This week Dubspot announced a remarkable hardware collab: "We could never find a single complementary controller on the market to meet our functionality and durability needs, so we decided to simply build one ourselves, with Livid Instruments as the perfect partner."
We asked our buddy Emch Subatomic, who also does some work for Dubspot, if he had anything to do with this 'retro' design. Emch says he wasn't directly involved, but he has discussed the controller with David Cross, a hardware hacker at Dubspot who has made some great dub minded custom controllers of his own in the past. Emch said he's been waiting about a decade for a quality midi mixer to dub on.
He's not the only dub producer who's interested. While some people are complaining about the lack of motorized faders, or want more faders, or even longer faders, it still seems like the DS1 got most of the buzz among dub producers in the week of the NAMM show.
The funny thing is that Dubspot needed a classic controller that works and is sturdy ~ to be able to "teach creativity". Ever since Yamaha launched the Tenori-on we've seen the rise of the USB controller grids that light up like a 70's disco floor straight out of Saturday Night Fever. While gadgets like the QuNeo 3D Pad MIDI Controller look nice, too many blinkenlights seem to get in the way of creativity.
