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AUDITION

M-AUDIO iCONTROL
USB CONTROLLER FOR APPLE GARAGEBAND
by Michael Gallant

Endless knobs, which


are click-y rather than
smooth, let you adjust
track volume, as well
as individual parame-
ters on “Generator,”
“Effects,” and other
edit windows.

Aesthetically, the
iControl’s a fitting
companion to
GarageBand, faux-
wood siding and all.

Standard transport Light-up buttons can


USB controller with
controls let you navi- be hard to see in a
MIDI input for
gate and record fluorescent-lit room, GarageBand.
without all that but can give you a
squinty point-and- quick system assess- PROS
click business. ment under different Very user-friendly
lighting conditions. and intuitive.
Provides high level
of tactile control and
makes the record-
With the iControl, M-Audio makes Apple GarageBand, already one ing/sequencing
of the friendliest recording/sequencing programs on the market, process significantly
even friendlier. smoother. Cute
and huggable.
OVERVIEW Inexpensive.
The USB-powered controller draws its wood-paneled design
scheme from GarageBand itself and places many of the program’s CONS
triggers and parameters — physically — at your fingertips. It pro- Doesn’t work with
Parameter buttons vides the sort of tactile hands-on control of GarageBand you might GarageBand version
let you get at the expect from a high-end control surface. 1.0.
guts of your individ-
ual tracks quickly CONTROL SURFACE M-Audio,
and easily. First things first: This is one attractive piece of gear — more www.m-audio.com
understatedly classy and huggable than downright sexy, but
attractive all the same. And thanks to the varied, well-planned $179.95
textures with which M-Audio constructed the surfaces, buttons,

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AUDITION
M-AUDIO iCONTROL
USB CONTROLLER FOR APPLE GARAGEBAND

The Back Panel


The iControl is as plug-and-play as it
gets — just link it into your Mac via USB
and your setup is done. The single MIDI
in jack is a nice port-saving feature too,
since it allows the iControl to ferry MIDI data from another external controller to GarageBand
directly, without the need for a separate connection. And with a unit as pretty and portable as
this one — the laptop lock port is an excellent addition. Among other users, educators using
the iControl in a classroom setting will definitely appreciate this added bit of security.

