PC44: A field of knobs from Faderfox
Faderfox believe that you can never have enough control. They also have small fingers and can’t bear the idea of wasted space between controls. And so we have the PC44, the unintuitively named 64 knob (plus extras) MIDI controller.
PC44
Along with the 8c8 matrix of 64 knobs there are 4 regular sized knobs for people with normal sized hands. There are 8 buttons and one push-encoder. That’s an awful lot of control. And it will, of course, control anything. You can MIDI learn all of the pots in your software, or you can route things the other way and have the pots learn whatever MIDI instruction is coming in. Once you have the PC44 setup you can save the configuration in one of 64 destinations for recall later. There’s also some advanced management features like copy/paste and duplicate.
The 4 digital display shows pot values and programming data. These appear when you grab a knob. You can also switch on a lock to display a control value permanently. The standard resolution of the knobs is regular 7-bit MIDI but there is a 14-bit high-resolution mode for the encoder to give a higher level of sensitivity.
It’s very compact and comes in a super sturdy, gig-proof silver metal casing. The size and bomb-proof nature making it perfect for children.
The PC44 works with both Mac and PC, powered over USB and requires no drivers. It’s yours for €549, which seems a lot for a MIDI controller, but these are extremely well built. More information on the Faderfox website.