In this free video tutorial, brought to you with the support of Avid, Julian Rodgers introduces the S1 for those who have yet to experience how this brilliant little control surface works.

The first thing he does is to remove his tablet running the Avid Control App. The S1 is used in combination with the app, or with the Avid Dock and multiple tablets, or even multiple S1s to build a control surface which can approach the levels of control offered by the S4 and even the S6. But this level of sophistication comes with a learning curve.

Although it’s not typical, the S1 can be used on its own and using it like this makes it far less disorientating when getting to know it for the first time. In this video, Julian illustrates how the 8 encoders and OLED screens can be used to access mixer parameters and inserts, either row by row across the tracks on the Pro Tools Mixer or vertically, down a single track.

There is of course far more to this control surface but this is a good place to start the journey. Check back for more on the S1 soon.

Normal Mode

in this mode the 8 encoders and 8 OLED screens display whichever parameter is selected on the buttons above the screens (Pan, Aux, Inserts etc.) showing one horizontal row across the Pro Tools Mixer. The row displayed can be changed using the Page up/down buttons. For Pan controls each channel can be accessed in the same way.

Channel Mode

This mode displays multiple parameters for the single, currently attentioned track. Plugin parameters and routing parameters can be accessed from here but in this example, the use of Channel mode is restricted to accessing the top level of parameters.