JazzMutant Dexter
Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY JASON SCOTT ALEXANDER
A little more than a year ago, Remix took a good long look at Lemur, JazzMutant's pioneering foray into the brave new world of multitouch interface design. Without any physical controls, Lemur used only its programmable touch screen to command virtually any hardware or software you'd find onstage or in a studio. With its Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol, not only could you design your own screens and GUI objects, but you could also assign parameter control and object behaviors any way you chose — truly a “blank slate” control surface.
Based on the same hardware, Dexter is an adapted version aimed strictly at DAW control, exchanging the user-customizability of OSC for bound control of specific workstations — namely Apple Logic Pro, Cakewalk Sonar and Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo. Lemur users will be interested to note that a firmware upgrade will soon be available (price TBA) that enables the device to boot to either a Dexter or Lemur operating system. Conversely, Dexter is easily updated to Lemur status as well.
SOMETHING TO LEAN ON
The size of an average laptop, Dexter features the same road-durable metal chassis, sexy curves and glossy graphite fleck finish as Lemur. Save for four small backlit buttons located in the upper-right corner handling global commands, a 2-inch protective bezel (the front of which is ramped to act as an armrest) ensconces the patented 800-by-600 pixel, 12-inch TFT multitouch display. Unlike most touch displays, Dexter lets you use as many fingers as you can to control multiple parameters simultaneously. Whether it's adjusting gain and pan of multiple tracks or tweaking virtual instruments and filter banks at the same time, Dexter allows you to grab hold of controls with both hands, just as you would in the physical world.
That's not to say that what you see on your DAW screen is what appears on Dexter's display. With its own CPU and graphics processor embedded, Dexter uses bidirectional communication to mirror project states, which are contextually displayed through its own set of graphic representations.
The virtual on-screen widgets of course don't wear out the way moving parts can. If you look closely at the display (with Dexter turned off), you'll actually see the grid-work of sensors sandwiched within the touch layer. The protective film covering this matrix is extremely durable and resistant to scratching or dings by most sharp objects. In fact, you'll find that fingernails provide more precise control than using the tips of your fingers. I also noted that the brightness and viewing angle of Dexter's display is much better than your average laptop screen, making it easily visible under spotlights or bright outdoor conditions.
PLUG AND GO
The back panel sports a power jack for its line-lump transformer, an on/off switch and 100Base-T Ethernet port. The installation disc has small driver plug-ins specific to each supported DAW; I reviewed Dexter with Logic Pro 7.2, which required installation of an intermediary application called JazzDaemon from the disc. Plug Dexter into your computer or network router, select the Dexter plug-in from your DAW's control surfaces list and, through automatic IP detection, communication begins with no mapping necessary. It's quick and simple.
Dexter opens to its main Arrange screen, where eight channel strips and one master strip fill the display horizontally. Across the top is a menu bar/transport/timecode display. Channels take on different colors depending on their DAW state: shades of blue differentiate active from muted tracks, while red or yellow backgrounds make record-enabled or soloed tracks stand out. Rather than the endless channel paging you find on conventional controllers, an icon in Dexter's menu bar opens a miniaturized view of all eight available fader banks, displaying 64 total channels. This view is tremendously helpful in scanning track status of the entire “console” on one screen. Tap the bank you wish to work on to blow up only those eight faders on Dexter's display. The only downside is when sessions exceed 64 tracks/audio objects; then you'll need to select them with a mouse in your DAW.
The Track Filtering feature instantly sorts tracks by their current state, which is very useful. Selecting the record-ready icon, for instance, displays only armed inputs. Dexter allows you to decipher unwieldy large sessions by hunting down stray muted or soloed tracks in a flash. Another smart navigation feature, Dynamic Grouping, shades the Dexter's display military night-ops green, allowing you to assign any number of tracks to upward of eight available groups. That is ideal for creating focused views on drums, guitars, vocals, etc. Unfortunately, group assignments disappear once Dexter is powered down, rather than storing within your DAW session.
MIX MASTER
At the top of each channel strip sits an EQ Curve button that launches a full-screen equalization envelope, complete with band selection, Q and gain control. Benefits of multitouch technology become apparent as you reach in with both hands and start finger painting EQ curves. You can yank cutoffs and Q-points left and right, haul gain levels up and down, and generally fondle your sound with great spontaneity. Other buttons also allow you to freeze peak gains while you sweep frequency centers, or vice versa.
Pressing the Plug-Ins button takes you to an insert effects edit page for that channel. Although Dexter unfortunately cannot instantiate plug-ins on its own, tabs across the top of the page can select effects already in place. Plug-in parameters are adjusted using faders — again, scrollable in banks for plug-ins with more than eight parameters. Faders are labeled by name and have their own value boxes. Under its current OS, Dexter cannot access or display parameters to virtual instruments. That's too bad because hands-on interfacing with synth and sampler parameters could have been one of Dexter's strongest selling points. Hopefully an update will rectify that.
The Edit button on any channel strip takes you to an all-in-one overview screen that displays reduced-size EQ, Sends and Effects edit windows, plus an assignable x-y pad with real-time scrollable parameter pairings and a surround panner. You can expand each of those to fill the screen quickly and restore them down again, which is awesome for live performance.
