Recording - June 2017 - 50

FaderPort 8 does not; in side-by-side comparisons, the FaderPort
8 faders' glide is a tad less silky, but they are still nicer than much
of the competition. I am assuming that to equip the FaderPort 8
with 8 Alps faders would have jacked up the price significantly.
On the non-fader side there are buttons to control: Play, Stop,
Fast Forward, Rewind, Record, Loop, Drop Marker, Next/Prev
Marker, Next/Prev Event, Undo/Redo, Arm All, Solo/Mute Clear,
Track Management, Click On/Off with tap tempo, Track
Scrolling, Channel Banking, Timeline Scrolling, Level, Pan, Solo,
Mute, Rec Arm,Touch, Latch, Trim, Write, Read, Off, and more.
These buttons are a nice improvement to the original FaderPort's,
which clicked when pressed. These are dead silent.
The smaller rotary encoder is similar in look, feel, and function
to the original's. The other encoder is slightly larger but feels
and functions the same.

Calling all protocols

PRICE: $499.95
MORE FROM: PreSonus, www.presonus.com

PreSonus
FaderPort 8

The venerable desktop controller is
back for more-7 more, to be precise
REVIEW BY PAUL VNUK JR.

en years ago PreSonus released the FaderPort, a compact
desktop DAW controller. It featured a single 100mm motorized Alps fader, a stepped rotary encoder for panning, and
the usual transport controls like Play, Stop, Record, etc. It worked over
USB via the Mackie HUI protocol, and is still in production today. A decade later, the company has released a product that many PreSonus
fans have been begging for: an eight fader version-the FaderPort 8.

If one is good, eight is surely better!

Still a desktop controller and nicely compact compared to many
competing units, the FaderPort 8 measures 2.25" tall, 11.85" deep
and 13.15" wide. It weighs 5 lbs. Its body is solid metal and dressed
in a black finish with tapered edges. It features 57 soft-touch, silent
backlit buttons, a pair of stepped rotary pushbutton/encoders, eight
LCD "scribble strips", and-of course-eight faders.
Connections on the back include USB 2.0, external footswitch,
and external power for connection to an external DC line lump
power supply.

F-F-F-F-Faders (and stuff)

The faders are 100 mm long, motorized and touch-sensitive.
They are driven and automated by a dual-servo motorized drive
belt system which is fairly smooth and quiet; each fader has
10-bit resolution for 1024 steps between top and bottom.
The original FaderPort used a 100mm Alps fader that is still the
best-feeling fader I have used on any control surface to date. The
50

RECORDING June 2017

Like the original, the FaderPort 8 can be used with both macOS
and Windows. It still offers HUI protocol, but this time that mode
is for use in ProTools only. For popular DAWs such as Logic,
Cubase/Nuendo, Live, Bitwig, Reaper, and Reason, the FaderPort 8 uses Mackie Control Universal Emulation. In all of these
DAWs, much of the FaderPort 8's button and control beyond
transport, levels and panning will vary greatly.
Since the original FaderPort launched in 2007, PreSonus Studio One
has muscled its way to the upper echelon of the professional DAW market, not just as a DAW but an entire paradigm-possibly second only
to Avid ProTools in regard to control surfaces, interfaces, and studio and
live software/hardware integration. As you might guess, FaderPort 8 is
tailor-made for use with Studio One; James Lindenschmidt offers his take
on the FaderPort 8 and Studio One relationship in the included sidebar.

Setup

Hookup and setup is fairly plug-and-play. Registering the unit
online gets you access to firmware updates and to a full license
for Studio One Artist with 4 GB of content and plug-ins.
To choose your protocol, power up the unit while holding down the first
two channel select buttons. The first three LCD windows will display the
three protocol choices. If you work in multiple DAWs you can follow this
procedure to switch back and forth at any time. Beyond this, PreSonus
offer setup configurations for most of the popular DAWs in the manual.

My Cubase experience

My DAW of choice is Cubase and I put the FaderPort 8 to
work with Cubase 9.0 (also reviewed in this issue). I have been
a big fan of single-fader units and have used the original FaderPort for years, as well as Steinberg's legacy CC121 single-fader
controller. Both worked swimmingly alongside the FaderPort 8.
Right off the bat, all common transport controls worked flawlessly, as
did standard channel functions of mute, solo, and pan. The master dial
handles scrubbing, timeline scrolling, and can even act as a master
fader control. The pan knob's stepped feel is very fine-grained and
slow, just like the original's-which I didn't like in my original
October 2007 review, either. Luckily, if you need fast panning and
automation, you can set the faders to handle those duties.
Speaking of faders, these also worked great right out of the box.
They were smooth and interacted with my virtual faders in Cubase
quickly and accurately. The only time I noticed any fader noise was
when I had my music turned down low... and that was just smooth

http://www.presonus.com

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