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Title of Equipment: Evolution UC-33e Price Paid / Price New: €209($272) / €289($377) Year Manufactured: 2004 Specs: The UC-33e is a keyboardless USB MIDI-controller manufactured by a subsidiary of the legendary M-Audio. It has 9 volume sliders, 24 knobs, 16 buttons that work as on/off switches (values 0/127), and 2 buttons that work as half/off switches (values 0/63). All of these controls can be configured to work with any program that accepts MIDI in-signals. Additional in/outputs include MIDI in, MIDI out, and a jack for a 9V DC power supply. The controller comes with presets for Reason, Live and 31 other programs/modules. Included also are 5 cover templates for the unit that clearly mark what each switch does in a certain preset. I don't need them but having them is a plus since I can use them to cut out same-size templates from transparencies and mark them with what each control does in a song of mine. Last but not the least, the controller has a handy little display that shows the value of the switch currently being tweaked. Equipment Quality: 5/5. The controller is surprisingly small and light, yet it doesn't feel like a toy at all. The knobs and sliders provide just the ideal amount of resistance for quick and accurate tweaking. The petite buttons are covered with soft rubber so even sweaty fingers won't slip on them. Pressing and depressing them also yields a nice clicking sound and you can feel the motion in your finger clearly so you'll never have to guess whether you actually pushed the button or not. They also can take a righteous amount of punishment, which was a pleasant surprise to me, since my improvised noise sessions tend to be rough on the gear. As a nice extra touch the volume sliders are equipped with small leds so they can easily be seen in the dark too. Usefullness: 4/5. The UC-33e has just about everything you can ask from this kind of a controller, except for one thing: I would really have liked to have one or two switches that go from 0 to 127 when pressed and back to 0 when depressed. I don't know how well this gem works with other software, but it was ridiculously easy to configure it to work with Jeskola Buzz. I could complain about the sometimes noticeable MIDI latency, but it's Buzz's fault, not the controller's. There's also a nice feature called MIDI mute, which allows the user to set any knob to any value without sending any control signals to the computer while the muting is on. Overall Value: 4/5. Except for the lack of 0-127-0 switches the UC-33e has everything I could ask for in a MIDI controller. Kekkoslovakia fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 16, 2005 |
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Dec 21, 2004 18:23
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 09:26 |
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