A control surface is a piece of hardware — motorized faders, knobs, and transport buttons — that lets you mix and run AnalogDAW with your hands instead of the mouse or trackpad. AnalogDAW supports control surfaces on both macOS and iPad/iPhone, and the connection is two-way: when you move a fader on screen, the motor fader on the hardware follows, and the scribble strips, LEDs, and meters stay in sync.
Open the setup from ☰ ▸ Audio Settings… ▸ Control Surface ▸ Configure….
AnalogDAW speaks two control-surface "languages":
Your configuration is remembered between sessions — it belongs to your studio, not to any one project.
The same setup sheet includes MIDI Sync for instruments and sequencers that need to follow AnalogDAW's transport tempo.
Playback from the top sends MIDI Start; playback from later in the timeline sends Song Position Pointer followed by MIDI Continue once the rounded song-position value is nonzero. Stop sends MIDI Stop. Changing the project tempo while playing updates the outgoing clock immediately.
This is tempo/bar-beat transport sync, not full SMPTE or machine-control chase. Seeking and loop wraps briefly send MIDI Stop, then a new Song Position Pointer and MIDI Continue, but AnalogDAW does not yet send MTC or MMC.
With a Mackie-class surface, AnalogDAW maps the controls the way you'd expect. The fader strips control your whole console — not just audio tracks but also VCAs, mix buses, and aux returns — and the dedicated master fader always rides the master. Use the global-view buttons to focus the strips on one channel type (Tracks, Buses, Aux, VCAs) or show them all in console order.
Channels (per fader strip)
Banking — a surface has a fixed number of strips (usually eight). Use Bank Left/Right to page through your channels eight at a time, or Channel Left/Right to nudge by one. Banking spans every channel in the current view — tracks, then VCAs, then buses, then auxes — and the master fader always controls the master output. The global-view buttons narrow the view to a single channel type, or back to the whole console: Audio → tracks, VCA → VCA groups, Bus → mix buses, and Outputs → the output buses (the master and the cue/headphone buses). The full-console (All) view also includes the cue buses and master at the very end. Two of these buttons toggle to a paired view when you press them again: VCA ⇄ aux (FX) returns, and Bus ⇄ Outputs. (On the FaderPort 8 the "FX" function is Shift+VCA, which the surface sends identically to a plain VCA press, so the toggle is the way to reach the FX returns; the Bus button toggles the same way for symmetry, and Shift+Bus still jumps straight to Outputs.) Bank to a cue or the master in the Outputs view to ride its level, or press its Select to focus the master for encoder editing (see Editing the master bus). (While you're editing a processor — EQ, Dynamics, a plug-in, etc. — the Bank and Channel keys navigate that channel's processor chain instead of moving the channel bank; see Edit every processor from the surface below.)
Editing buses, aux returns, and VCAs — every encoder mode that works on a track works on the selected channel: EQ, dynamics, channel-strip, and plug-in V-pot editing all follow the selected bus or aux (VCAs carry only a level). Select a bus, press EQ, and the encoders edit that bus's EQ exactly as they would a track's.
Editing the master bus — to point the surface at the master, bank to the master strip and press its Select: the master is the last channel in both the full‑console (All) view and the Outputs view, so it's always within reach even on a surface with no dedicated master fader. You can also select the master strip on screen, or bind a Focus Master control in MIDI Learn (see below). Once focused, every encoder mode edits it — no need to reach for the mouse; press a channel's Select to return to that channel. The master's EQ, compressor, and plug-in inserts edit exactly as on a channel. Two modes adapt to the master's different chain: in Dynamics the last two encoders edit the brickwall limiter (ceiling and release) where a channel shows its gate, and Channel Strip leads with the master tape stage (drive, bias, flutter) followed by the filter — the master has no preamp, gate, or de‑esser.
Transport — Play toggles playback, Stop halts playback and finishes an active recording pass, and Record toggles recording. Rewind, Fast-Forward, and Loop are also mapped, plus the jog wheel to move the playhead (press Scrub to toggle fine, audio-rate moves on and off). Pressing the jog wheel or the MCU Enter control resets the active navigator value where AnalogDAW has one; for example, while Zoom is engaged it returns timeline zoom to 100%. Click toggles the metronome, and Solo (clear) drops every solo at once — the global solo indicator lights whenever anything is soloed. The time display shows the playhead position; SMPTE/Beats toggles it between timecode and bars/beats (the matching mode indicator lights).
Encoder (V-pot) modes — the Assign buttons change what the encoder row edits, shown on the two-character assignment display:
On surfaces without eight V-pots, such as FaderPort 8-class controllers, the focused processor modes (EQ, DY, CH, and Plug-in) also map the eight motor faders to the eight visible parameters. The scribble strips show the parameter names and values, and the faders follow or edit those parameters until you return to Pan or Sends mode.
Edit every processor from the surface — On a surface without dedicated EQ/Dynamics assign buttons (such as the FaderPort 8), press Edit Plugins (the Plug-in assign button) to start editing the selected channel's processing chain, then use the Bank and Channel navigation keys — the standard Mackie way — to move through it. Bank ◀ / ▶ jump between whole processors; Channel ◀ / ▶ step one parameter page at a time through the entire chain (so a processor with more controls than your faders, like the four-band EQ, is fully reachable). The faders and scribble strips show just the processor you're on:
(Sends sit at the very end of the walk, after the inserts, because they route post-insert.)
The Sends section gives each aux send its full on-screen control set — level, On (enable), and Pre (pre/post fader) — so you can turn sends on and off and switch pre/post right from the surface. (For quickly riding one send across many channels at once, use the dedicated Sends encoder mode instead — see below.)
Every section mirrors the on-screen panel exactly — the same controls, in the same order, over the same value ranges — so what you edit from the surface and what you see on screen always match. That includes the voicing controls and the shelf Bell switches on the EQ, the HPF/LPF switches and frequencies on the Filter, the preamp Pad and phase, the master Tape speed and wow & flutter, and the brickwall limiter's look-ahead. In the Comp section the first fader picks the compressor type (FET, Opto, Tube, VCA, Bus); change it and the rest of the controls update to match that type, exactly like the on-screen compressor (for example, FET shows Input/Output/Attack/Release and the ratio switch, Opto shows Peak Reduction). A processor with more controls than your surface has faders — the four-band EQ in particular — pages across the Bank buttons, so every control stays reachable.
The Bypass button switches the processor you're currently editing on or off. As you step through the sections, the on-screen mixer and edit-inspector strips switch to the matching tab so you can watch what the surface is editing. Landing on an insert also opens that plug-in's editor window, showing the plug-in's own interface — the same editor you'd get from the on-screen Insert slot, including third-party plug-ins.
Flip swaps the fader and encoder duties (for example, ride the selected send on the big motor faders).
Automation — the Read / Write / Touch / Latch buttons set the selected strip's fader-automation mode, including tracks, buses, auxes, VCAs, and the master. On a combined Read/Off key — the Mackie standard, and surfaces like the FaderPort 8 whose separate Off button sends nothing in MCU mode — press Read again to toggle the mode to Off. The matching LED follows the selected strip and app-side UI changes. See Mixing ▸ Automation.
Editing — Undo, Redo, and Save; Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete on the selected timeline clips; Nudge to move selected clips by a small step; and Marker to drop a marker at the playhead or jump between markers. Press Zoom to make the cursor Left/Right keys zoom the timeline in and out instead of nudging. See Editing Clips.
With the Generic MIDI Learn driver:
Bidirectional controllers (motor faders, button LEDs) get feedback where the mapping allows it.
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