and knobs, it feels excellent as well. The buttons are


COMPATABILITY cushy, elevated, and rubberized, so you can easily find
Though the iControl is currently them by touch alone, and the knobs provide enough
mapped specifically for friction to give you a solid grip every time you reach
GarageBand, M-Audio says for them. The buttons also become subtly lighted
that support for the device in when selected, so you can tell at a glance which tracks
Logic Express 7 and Logic Pro 7 are armed for recording, which ones are muted,
is in the works. And if you have soloed, or looped. The device occupies a small footprint
the patience, you can always and is as light and portable as you could ask for. At
manually map the iControl to the same time, it feels solid, gracefully laid out, and
work with your DAW of choice. well constructed. The design team at M-Audio should
iControl is designed specifically get a solid “A” on this one.
for GarageBand 2.0.1 or higher. Connecting the device to GarageBand is as simple
It won’t work with version 1.0. as it gets. Hook the iControl’s single USB port to one
(We tried. . . .) You can upgrade on your Mac and you’ve got instant control over the
previous versions of GarageBand program: no drivers, no configuration, no nothing.
with the iLife ’05 bundle for And thanks to the lone MIDI in jack on the back of the
$79.90 (single user) or $99.90 iControl, it’s just as easy hook up an external MIDI
(family pack: up to five users in controller and send sequencing data through the same
the same household). USB connection. If only everything about electronic
Unfortunately, at this time Apple music was this easy. . . .
doesn’t offer GarageBand
upgrades on a standalone basis. CONTROL
Once you’re plugged into GarageBand, iControl gives
you deep and wide-ranging power over the program.
CLAIM CHECK All the standard transport functions are there in
M-Audio says: “We designed front of you, in addition to a Loop On/Off button,
iControl for the new group of which is a nice addition, especially given
GarageBand musicians and hobby- GarageBand’s loop friendliness.
ists, bringing them a level of Each set of individual track controls (and there
hands-on control typically asso- are eight of ’em) is basically a physical manifestation of
ciated with professional studios. the controls you see on the screen — Track Select,
The iControl surface emulates Record Enable, Mute, and Solo buttons — as well as a
the application’s on-screen rotary encoder dial that can be used to edit volume, EQ,
layout, making iControl quite panning, or other parameters. Track Info, Generator,
intuitive for GarageBand users. Effect, and EQ buttons give you easy access to all the
Beyond offering a natural, tactile guts of a selected track. And once inside Track Info
feel for on-screen controls, mode, the eight Select buttons and eight endless dials
physical controls enable the become linked to the tracks’ parameters. One row lets
adjustment of multiple parame- you tweak the compressor, for example, and another
ters at the same time — some- gives you power over the level of reverb. Additional
thing that can’t be done with a levels of control come from the universal Volume and
mouse alone! Pan buttons. Press Volume and the endless dials con-
iControl is easy to set-up. By trol each track’s level. Press Pan and they control the
simply plugging the USB cable tracks’ placement, left to right.
from the iControl into a Mac, What if you’re dealing with more than eight tracks?
GarageBand automatically recog- No problem. The Track/Parameter Up and Down but-
nizes and enables the iControl. tons let you scroll through tracks eight at a time. Even
iControl is the only control with a large amount of tracks going, it takes only a few
surface designed for button presses to gain access to whatever you need to
GarageBand and offers the tweak. And unlike when you’re dealing with a mouse,
deepest and most reliable con- you can tweak multiple parameters at once.
trol integration available.
IN USE
I used the iControl to play with GarageBand on a Mac
Michael Gallant performs and composes in Mini and Keyboard’s studio Mac G5. Some of the time, I
Northern California. A brand new resident
of San Francisco, he enjoys shooting water
used it both to control the program and to feed it MIDI
balloons off of . . . er, watching sunsets data from a Yamaha S90 ES (see review on page 66). I
from his roof deck. also used it to test out loops from Big Fish Audio’s Rock

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VITAL STATS
POWER SOURCE
USB.
COMPUTER CONNECTIVITY
1 USB port.
MIDI CONNECTORS
1 MIDI in.
TRANSPORT CONTROLS
Record, Rewind to Start, Rewind, Play, Fast
Forward, Loop Enable, Jog Wheel.
SELECTED TRACK PARAMETER
BUTTONS
Track Info, Generator, Effect 1, Effect 2, EQ.
UNIVERSAL PARAMETER BUTTONS
Volume, Pan.
SETS OF INDIVIDUAL TRACK CONTROLS
8.
INDIVIDUAL TRACK CONTROLS
Select, Record Enable, Mute, Solo; 1 endless
knob.
DIMENSIONS/WEIGHT
9.45" W x 8.40" L x 1.67" H, 3.75 lbs.

Bass (see review on page 95) and see what


raging material it could facilitate creating.
I liked the iControl straight out of the
box and, after using it to tie a number of
tools together and make music, I liked it
even more. With physical transport, select,
and edit buttons right in front of me, I found
it easy to forget about the mechanics of what
I was doing and focus almost purely on the
creative aspect. Enable a track to record with
one button push, thin out the mix by muting
the organ track with another touch, scroll
backwards with the jog wheel, and loop and
listen to the selection with a final two but-
ton pushes, adjusting playback level with the
Master Volume slider. Way easier than that
whole squint, point, and click thing.
Using the iControl as a basic MIDI interface
proved equally easy, and I found the MIDI
data to reach the computer in a timely fashion,
unencumbered by any latency issues. I did
notice a small amount of latency when using
the transport and track function buttons,
though, but this didn’t bother me. Since
those controls weren’t part of my realtime
recording process, losing a millisecond here
or there wasn’t a big deal.

CONCLUSIONS
I found the iControl to achieve one of my
loftiest expectations when it comes to music
technology: transparency. In other words, it
worked so smoothly and intuitively that I all
but forgot it was there. It significantly
improved my music-making experience and
led me to create some things I wouldn’t have
had the patience or mental bandwidth for had
I been working with GarageBand purely in
point-and-click land. Given its strong design,
strong performance, and stellar ease of use, the
iControl well deserves a Key Buy award.

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