JazzMutant Dexter

The idea behind Dexter is to give you a full display that you can touch, and unlike most touch screens sold in  computer stores, one that you can touch in more than one place at the same time. Dexter’s predecessor, the JazzMutant Lemur (reviewed Mar. ’06) did the same thing. But while the Lemur gave users the freedom to create their own control layouts, tweaking those layouts to your needs could take hours of work. Dexter, in contrast, is usable for all the most common music production tasks right out of the box. Pre-configured setups for mixing, transport control, effects, EQ, and placing channels in a surround space integrate automatically with supported DAWs (see “Vital Stats” at right). JazzMutant says support for additional DAWs is planned in the future, and though Digidesign Pro Tools doesn’t support necessary functionality on Dexter, it will work in a limited way with MIDI on Lemur.

SETUP

The Dexter unit itself is a rugged-feeling piece of hardware that looks like the Minority Report take on an Etch-a-Sketch. Before powering on, it also looks just like the Lemur. The biggest difference between the two can be measured with a stopwatch — from unboxing the Dexter unit to controlling faders in Sonar took me about three minutes.

To connect the Dexter, run an Ethernet cable from it directly to your computer, or use an Ethernet router or switch if you also need your computer’s Ethernet port for internet access. One very cool feature is that if you plug the Dexter into a home network router as I did, you can connect to it from any other computers on that network. You could share it, for instance, between a Mac running Apple Logic and a PC running Cakewalk Sonar. You can make network settings manually, but in most cases the automatic DHCP option, which should be familiar to anyone who’s set up a home computer to get online, works without a hitch.

A simple Mac or PC installation prompts you to choose which DAWs you want. Once installed, add the Dexter as a control surface in each DAW’s setup or preferences, and Dexter automatically connects to your DAW of choice. I simply added the Dexter control surface in Sonar, which then appeared in the AutoConnect pane of Dexter’s setup page. Then, I had instant access to mix channels, buses, sends, automation controls, transport controls, EQ, effects settings, and surround panning. Some things you can do with hardware control surfaces aren’t implemented in the Dexter yet. For instance, it’s not possible to instantiate a plug-in from Dexter; you’ll still need a mouse for that. This feature is promised for a future version, but was unavailable at press time. However, you can navigate the vast majority of your DAW’s settings and easily move between mix channels in an uncommonly compact space.

MIXING AND TWEAKING

The original Lemur interface was fascinating, with simulated physics, but the resulting graphics were often abstract, and its interface widgets tended to be more evocative of futuristic musical computer games than a control surface. Though the Dexter’s screen still looks pretty and futuristic, it’s also more immediately musician-friendly. Channel strips show details like automation switches and EQ inserts where you’d expect to find them — I could control most of the settings before cracking the manual. The interface also shows greater attention to the details you deal with to get real work done.

Dexter has several basic views: Mixer, Channel Edit, Equalizer, Insert, and Surround. The Channel Edit view in particular really shines: surround, effects, EQ, and channel strip settings are consolidated on a single display, something you normally get only on your computer screen (see Figure 1 below). Across the top of the screen is a ribbon that displays navigation and transport controls, so they’re always readily available. Each view also has a “scribble strip,” which provides a consistent set of labels for tracks. This becomes particularly useful in surround mode, since it lets you choose which surround channels to use with panners and other controls.

This scheme has two key advantages over a hardware control surface: ease of navigating lots of channels, and control over detailed parameters. That’s especially powerful with surround, because it means the necessary juggling of mix automation, effects, and EQ across multiple channels finally becomes accessible.

The touch-sensitivity is very high-resolution, greater than what you’d find on a typical touchscreen tablet PC, for instance. But it is necessarily limited in real-world accuracy by both the available screen size and the size of your fingertip, i.e. it’s still fundamentally easier to do big gestures than small ones. The big innovations in the Dexter are that it can hold either the X or Y axis fixed as you tweak, and Dexter Zoom. Locking down one axis means you can, say, fine-tune one setting of an EQ (say, a band’s center frequency) without inadvertent finger motion affecting another (e.g., that band’s gain). Dexter Zoom lets you touch and drag to zoom in on a fader or parameter, then zoom out again for coarser adjustments.

