ONE Control as an MCU Controller
What is Mackie Control Universal (MCU)?
Mackie Control Universal (MCU) is a protocol that was originally intended to allow a Control Surface to communicate with other units, including your computer’s Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Basically, all modern DAWs support MCU.
MCU controls the most important commands you need to record and mix your music (you can see all of these on our cheat sheet). In a way, there’s nothing terribly fancy about MCU, which is great…that means there’s fewer things that could go wrong.
Why Use a Control Surface?
Using an external Control Surface (such as a MCU controller) allows you to work faster, and it frees up brain-space. You don’t have to memorise a bunch of short cuts, just put your finger down.
With a physical Control Surface, you would press, for example, the pause button, and that controls the pause function in your DAW. So, instead of straining your eyes at your screen, you can use your hardware controller. You can also do things like move multiple faders at once (try that with your mouse!), so an external controller speeds things up.
Control Surfaces are great, but they can be very expensive and take up a lot of space. The flagship Mackie Control Universal Pro, for example, runs around €1,200 ($1,300) and it gobbles up a lot of desk space.
In terms of your longevity and ergonomics, using an external controller is healthy because you are not frozen in a position with one hand on a mouse, one on the keyboard, and staring at the screen. It encourages more motion, which helps prevent problems like tech neck and carpal tunnel pain. Using your iPad as a touch controller is great because you can actually stand up and still edit!
The iPad as a Control Surface?
With ONE Control Pro and DAW Edition, you can control your DAW with your iPad. It’s a snap to set up, and it will ease your workflow in ways you hadn’t thought possible.
But you’ll find that DAWs like to customise the functions of the buttons a bit. If you have a physical Control Surface like the Mackie Control Universal Pro, that means you either buy an overlay for your DAW or get out your tape and pen.
However ONE Control Pro and DAW Edition have the customised labels built into our MCU controllers. This means you can see exactly what a certain button does. And if you want a cheat sheet to remember what a buttons does or a list of its alternate functions when you press Shift or another modifier, well you get that too!
Want to see which edition of ONE Control is best for you? Check out our comparison list.
Supported DAWs
ONE Control provides full integration with most of the major DAWs.
You get customised templates for the main DAWs:
Logic Pro (Logic Control)
Cubase/Nuendo
Ableton Live
Studio One
Universal Audio LUNA
FL Studio
Reaper
Reason
Cakewalk by BandLab
Adobe Premiere
Adobe Audition
Digital Performer
Sony Vegas
Waveform
Bitwig
And there’s also a generic Mackie Control Universal template for the other DAWs.
Please note that if you use a DAW not mentioned above, first check that it supports the Mackie Control Universal protocol (MCU). If it is not listed as one of our supported DAWs, then it would be better for you to purchase ONE Control Pro rather than DAW Edition. This is because the Pro version allows you to change labels and colors of the buttons, which you’ll want to do so you can match the names with DAW functions.
