VCM 600 Opinions
Im looking to add a midi board for the studio, to have a more hands on feel with Ableton. Ive been reading up on this, and it seems like a great little compact board that can be used much like a Studio Mix Board (Mini). Anyone have experience with this board likes or dislikes?
Ive already preordered a Push as I am dying to mess with that work flow (the maschine already is so much fun to use) so not sure this is just over kill, or if it really can offer a nice set of tools for the job.
Thanks for any feedback!
I used to own one.
It has nowhere near the capabilities of an actual studio board. It’s also a lot less expensive. What are you wanting to do with it that Push won’t do?
I use to have a Tascam Motorized fader board… I just like… faders.. and that kind of visual feedback I guess.
From what I saw at Namm and other videos, the small LCD display isnt something i want to always be looking at.. Im not getting any younger! haha
The Push really brings the step sequencing, the way to play keys and managing effects (I use mostly NI softsynths and it doesnt exactly play nicely with that)
Im kind of looking for a Mixing board I guess, but from the midi side, since I only have two outboard synths.
The VCM 600 is probably a worse board than the Tascam you used to have. I bought it to perform with Live, and it worked very well for that. But, it kind of sucks as a studio board.
The faders aren’t motorized, and they’re simple 7-bit MIDI. They will not give you the control you’d want. At least it seems like it’s come down in price some.
But…unfortunately…I don’t have any suggestions to replace it for anything like the same money. Back when it cost a grand, the Avid Artist Control stuff was a competitor. And if you can use it, it’s unquestionably better. Now, not so much.
Thanks for the info Mostapha.
Yeah I knew it wasnt going to be like my Tascam heh.. that thing was a beast (96/24bit internal card, firewire etc) Im just trying to keep my hands off the keyboard and mouse as much as possible. I could see it might be nice for Live, unfortunately I do alot of live audio routing so the Xone 92 has to work for my needs for live.
I Suppose ill work with push for awhile and see if it really limits me at all (Switching layers, and button presses to change knobs that id like to change without pushing modifiers… but ill live)
Thanks again sir.
If you want to try it, definitely give it a try. It was fabulous for performing with Live, though what I was doing was a lot more like DJing than studio mixing. It definitely takes abuse well and never gave me a hiccup…just some weird things that are holdovers from where Live was when it came out.
Very few of the knobs have center detents…which might be good or bad depending on how you want to use them. The faders just aren’t good enough for studio mixing. There’s basically no visual feedback without hard-coding it in Live’s mapping.
It’s a cool unit…just a bit short-sighted for what it could have been. And they never updated it.