In its expanded view, Dexter's Surround Panning controller is truly special. Anywhere within its three concentric rings, you can freely position objects (displayed as colored balls), selectable in banks of eight from your session's tracklist. Pressing the Rotate button allows you to change the angle of your entire surround landscape, while leaving objects in relative position with each other. Dragging your fingers apart with the Pinch function activated will proportionally adjust the full left-center-right-surround width. Using tabs across the top of the panner, you can isolate the view to only the track elements you wish to work on. Those changes can be made across the entire mix, one track at a time or to only certain tracks using the bank-select buttons.
JazzMutant really has its graphic ergonomics game tight. The new zoomable controllers are awesome, allowing you to tweak the resolution of tactile actions in real time. For instance, you can momentarily zoom in on a fader when you need extra throw precision, or when you want to tightly focus on a filter's resonance. It's fantastic for recording detailed automation. It's also cool how JazzMutant integrated metering into the channel faders. Because all track and sequence information flows continuously and at very high speed, metering is smooth, and Dexter's parameters are always kept current. What I really love is that parameter names and track values are always showed in full, not some cryptic four-character consonant abbreviation.
Dexter's touch sensitivity and responsiveness is quite good, for the most part. On button objects, I detected no latency between my fingers touching the screen and a response showing on either Dexter or the DAW. Faders and objects of deeper behavior, such as the surround panning balls, were a different story, often lagging behind or “losing connection” with my finger. Typically, the lags were visual only and didn't seem to affect DAW performance, but dropouts meant I had to go back and reattempt the edit.
An example of thoughtful design is that touching a point outside a neighboring object and then moving your finger into it will not accidentally trigger a response. That's an invaluable feature when mixing in a jostling live situation. Similarly, you won't lose your fader throw — even if you move outside of its channel area — as long as you don't lift your finger off the display. That makes sprawled-finger, two-hand group mixing possible.
FINAL FINGER POINTS
Whereas Lemur's modular concept shot for maximum versatility and adaptability, programming the little monkey took some technical chutzpah. Dexter is for the rest of us. Not only does it bring common DAW functions to your fingertips, but it also successfully manages to represent more obscure controls in a user-friendly manner. Using Dexter doesn't feel like work; I actually played with my arrangements and mixes a lot more creatively with it.
Dexter's interface inspired me to try wild multipoint EQ and filter contortions in real time, never before possible with only a mouse or even most control surfaces. When it came time to mix, I literally flew through a 24-track session with a kind of innate sense as to where everything should be. It was the first time I'd ever worked with a tactile controller that didn't encumber me with any complexities. Automation moves are fast and effortless, and I ended up performing more creatively and more often. Not surprisingly, the more adventurous your automation becomes — especially with simple levels, mutes and sends automation — the more your mixes start to open up and develop natural dynamics.
I'd love to see a little more console “center section” functionality. The transport section is too rudimentary, forcing you back to the computer and mouse to set up cycled recording, loop points, punch-ins, song markers, etc. But an on-screen QWERTY interface and cursor pad would be necessary to do away with a keyboard and mouse completely. Also, a blank tablet interface has such a chameleon-like advantage over hardwired controllers, it's a downright shame that Dexter doesn't provide DAW-specific edit commands. Hopefully JazzMutant will continually add functionality via updates, not to mention more DAW compatibility. JazzMutant mentioned that Digidesign doesn't provide a software development kit (SDK) for Pro Tools compatibility, and that Ableton's SDK needs some work before Dexter can support Live.
Granted, Dexter's not inexpensive, but I find it condescending to suggest a product is beyond someone's reach. However, it is odd to me from a marketing standpoint that JazzMutant would peg Dexter at roughly $400 more than the asking price of Lemur. By distilling the open-box concept into a closed box, you lose the on-screen development and ability to perform many of the cool tricks and niche workarounds that caught our attention with Lemur in the first place. I understand the value in having the interface design and programming done for you, but how will these two units distinguish themselves once Lemur's firmware can boot into Dexter OS?
Perhaps there will be a price adjustment when that happens, or they may become a single product that can boot to either OS, but it's all speculation until then. Any way you look at it, there are plenty of other more affordable controllers out there, but none as exciting as Dexter (or Lemur, for that matter). If its features appeal to you, and you're willing to adopt breakthrough technology early on, Dexter will bring you closer to your music than anything else.
JAZZMUTANT
DEXTER > $3,399
Pros: Excellent multitouch facilities. Intuitive layout. 800-by-600 pixel 12-inch TFT display. Fast 100Base-T Ethernet connection allows for thousands of simultaneous data commands and smooth multichannel metering. Wonderfully inspiring to work with.
Cons: Not user programmable. Doesn't yet support programs such as Pro Tools, Live and Reason. Could use more DAW-specific commands and virtual instrument control.
Contact: www.jazzmutant.com
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Mac: OS X; Ethernet port; Apple Logic Pro or Steinberg Cubase 4 for host
PC: Windows XP; Ethernet port; Cakewalk Sonar or Steinberg Cubase or Nuendo for host
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