ZeRO SL MkII Seamless With Pro Tools

Easy set up.Was up and running in less than an hour.Automap did all the work and walked me through step by step.In less than an hour I was working on a mix in Pro Tools.It also mapped all 91 of my plugins and was able to control them and the mix and transport.Great inexpensive unit well built and easy to get out of the way.Can not beat it for the money.

Immediately Useful, Easy to Integrate with Automap

The Novation ZeRO SL MkII was instantly the best addition to my workflow. I like to switch between using Cubase and Ableton Live. My APC controllers are great for controlling Ableton, but where the Zero is an absolute charm to use is for direct control over my VST plugins ( like Omnisphere, East West/Quantum Leap and Native Instruments Komplete). Wrapping the VST libraries with Automap is simple with the Plugin-manager. The touch-sensitive knobs and faders are fairly intuitive, allowing you to see what you are controlling before you actually make a change. The controller itself is highly configurable and makes switching between your mixer (like Cubase or Ableton) and your instruments and FX intuitive. I like the angled stands it comes with, placing it on my desktop puts it at a convenient working position.

I give this 4 solid stars. Where I docked it a couple of marks is that it really would be better with a second LCD strip along the top of the faders, though having just one display is by no means unusable. The Automap software is impressive, really ingenious in fact. Some of the default naming conventions for the mixer tracks in the LCD display add "Record" to the names (to indicate they are in record mode?), which shortens the display name from something like "SoloFlute" to "SFRecord". A minor annoyance, and most likely something that can be solved in the automapping for the DAW.

In Cubase, my most used features are the faders and transport controls. In Ableton, the device assignment controls (for instruments) mirror the setting on the APC40, so by default if you've got an APC40, your device controls are duplicated. What's cool is the ZeRO can be locked to an instrument while the APC40 can be left to dynamically control whatever device is active.

This MIDI controller is by far the most configurable and has the most knobs I could find in a professional level controller. The page left/right buttons mean it offers more than enough control over my favorite VSTs! User provided maps (online) mean there are setups for Omnisphere and EW/QL PLAY right off the bat. Get one!

Zero SL Mk2

The feel of the unit is good for the money, the automap software is really smooth, I have it working in Logic 8 and Reason. You have the option to write your own assignments and its a pretty painless process. I needed to do some un and reinstalling of the automap software to get the automap to work with reason but with great help from novations tech support they helped me to get up and running.

For the price range probably the best control surface you can get. It looks nice and the feel is pretty good for the price range. The feel of the drum pads are a bit cheap feeling but i don't have alot of use for them same goes for the crossfader. This unit completely does the trick for what i got it for. I would recommend this unit and i'm loving the automap after some slight growing pains

An improvement over the Remote

The SL Mk II is an excellent controller, which allows for easy assignment of parameters, and consequently helps in speeding up workflow.

Having previously owned a Remote 25 SL, the Mk II's are a big improvement despite the lack of a second screen. The backlit buttons and touch sensitive pots and faders alongwith the single screen provide a lot more feedback than the 2 screens on the Mk I. Still, I would imagine that a second screen on this unit would only have helped further. Additionally, the build quality seems to be slightly improved though the crossfader feels flimsy (feel is exactly like the one on the nocturn).

The slightly longer faders are nice, and of course Automap Pro is great, I was using it before I purchased the Zero SL Mk II.

For the money, this product can be described as mid-range as there are cheaper controllers out there, but they are surely not as easy to set up. In fact, I would say that it has some "high-end" functions for a fraction of the cost of the higher end controllers.

However, I have two problems with this unit. The first is that while the build quality is good, its all plastic (a factor which surely helps to keep prices low). In future, I would like to see Novation develop a line of higher-end controllers than the Mk II line or at least the zero, which would be made of metal, have motorized faders, dedicated pan and fader controls for the master channel, and probably a second screen.

And secondly, the platform that is included with the zero model has to be screwed on to the back of the unit. I would rather have liked to see some lever mechanism to attach these platforms, as the screws can easily get lost, and it would be nice to be able to raise and lower the platform as one sees fit, without having to screw and unscrew them each time.