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Motorized faders vs conventional


glenn

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I have been reading alot of posts that disparage motorized faders in the defence of not using them in a control surface where their use would be clearly beneficial if not required. We have made consoles with and without them. If I may speak for the motorized fader that can not speak for itself. They make no "noise" when used as any other type of fader. In Zaxcoms case the motor is only active when  changing banks. They are more than smooth enough for this to not be a consideration. There is no "walking" or motor action when there should not be, and there use allows for the use of a smaller number of faders to control a larger number of channels. The use of literally millions of these over the years shows this to be true. Because we only have so many fingers motorized faders make sense when a lot of channels need to be controlled in a small space. Let's not make up or exaggerate problems that simply do not exist in order justify a design decision or disparage other products. 

 

Glenn

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I don’t have a particularly strong opinion about this either way. My only experiences with motorized faders were on mostly prosumer devices, with the possible exception of the O2R. Never liked them much, but that was more because of the plastic feel they had to them. Noise was of no concern, but obviously, the main reason they are really useful for would be bank switching and there they will always make make some noise, but that could or should be a user’s decision when to switch banks. 
Sometimes motorized faders can develop a bit of a life of their own and make very small moves on their own, or kind of twitch in position. I also had the occasional experience of having to fight the faders when I wanted to move them, but they had other plans. Obviously that won’t happen on non-motorized faders. 
In those instances I never thought that I would have preferred non-motorized faders at that moment, though

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22 hours ago, glenn said:

I have been reading alot of posts that disparage motorized faders in the defence of not using them in a control surface where their use would be clearly beneficial if not required. We have made consoles with and without them. If I may speak for the motorized fader that can not speak for itself. They make no "noise" when used as any other type of fader. In Zaxcoms case the motor is only active when  changing banks. They are more than smooth enough for this to not be a consideration. There is no "walking" or motor action when there should not be, and there use allows for the use of a smaller number of faders to control a larger number of channels. The use of literally millions of these over the years shows this to be true. Because we only have so many fingers motorized faders make sense when a lot of channels need to be controlled in a small space. Let's not make up or exaggerate problems that simply do not exist in order justify a design decision or disparage other products. 

 

Glenn

 

Where are all these disparaging posts you speak of? Who is exaggerating problems? This whole post seems unnecessary and comes off as insecure.  You should probably just let your equipment speak for itself rather than appearing to get defensive over a FAQ post from a competitor.

 

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2 hours ago, Jesse Flaitz said:

 

Where are all these disparaging posts you speak of? Who is exaggerating problems? This whole post seems unnecessary and comes off as insecure.  You should probably just let your equipment speak for itself rather than appearing to get defensive over a FAQ post from a competitor.

 

I'm not going to try and pull together all the posts that discuss motorized faders vs. non-motorized but Glenn's post, I believe, was not intended to be defensive or competitive, just merely trying to clarify many of the reasons why motorized faders make perfect sense in many situations and that they do not pose a significant problem as some had suggested in previous posts. Obviously there is personal preference to consider  ---  if the ultimate feel of the fader can only be satisfied by use of high quality P&G faders and any given piece of gear does not have these, then you need to make some choices. It is a question of priorities and functionality. In my view, the feel of the fader is important but should not be the main determining factor and I think Glenn was just trying to dispel some of the myths that motorized faders are unacceptable.

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