Jazz Mutant Dexter

DEXTER, by JazzMutant, redefines the very interaction between digital audio workstations and users. This laptop-sized control surface has been designed with only one purpose in mind: making user experience more pleasant, playful and efficient. Dexter brings the power of digital audio workstations to your fingertips, in a creative and user-friendly manner. For the first time, controlling DAWs feels natural instead of adding an intermediate level of complexity. In a word, Dexter amounts to what DAW users have been awaiting for years: a Controller. At last.

At the foundation of Dexter’s groundbreaking concept lies JazzMutant’s patented Multitouch Display Technology. Unlike traditional touch-sensitive displays, Dexter’s sensor lets your ten fingers perform simultaneous actions on-screen with great responsiveness. While this means basic operations like levelling multiple tracks are perfectly possible with Dexter, this also allows for novel and intuitive ways to navigate inside a project and interact with its various aspects like equalizers, inserts and surround panning. Dexter's virtual widgets are immune to wear-out, and make DAW controlling feel and look natural.

Seamless Integration with Thorough Visual Feedback
Visual feedback has long been the Achille's heel of controllers. With Dexter, users experience a feedback so complete they can switch off their computer's display altogether.Indeed, never has a controller been as tightly integrated with Digital Audio Workstations. JazzMutant has partnered with leading DAW developers to offer visual feedback and two-way communication. The entire state of your project is constantly mirrored on Dexter's screen : track and effects names fully displayed with no abbreviations, level meters, timecode, as well as precise surround position and exact EQ curves updated in real-time.

Zoomable Controllers
In order to provide the finest precision of control, JazzMutant introduces a whole new concept with Dexter : that of zoomable controllers. You can now tweak in real time the resolution you want to achieve from a set of controllers. Zoom in on your faders when you need that extra bit of precision in a mix. Zoom out when you’re looking for the widest range achievable. Zoomable controllers are priceless when it comes to adjusting the threshold of a compressor or the cutoff frequency of a filter. Dexter brings matchless precision to your mix that top-of-the-range physical faders just can’t compete with.

Crystal Clear Mixing Interface
One glimpse suffices to get acquainted with Dexter's workspace. Its design goes to the point and is immediately understandable : all functions are available through explicit icons. The main interface on Dexter accurately mimics the mixer of your DAW. For greater visual comfort, each individual track is pictured with a specific color that represents its current state : shades of blue differentiate active tracks from muted ones, while red or yellow backgrounds make record enabled or soloed tracks stand out from the rest.

Full-Featured Channel Edit
Get a full overview of what's going on in any particular track from the Channel Edit page : equalizer and insert parameters, surround panning and bus sends are conveniently placed for maximum efficiency.

Bank Navigation
Dexter has been designed to offer the most immediate access to any feature of your Digital Audio Workstation. With conventional control surfaces, navigating inside a large-scaled project can rapidly turn into a nightmare. Instead, Dexter introduces the most evident way of browsing through your project, by including an arsenal of fancy widgets making operation more efficient and pleasant than ever. The smart Overview widget displays a miniaturized view of the whole mixer, showing up to 64 tracks at a time with levels and color-coded states. Swiping a finger across the view discloses the content of each bank of tracks, making each one of them accessible in a snap.

Track Filtering
For smarter navigation a unique set of buttons allows you to rearrange Dexter’s mixer on the fly. These allow instant sorting of your channels based on your needs. Press the View Solo button to display only the soloed tracks on the screen. With Dexter, channels you don’t need never get in your way.

Dynamic Grouping
Dexter features a convenient mode of operation that lets the user create groups of tracks on the fly. Press the Group Edit button and choose with your finger whichever tracks should belong to the currently selected group. When you're done, you can display at any given time any one of 8 saved groups, each containing any number of tracks.

Outstanding EQ Controller
Dexter’s beautiful EQ controller will amaze you straight away. Exactly mirroring the filter curve of your sequencer’s EQ, this appealing interface particularly benefits from Multitouch technology in order to bring spontaneity and precision to the uppermost level. Dexter’s EQ controller offers a dual operation mode, where vertical axis movements can either control the gain or the slope of a particular band. It also features the same zooming capabilities as track faders for best accuracy. This way, you can zoom around a particular frequency, lock it when you've found a resonance, an proceed to setting up the Gain or quality factor.

User-Friendly Effects Tweaking
Dexter succeeds where almost control surfaces have failed so far - where it comes to setting up insert effects. Forget about those unnatural key sequences to access a particular parameter of an insert on a track. Dexter lets you jump from the touch of a finger to a unified interface that shows every effect and parameter in a clear way.

window enables to move from one insert to the other, while a drawbar at the bottom of the interface facilitates navigation among the numerous parameters of plugins. Distinctive faders allow to control your insert parameters, as well as read all automation data from your DAW.

Multi-Channel Surround Sound Positioning
With its unique palette of tools dedicated to sound spatialization, Dexter is a dream come true for multichannel work. Its breakthrough surround panner provides live monitoring of up to eight channel positions in the surround space. Sound sources can be naturally moved around with the tips of your fingers in the most intuitive manner. For maximum flexibility, you can easily hide any tracks that you do not wish to manipulate. To ensure better control over trajectories, the lock buttons on the sidebar let you preserve either the angle or the distance form the center of any track.

Dexter also introduces novel ways of reshaping the whole surround soudscape through simple finger gestures. Rotation of all your sound sources can be achieved by manipulating the panner just like a spinning vynil. Drag two fingers apart to spray all sources away from the center.

Features:

• Multi-touch sensing with visual feedback
• Built-in computing resources
• Robust design
• Fast ethernet connectivity
• Fully upgradable firmware