Modes & Scales
If you've used a fader controller before, the basic paradigm of S1 operation will be familiar. Faders, mute and solo buttons operate their on-screen counterparts, with the rotary encoders behaving as pan controls by default. The OLED displays tell you which tracks are in focus; you can use the Bank and Nudge buttons to shift this focus across the DAW mixer either en bloc or a track at a time, and you can have it optionally follow track selection in the DAW or Avid Control app. There's also a Flip button, which swaps the roles of the faders and the rotaries. In the default mode, this means that the faders become pan controls and the rotaries adjust channel levels, which is not particularly useful, but Flip comes into its own in some of the other modes.
These are likewise accessed using the strip of buttons at the top. The simplest of them, and one that can most usefully be flipped, is Aux. Press this button, and instead of pan, the rotaries control the send level for the first auxiliary slot on their respective channels. You can then use the Page up/down buttons to select the other auxiliary slots instead. In conjunction with the Flip button, this makes it super-easy to set up cue mixes within your DAW's mixer: just send to the cue bus from the same auxiliary slot on every channel, press Flip, and your faders are now controlling these send levels to adjust the cue mix.
There are three more of these basic modes: Inserts, EQ and DYN. When you enter EQ or DYN mode, the parameters of the first supported EQ or dynamics plug-in on the selected channel are immediately 'spilled' across all eight rotary encoders. In Inserts mode, by contrast, you get an overview of what's instantiated in the first insert slot on each channel. The Page buttons then cycle through the other insert slots, and you need to press a channel encoder in order to have its parameters spilled for editing.
As is the case with every control surface, the usefulness of these modes is dependent on the plug-in. Many plug-ins spill their parameters in a logical and intuitive way, but some simply present an endless list labelled 'Knob 1', 'Knob 2' and so on. Quite a few third-party plug-ins support EQ and DYN modes as well as Inserts mode, but the implementation isn't always complete: for instance, bands in FabFilter's Pro-Q are editable once created, but you can't create them from the S1.
Shift Working
All of the mode buttons at the top of the S1 also have a shifted function. Input and Mix allow you to view and modify a track's input source and output destination, though the process is a bit convoluted — I imagine most users would choose to do this from the computer or from the tablet in preference. HEAT provides direct access to the global parameters for the HEAT console emulation feature in Pro Tools, which is nice, because I can never remember where they live in the application itself.
Physically, the S1 is compatible with most tablet devices.
Instr is the counterpart of EQ and DNY as it relates to virtual instrument plug-ins, while Group offers a very elegant way to add and remove tracks from groups in Pro Tools. Press it once, and you'll see the ALL legend in each channel's OLED display. This is because the first group in Pro Tools is always the ALL group to which every track belongs. Press the right Page button and the S1 will cycle through any user-created groups. You can press any channel's encoder to add it to or remove it from the currently displayed group, and channel In buttons light up accordingly.
The shifted function labelled Config is used where you want to change the configuration of the DAW mixer. For instance, to insert a new plug-in, you'd select and attention the relevant channel before switching to Inserts mode and selecting Config. The usual Pro Tools plug-in menu hierarchy is then presented over several different pages, allowing you to, for example, specify that you want a mono-to-mono plug-in, then the Dynamics category and finally an individual compressor plug-in. This takes a bit of getting used to because the end result as far as the S1 is concerned is that nothing happens: to edit the parameters of your newly instantiated plug-in, you'll need to navigate back to the top level of the Inserts view and select it from there.
The last of the major shifted functions at the top is Channel. This spills the relevant parameters of the selected channel across all eight OLEDs and rotaries; so, for instance, if you hit Channel while in Aux mode, these will display settings for sends 1-8 on the selected channel. When I first used the S1 I was wondering whether making this a shifted function might be an economy too far, but you soon realise that it's not needed as often as you think, because the other modes perform the same sort of parameter spill on the fly as required.
The S1 Shift button is also used in conjunction with the channel Rec buttons, to cycle through the automation modes. I suspect quite a few people will use this function more often than the buttons' default record enable function, so happily there is a preference that allows you to make record enable the shifted function instead. With advanced features such as automation preview and trim fully supported, automation is one of the many areas where the high-end, pro origins of the S1 are very apparent.
One S To Rule Them All?