As you get deeper into the Effects, Surround, and EQ views, you begin to see the additional work done on the Dexter versus the Lemur. Effects parameters are combined into an integrated, tabbed view using a set of faders, with the channel strip always visible on the right. EQ and Surround are where things start to get fun. The EQ setup has draggable bands, so you can fine-tune frequencies individually. Surround goes further, with gestures for rotating the entire surround space and expanding or tightening overall spatialization of sounds. These views also benefit from the new zoom and constrain features. You could do some of this on the Lemur, but not with this amount of fine-tuning, and not without a lot of programming. With the Dexter, you plug the settings into your DAW, and everything just works.

A few areas could use improvement if a conventional computer screen is taken as the measuring stick. Faders have level metering, but it’d be great to have a live spectrum dancing on the EQ. The main Mixer window shows all of the mixing parameters, but it doesn’t have the thumbnail EQ preview most DAWs now have onscreen, or an indication of what plug-ins are active on a track. JazzMutant regularly provides software updates, so it’d be great to see these things added in one.

My only true disappointment is that you can’t go beyond the basic layouts. A firmware update now lets you choose between the Dexter’s baked-in DAW capabilities and the Lemur’s open-ended, custom controllers, but you have to decide at power-up. That means there’s no way to use the Dexter’s layouts for DAW mixing while adding a custom page for controlling your favorite synth at the same time. Since the whole point of the Dexter and Lemur is having unique controller layouts, that’s a significant drawback.

IN USE

I used the Dexter with a Mac running Apple Logic Studio and a Windows Vista PC running Cakewalk Sonar 7. In each, configuration took only about as long as running the installer. The Dexter integrates perfectly with the control surface support in those applications — something that’s almost magical when you see everything just appear on the Dexter’s screen.

Working with this multi-touch screen is an aesthetic delight, but its practicality depends on the task at hand. Dexter Zoom is nice, but you can get the same results with more tactile feedback by gently nudging a touch-sensitive hardware fader. On the other hand, the Dexter is very useful when working with lots of tracks in cramped quarters, or working with surround panning for even a few tracks (since surround multiplies the number of channels so quickly). Where the Dexter really comes alive is in navigating complex mixes with lots of effects and surround. Dexter’s ability to juggle just these settings becomes invaluable (see Figure 2 above). That Dexter also requires essentially no setup is a huge boon. Ironically, having criticized the Lemur for being too time-intensive to configure, I now wish I could add a page or two of custom controls to the Dexter’s existing layouts, using the buttons at the top of the unit to switch between modes. With JazzMutant now having taken care of the basics, it could free up Dexter owners to spend more time with custom controls, which I predict they’ll want to do as they become more familiar with it. Integration of basic mixing templates and custom layouts would also be far more useful without having to reboot into “Lemur mode.”

CONCLUSIONS

JazzMutant’s vision of multi-touch control is starting to seep into the marketplace, scaled down in the form of the Apple iPhone, and implemented in a tabletop-type device with Microsoft’s high-end “Surface” controller. If you want to reap the benefits of that technology in your studio right now, though, the Lemur and Dexter are your only real choices. Dexter offers substantial advantages over hardware control surfaces in terms of precision, control of multiple parameters at once, ease of navigation when working with surround and multiple channels, and vivid visual feedback. There’s no question that its out-of-box integration with DAWs opens up multi-touch technology to a broader audience. At the same time, all control options involve tradeoffs. Dexter’s compact size, visual feedback, and flexibility mean spending more and getting less tactile feedback than you would with well-known hardware control surfaces such as the Mackie Control Universal. I do hope JazzMutant will find a way to let you mix and match the somewhat avant-garde custom layouts possible on the Lemur with the Dexter’s ready-to-use DAW control templates. Still, the Dexter is sure to find a home when a small footprint is needed or deep sonic tweaking outweighs bread-and-butter mixing. For sheer innovation, JazzMutant remains a step ahead of the industry with an unparalleled alternative means of DAW control.

CLAIM CHECK

Axel Delafon of JazzMutant says, “Dexter redefines the very interaction between a digital audio workstation and its user. This laptop-sized control surface has been designed with only one purpose in mind: Making the user experience more pleasant, playful, and efficient. For the first time, controlling your DAW with hardware feels natural, instead of adding another level of complexity.”

SPECS

Multi-touch DAW control surface and display.

PROS
Works with almost zero setup. Powerful tools for adjusting EQ and surround parameters. Multi-touch control. Makes navigating lots of channels and parameters easy.

CONS
Can’t mix and match Dexter’s layouts with custom, Lemur-style layouts, even on a separate page. Using a touchscreen means sacrificing tactile feedback. Pricey.

$3,399
JazzMutant, www.jazzmutant.com
U.S. dist. by Magic Audio, www.magicaudio.com