Mackie Designs (www.mackie.com) announced the arrival of Baby HUI into its growing family of high-performance, touch-sensitive control surfaces. Baby HUI (U.S. $799 MSRP) is a control surface that supports the HUI/MIDI-mapping protocol, allowing it to work right out of the box with any HUI-supported digital audio workstation on PC or Mac platforms. The growing family of HUI-supported DAWs currently includes Mackie Broadcast Professional Soundscape 32, Mackie Mixtreme, Digidesign Pro Tools and Digi 001, MOTU Digital Performer, Steinberg Nuendo, Emagic MicroLogic and many others.
Baby HUI (3.4×14.6×10.1, HxWxD; 7.6 pounds) allows users to interact with their favorite DAW through a familiar analog-style interface rather than a mouse. “With Baby HUI, users will no longer have to rely on a mouse to delicately move a fader or rotate knobs on screen,” explained Keith Olsen, corporate director, global recording market and product development at Mackie Designs Inc. “These simple actions can become frustrating and even time-consuming when attempted with a mouse. Baby HUI provides the ‘human touch’ of analog faders and knobs. Actions that would require multiple mouse clicks can be accomplished with a simple push of a button, slide of a fader or a turn of a knob.”
Baby HUI features eight channel strips that each include a 60mm touch-sensitive motorized fader, Mute and Solo buttons, and a signal LED. Multi-functional rotary encoders accompany each channel strip, which provide pan or send level controls along with channel select, record arming and automation arming functions. Baby HUI also supports a full automation assignment section, display buttons, undo, tape-style transport controls and a shift modifier to double up with certain controls.
“Baby HUI is ideal for hobbyists and professionals alike and is perfect for just about anyone looking to improve the ergonomics of their studio without straining their budget,” commented Olsen. “And, it has a marked advantage over similar products because it will work right out of the box with a huge family of digital audio workstations that already support the HUI protocol.”
