The MCU communication protocol is used by many other hardware units, like the PreSonus FaderPort-8, and is open-source - this protocol is not likely to change or be discontinued any time soon. The knobs can also be used to edit pan or send levels, and by pressing the "flip" button the knobs and faders will swap positions so you can edit sends or plugin parameters from the faders instead of the knobs. It is NOT possible to "split" the knobs to show parameters from more than one plugin at a time, but whatever plugin is selected for editing WILL "spill" across as many knobs as you have channel faders. If you have multiple MCU units, then you'll be able to see more parameters of your plugin, up to 32 if three expansion units and a master are connected. Other than the color and the built-in USB > MIDI interface on the silver MCU master, the brown and silver MCU units are the same, and although it might look ugly, you can mix and match them.Įach MCU master or fader expansion unit has 8 knobs above the channel faders, and these can be used to edit plugin parameters. It is still possible to find used silver C4 units for sale from time to time, and you can even use the older brown C4 connected via 5-pin MIDI cables to the newer silver MCU master unit. For a short time, there was also a silver C4 unit, but it has now been discontinued. This means that you can just plug in the main MCU unit to the computer with a simple USB cable, and then use 5-pin MIDI cables to connect up to 3 fader expansion units to the main unit for a total of 32 faders. Later (and current) MCU units were silver in color, and had a built-in USB > MIDI interface in the main unit. There was also a very slick unit called the C4 which added 32 knobs for direct control of plugins, and it had some very cool features as well - you could use the knobs to control track zooming and press the knobs to jump to any one of the first 32 markers in a session, etc. The expansion units added 8 faders, and you could use (I think) three expansion units for a total of 32 faders. The main unit was an 8-channel fader controller with transport and menu buttons. The first MCU units were brown in color, like the HUI, and used conventional 5-pin MIDI to communicate with the DAW, so you needed to have a multi-port MIDI interface and associated cables in order to get it all working. There are TONS of HUI boxes on the street at this point and they can be bought for $300 or less in decent shape - but they are long discontinued so some repair parts may be scarce. If your software only supports MCU and not HUI, it will not work with a HUI hardware controller. While the two formats are very similar they are NOT identical or compatible. The MCU communication protocol includes pretty much everything that the HUI had plus some further advances, and most DAW software supports MCU, whereas software that never had HUI support in the first place is probably never going to have it at this point since the hardware has been discontinued for many years. The HUI also had a couple of mic preamps as well, so in the end it was a similar combinations of features to what you'd find on today's SSL Nucleus. The HUI was larger and bulkier than the MCU and was also a monitor controller, so it had audio ins and outs for connection between your DAW and your speakers. Later versions called Mackie Control Universal (aka MCU) appeared once other software began supporting the Mackie Control protocol, which was originally developed by Mackie and Emagic specifically for Logic. The Mackie Control was at first a dedicated controller for Logic, and the front panel labels reflected this. HUI was the first controller from Mackie and is very old.
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