Are There Any Plans for a Dedicated Controller for Platinum & Beyond?

With Sonar now a part of the Gibson family do you think they will bring us some type of controller/mixer (or combo) that fully integrates w/ Sonar kinda like the Roland V Studio stuff, but a controller only?  Either working with another Midi keyboard company or in house.  I mean out-of-the-box compatibility.  Mixer(faders and knobs), Transport, Tap Tempo, Menu & Track Selection, ect,...... and for god sakes PRO CHANNEL...some motorized fader action would be nice.  I mean everything.  Touchscreen is cool and all but personally I would like to have a choice of either.  I just hate seeing all these new controllers coming out that's either partially compatible or specifically meant for a different DAW.  I currently have an Impulse 49 Keyboard that works ok, but Automap is very unstable and unpredictable. Took me forever to finally get it working correctly and it still only lets me control some features, but not all. 
 
I was looking @ the Nektar Panorama P4/P6 keyboard (love the 1 motorized fader idea) only to find out of course they don't support Sonar.  I'm sure you could painstakingly set up the general control surface but would love something already setup for us before I go out and spend $500 bucks.  And yes I've seen the Nektar LX series which does have support for Sonar but still not full compatibility and it looks kinda cheesy.  Sonar itself has been very stable for me for the most part and is a great program just wish I had something to make the workflow even better sitting on my desk.
 
Sorry if this sounded like a rant, but just wondering if you guys think they will ever bring us something like this....

TheMaartian
I have a P6, and love it. I just moved from Studio One 2 Pro to SPlat, rather than upgrade to S1 v3.
 
Nektar provides what looks like reasonable integration with S1, but it really sucks. I find it hard to understand when their S1 support package is in v1.4. It's still a mess. All of the encoders (all 16 of them) are defined incorrectly being the most egregious problem. I thought.
 
Now that I'm starting to use it with SPlat, I did a full factory reset on the P6...and it's like an entirely new surface. Now that I'm playing on it, I'm noticing that the S1 SysEx must have also screwed up the velocity curve for the keyboard the same way the encoders were screwed up. I've now got full range (7-bit; woot!) velocity coming in to my VIs.
 
You're right, it'll take some time to map the P6 to SPlat the way I want it, but...when I'm done...it'll be the way I want it, not the way some inexperienced technodweeb wanted it.
 
So, I'm willing to spend the time to do it my way (sorry, Frank).

 
@TheMaartian
I thought I read somewhere that the motorized fader on the P4/P6 doesn't work w/ Sonar.... is this true?  If it's not then this keyboard might just be my next stop gap until they come w/ something specifically for Sonar.

The motorized fader requires a special protocol (not MIDI), although it can be used as a standard fader, just with reduced MIDI resolution. Studio One doesn't support it, either.
 
What I am most concerned about at the moment, being new to SONAR, is whether or not it supports soft pickup (doesn't start acting on MIDI controls until the controller reaches the same value as the current state of the device parameter being controlled). That's my next thing to learn, challenge to overcome.
 
Re Tascam drivers...
 
They, like many (most?) others, outsourced their driver development. With the new line of audio interfaces, they've brought their driver development back in-house. I can't speak for other product lines, but my v1.00 US-16x08 driver works very well (significantly better than my PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL driver, which, on v1.3, still completed sucked). My iLok works. Finally. After wasting a year on a bad driver (of course, it took most of the year to identify the culprit). There are minor little issues with the v1.00 Tascam driver, but no showstoppers.
 
So, I'm thinking Tascam are going in the right direction, as is SONAR. And, yep, there's my Gibson SG bass, on its stand to my right. When spec'd or acquired, I had no idea all three where from the same big family.
 
How copacetic!

TheMaartian
The motorized fader requires a special protocol (not MIDI), although it can be used as a standard fader, just with reduced MIDI resolution. Studio One doesn't support it, either.

Why you think so? MCU, Alphatrack, Faderport, A&H Qu, etc have motorized faders and use MIDI.

Fact. Since Gibson have acquired Tascam. Tascam have been able to bring driver development in house. Their recent efforts on new hardware has proven that they do excellent work. They've also picked up some of the slack for their older products. They seem to be benefiting just like Cakewalk have in the last 1.5 years.

VS700 support is down to Roland and while it was bundled with Sonar it was never a cakewalk product. All drivers and associated software was provided and developed by Roland.

I can't see any control surface development with Sonar as the focus. Cakewalk are focussing on touch screen support. I conclude from that that they are not looking to advance control surface technology. The fact that they have released their various SDKs for their development into the public domain speaks volumes. If you want to see the SDKs they are on Git Hub.

Yea, I think Cake is geared more to touchscreens than making the same mistakes w/ Roland.  A dedicated hardware controller is a hard sell, even if the V-700 was perfect for Roland-era SONAR.  And if you make your controller generic there is a much bigger market but less integration.  Unless Tascam has given up controllers (and there are making some nice hardware interfaces), anything they do make will have a tight SONAR template (from the git go).
 
Even on Protools w/ Raven most of the mixers I know still use a lot of mouse and keystrokes.  I'd like to see a big touch screen w/ hardware knobs and maybe a single fader.  But that is just me.  The guy that reviewed SONAR in SOS loves multitouch for riding faders, so maybe touch only is the way forward, but I still like some tactile feedback.
 
@

Hello,
 
Please search the Forum topic for , "You can control Sonar As Deep As You Want" created by user Azslow3. He has worked with me on my Zed R16 and QU 24 using his utility to turn these mixers (and other devices for other users) into very capable control surfaces for Sonar in my case going beyond the offering of standard midi and even HUI emulation (not supported by Sonar). I believe his efforts are worth a serious "look see". IHTH

Jarsve
I think a digital mixer with Mackie control is what you need if you have space.

Not that I had plans to get some, but I have tried to check what digital mixers (on the market) can do as control surfaces. The information is just from the documentation. I could interpret it wrong.
 
Tascam DM-3200
MC protocol support, all controls. So, Tascam has already "a control surface". It is a bit heavy and not something you want to put on computer table
 
Yamaha 01v96i
Support HUI (more or less complete), generic MIDI (limited).
 
A&H Qu.
Has midi mode for some subset of controls. Works at the level of BCF2000 without encoders but with many channels (16,24,32... model specific).
 
Midas M32/ Behringer X32
8 channels only as control surfaces.
 
Presonus StudioLive.
Has proprietary communication protocol and support selected subset of DAWs.