In fact, the S1 is only superficially comparable to other eight-fader control surfaces targeted at small production environments. In reality, it's one element in an extremely powerful modular system. To compare what's possible using EUCON with what's achievable over HUI or MCU is like comparing an ocean with a lake. What's more, all of this power is by no means unique to Pro Tools, and although I didn't spend a lot of time using the S1 with other DAWs, I saw enough to convince me that it can control Logic and Cubase in equally comprehensive fashion.
A consequence of this is that if you want to go beyond basic fader and pan control — and you will — there is a learning curve involved. This process is smoothed by excellent PDF documentation and video tutorials, but even so, I hadn't approached anywhere near power-user status by the end of the review period.
The obvious question that arises with any modular system is: which are the most important modules? To a certain extent, the answer to that will vary depending on your use case, but in the case of EUCON, a tablet running Avid Control has to be the first port of call. Even as a long-term Pro Tools user I'd somehow neglected this utility, and I can't believe how much functionality it offers, especially given that it's completely free. For the £150 or so that it costs to buy a cheap Android tablet, you're getting one of the most advanced remote controllers around.
If you want to take your EUCON adventures further, I suspect the chances are you'll end up buying both a Pro Tools Dock and at least one S1. If mixing is your primary use then it makes a lot of sense to go with the S1 first, and if you do, I think you will be impressed.
VCA Spill
Many DAWs now follow Pro Tools in offering VCA faders. In essence, a VCA Master is a fader that governs the level of one or more other faders. So, for example, you might assign all of the tracks within a multi-miked drum kit to a VCA Master fader labelled Drums. Moving this VCA fader up or down would cause those on the individual drum tracks to follow, with any level offsets preserved between them. Conceptually, this has something in common with the alternative technique of routing all the drum tracks to an auxiliary or bus channel, but there are important differences too (and there's nothing to stop you doing both).
VCA faders first became popular in live sound circles for managing large-scale mixes. The idea is that once you have set up 73 mics on the drum kit, another 27 on the backing vocalists, and so on, you then condense these on to a few VCA Masters that can be kept permanently at hand. However, there are times when you need to be able to tackle things at the level of the individual channel, and banking through the entire mix to find the one channel out of 100 that's causing a problem is time-consuming and fraught. What if, instead, you could simply press a button, touch a VCA fader and instantly be presented with only the channels that form part of that VCA group?
That's the basic idea of VCA spill, and it's an immensely powerful feature for studio and post-production work as well as in live sound. One of the really impressive things about EUCON is that VCA spill is implemented at every level, and it's just as useful for the project studio owner with a single S1 as it is for the film mixer with a fully kitted-out S6. It's also childishly simple to use: you simply bank left or right until your chosen VCA Master is visible, then double-tap that channel's Sel switch. The S1 then hides all channels that are not assigned to the VCA group controlled by that master.
The utility of this is obvious, and is enhanced further by EUCON's Layouts feature. This would allow you, for example, to set up one or more VCA Masters and have them permanently assigned to the first few faders on an S1. Your global mix balance would then be permanently at hand, with the option to dive in and address detailed issues with drums, guitars, vocals and so on at the touch of a button. Just make sure that you have 'Assign VCA Masters to S1' enabled in EuControl, otherwise you won't easily be able to unspill from the surface.
The VCA-related features are due for an imminent update to reflect the new Folder tracks that will be coming to Pro Tools soon, but are already extremely powerful, and a good example of the sort of functionality EUCON enables that would never be possible with MIDI-based control surfaces.
Pros
- Part of a modular system that brings high-end control-surface functionality to any studio.
- Full support for pro features such as VCA spill, advanced automation and Layouts.
- Not just useful with Pro Tools!
- Well made, with good-quality touch-sensitive faders, clear displays and responsive rotary encoders.
- Clear, well-written documentation.
- Close integration with the powerful, free Avid Control app.
Cons
- The more advanced features inevitably present a learning curve, and the occasional counter-intuitive element.
- Requires a wired Ethernet connection.
- A tablet running Avid Control should be considered an essential partner for the S1 rather than an optional extra.
Summary
The missing piece in the EUCON jigsaw, the S1 completes an incredibly powerful control surface ecosystem that goes way beyond what's possible with MIDI-based control protocols.