While getting thru a few more chapters of Mike Seniors excellent book I got to mulling over the benefits of having more control surface when tracking and mixing in Cubase, particularity with having an LCD screen and motorized faders which presents the chance of mixing blind (without having to look at the screen) something I very much like the sound of, plus there’s something about having a software track represented by a physical fader that makes it so much more less virtual. Studio gear unfortunately is somewhat of an OCD trigger for me thou and I can happily while away whole afternoons obsessing over the finer points in various equipment. The downside to this is that I usually end of doing so when I should be working on something else but the plus side is that when I do make a purchase its been well researched and I can source out a b-stock or sale item. I already spent about four hours this week comparing DAW controllers and fine tuned the list down to one of these with an extra one of them to add more faders. I was alittle hesitant considering how good the price is – too good to be true maybe (its half compared to what its based on – a Mackie MCU) but I discovered on one of the reviews that both actually use the same ALPS faders! plus the ICON’s have a 3 years warranty, damn good value for a grand I reckon.
Actual-work-wise this week I finished off a site for a local painter. She went for a very minimalist design which I enjoyed doing as I get to put alot of focus on font choice and spacing. We also put in some nice slow-fade page/menu load javascript and CSS (I love you CSS3). Speaking of which I’ve moved on to the second A-book-apart title. I really like how the author separates out functionality into critical and non critical allowing us to experiment as much as we like with CSS3 on non-critical elements until the time comes when its supported across all browsers (except probably Interent Explorer).
