ACT vs Remote Control

Mentioned by bitman "ACT" interpretation is only one part of Cakewalk ACT technology in general.
 
Remote control is "one to one" mapping between some parameter and some hardware control. Typical surface has under 100 controls in total. Even if the surface has several "hardware presets", the total number of distinguishable signals is still way under 1000.
 
10 tracks audio project, without any soft synth or FX has over 100 parameters. Just with EQ and Compressor, it will have additional 300 parameters. And so, no surface is able to provide sufficient amount of controls for 30 strips project using Remote Control approach.
 
And that is even before any soft synth or advanced chains of FXes is inserted.
 
Next, Remote Control is almost by design "per project". F.e. after you have assigned some knob to the volume of the Drum track in one project, you will have to do this for any other project. Sonar has no artificial intelligence to do this automatically.
 
And finally, there is no standards for any advanced control surface elements, including encoders, LEDs, motor faders and displays.
 
Cakewalk ACT is the way to create the intermediate layer between Sonar and Control Surface, which can:
1) using limited number of physical controls organize the steering virtually unlimited number of parameters
2) do this project independent
3) support the hardware specific communications
 
There is a set of ACT plug-ins for particular devices (MCU, Faderport, VS700, A-Pro, Naktar Impact, etc.) which at last partially use all 3 advantages of ACT.
 
There are 2 not hardware specific plug-ins, "Cakewalk ACT MIDI" and "Cakewalk Generic Surface", but they only partially implement (1) and implement (3) only for encoders input (no feedback at all).
 
There is my own plug-in, "AZ Controller", which provides all 3 advantages of ACT for almost any device (including game controllers and OSC).