Novation Nocturn

i'm on a piss ant budget when it comes to gear, but this one is worth every miserly penny. great controller for VST and AU plug-ins, using it for Ableton right now and planning on incorporating into Traktor in the coming weeks. the GUI is really slick, semi-transparent, moves to the background if you have little screen space, then comes up when touch sensitive faders are activated (the coolest feature). also loved is the speed dial fader, which is basically an on the fly assignable, just put the mouse cursor over it and touch (i fucking love it). yeah it's not the most expensive or sturdiest piece of gear, but i'm a simple man with simple tastes. nice LEDs to frost this cake.

I've had one for the past couple of months, and it is great, first controller I've had that I've been able to successfully incorporate into actually mixing rather than just fucking about with stuff.

Except the speed dial. Nice to be able to browse presets on some stuff. But I really cant see the point beyond that. I can either point, click, move mouse, which is quick and takes one hand, or I can point, grab speed dial, spin which takes two hands and fucks up the mouse position, and if you let go for any reason, you have to start again as it doesn't latch. I just can't integrate it into my work flow.

looks good for making disco

good review...I've been wanting one of these, but there's other things (like a new kb controller) that I have to get first. BUt I think the nocturn is next in line, i really liek the point and click deal, i've been needing that. I use midi ox with my xt for controlling stuff, but its not exactly a nice "flow" when you have to open up that prog and assign the controller, map it to cubase, etc.

How much did you guys pay for this? If there were a couple of faders on it, it would be fucking great.

  Solo Strike said:

How much did you guys pay for this? If there were a couple of faders on it, it would be fucking great.

£69

You don't get an idea of how great they are until you actually start using them, and its not just the knobs, it's the whole set up including the tab buttons and the software. It's just the speed dial that people are raving about, I can't see the point, it's annoyng to use.

yeah $150 here in the US. Zzounds and other places will give you free shipping.

How is it better than say, the Evolution UC 33?

I have that, and I don't have any problems MIDI mapping it with various VSTs etc. I barely ever use it though, I wish you could buy paper overlays for it so you can label all the knobs and such, because I always forget what I assigned to where.

  Tamas said:

How is it better than say, the Evolution UC 33?

 

I have that, and I don't have any problems MIDI mapping it with various VSTs etc. I barely ever use it though, I wish you could buy paper overlays for it so you can label all the knobs and such, because I always forget what I assigned to where.

That's where the GUI comes in. It's not doing anything that can't be done with other midi controllers, it really is about work flow. This video will give you a bit of an idea.

Nice, that actually does look pretty great...

When you're running Ableton, if you're near 90% CPU usage, does it cause Ableton to run out of buffer/CPU power if you call up the GUI, or is it really low on CPU usage?