and still use your mouse and keyboard when you don't want to touch (can't use mouse and touch at the same time obviously) This function is built into windows.

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You sure you can use twin touch monitor setup? Last time I tried it Windows only supported one at a time although you can plug in and view as many as you like, due to the way the driver worked only one was recognized at any given time as far as the touch functionality went.

But yes Windows 7 has some support although personally in testing I've not been blown away by the monitors available. The highly responsive screens you get on tablets and phones tend to be capacitive touch which get rather expensive as they get larger so most of the monitors you see out there are resistive touch which are nowhere near as responsive.

Actuary, just had a quick look, and the 22" one's are looking to have come down to the £500 level, so the price is certainly improving... they were well over a grand when i looked a year ago.

I'd quite like a nice 30" as my main and then a 22" sunk into the desk to use as a controller.... don't think I've a spare £1500 to be able to do it through!

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
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Quote Pete Kaine:

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You sure you can use twin touch monitor setup? Last time I tried it Windows only supported one at a time although you can plug in and view as many as you like, due to the way the driver worked only one was recognized at any given time as far as the touch functionality went.

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Yep sure, it might be the touchscreen application rather then the built in Windows touch screen manager, I'll have to double check.

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Quote Kes:

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My plan would be to have the primary monitor positioned close to vertical and in a normal viewing position. The touchscreen, secondary monitor would be directly beneath and in front of this at an angle of around 20 degrees from horizontal (in the position where you would place a physical mixer or control surface like Mackie Control.) Keyboard and mouse would be on a slide out shelf underneath this.

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This sounds perfect to me - the trouble is that regular PC touch screens are mimicking mouse movement and so are essentially single touch. You can move a fader in Cubase but only one at a time which isn't very exciting. What would be exciting would be to move as many as you like with lots of fingers, but even if you have a multi-touch monitor Cubase isn't a multi-touch application and so wouldn't cope with more than a single touch at one time.

Sooooo, what you need is something between the touch screen and your software, something like this:
http://www.smithsonmartin.com/software/
It essentially lets you build your own controller and use it on any touch screen. The knobs and sliders would interface with Cubase via MIDI so now you can control everything with your fingers.

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Quote robinv:

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This sounds perfect to me - the trouble is that regular PC touch screens are mimicking mouse movement and so are essentially single touch. You can move a fader in Cubase but only one at a time which isn't very exciting. What would be exciting would be to move as many as you like with lots of fingers, but even if you have a multi-touch monitor Cubase isn't a multi-touch application and so wouldn't cope with more than a single touch at one time.

Sooooo, what you need is something between the touch screen and your software, something like this:
http://www.smithsonmartin.com/software/
It essentially lets you build your own controller and use it on any touch screen. The knobs and sliders would interface with Cubase via MIDI so now you can control everything with your fingers.

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Yeah, I realised after my previous post that a lack of multi-touch support in the software would be a problem. I also think that most likely the Cubase mixer might need to be modified a little to be more touch friendly (possibly as an alternative version that can be accessed via the preferences) and a lot of the plug-ins I use might be a bit fiddly as well. The support would need to come from the DAW first and then plug-in makers might start to create touch friendly GUIs. Despite this the potential for having a totally integrated and intuitive experience is a mouth watering one to me. Especially when you consider a large, capacitive touch screen monitor is already cheaper than the Mackie Control base unit. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before this dream is realised.

The software you linked to looks interesting, although because you have to map things it's not as intuitive as directly manipulating mixer and plug-ins controls and will take longer to set up. I'm not sure how easy it would be to have a button on instrument channels that links to the relevant page that will manipulate the VSTi on that channel, or the effects in each insert slot etc. Also I can't help but think it's overpriced for what it is.

Quote Kes:

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The software you linked to looks interesting, although because you have to map things it's not as intuitive as directly manipulating mixer and plug-ins controls and will take longer to set up. I'm not sure how easy it would be to have a button on instrument channels that links to the relevant page that will manipulate the VSTi on that channel, or the effects in each insert slot etc. Also I can't help but think it's overpriced for what it is.

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I don't disagree - maybe what we need is a touch version of Novation Automap so that the right controls appear depending on what's in focus - or, as you say, Cubase needs a redesign
It'll come.

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I believe Windows 8 is supposed to fully support multitouch throughout the OS.

However Cubase is STILL stuck in XP land in terms of UI so I doubt you'll see Cubase supporting it for at least 4-5 years.

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http://www.jeremycorbett.co.uk

That would be very disappointing. If one of the other major DAWs introduced it then that might be enough for me to switch, even to Logic and a Mac.

Does anyone know if Steinberg has a general questions/feedback email address? The only one I could find on their site was for technical support.

Quote Kes:

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That would be very disappointing. If one of the other major DAWs introduced it then that might be enough for me to switch, even to Logic and a Mac.

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SAW - Software Audio Workshop already supports multi-touch but i dont think anyone noticed

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