Presonus Faderport 8 with Cakewalk by Bandlab
This is a post about the Presonus Faderport 8 and how to use it in Cakewalk by Bandlab. There is a video below that you can watch where I go through at least some of the basics of the use of the hardware in the software. There are a LOT more features, but this is as far as I have documented in Cakewalk. In Presonus Studio One, the unit definitely goes deeper and is more intetgrated.
If you have followed my Blog here, you will know that I have had a hard time completely giving up on the Cakewalk brand. I really like Studio One a lot, but there are some things about Cakewalk by Bandlab that draw me back a bit. One of those things is the list of already started projects I have over there that need to be completed. So, in getting things set back up in Cakewalk, I decided to take a look around in the Faderport 8 and see what it would do without a lot of messing with it. It really works pretty well - certainly better than the old Behringer BCF200 I had. Even if I were to stick with Cakewalk, I would definitely keep using this device.
In fact, even though the Studio One integration is deeper, many of the features that I use it for are shared. I don't do a lot of deep plugin editing because (so far) I have found it to be a little hard to get into and really take advantage of, so I mainly use it for level and pan mixing, transport features, recording automation, and some of the more "normal" stuff, much of which is covered in the Mackie implementation.
So take a look at this video and hopefully it will be helpful to you if you are looking for a Control Surface. Know that the colors on the buttons are FAR more brilliant and nice to look at and that the buttons themselves are soft touch and very quiet. The sliders are also very smooth and the motors on them are pretty quiet - not chattery like the BCF2000, none of which you can tell by this video.
In fact, if you want one, and want to help me out.you can buy one from zzounds.com by going here: https://www.zzounds.com/a--2677514/item--PRSFADERPORT8
And as always - a comment or reaction is always appreciated.
Here's the video:
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Comments 4
Just wanted to say a quick thank you for taking the time to create this tutorial. I (unfortunately) just placed an order for the single channel Faderport v2 to use with Propellerhead Reason 10.2, assuming it was supported. Is there any hope that I'll be able to get it running with a decent amount of functionality in tact, or should I be thinking about a return? Any advice would be kindly appreciated!
Hey Alex - thanks for the comment. I don't really know about the single channel version, nor about Reason, so IO'm afraid I don't have anything to offer in reply to this
What I CAN tell you is that the Presonus stuff is built well and has a very quality feel all around. I hope that it works for you in a capacity that is valuable!
Marke - Sorry I missed your comment! I looked at the settings for this and found that the answer is YES. I didn't have a footswitch available, so I took the sustain pedal from the MIDI KB and plugged it in there, went into the Mackie Control Settings and set the footswitch 1 value to Record and was able to Start Recording on a record-enabled track, which started playback/recording, then alternate hits of the pedal took me in and out of record mode on that track (or whatever tracks were set to Record enable). Of course the same works in Studio One as well, if that's of any interest to you!
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