JazzMutant Dexter Control Surface

Product Info

DEXTER, by JazzMutant, redefines the very interaction between digital audio workstations and users. This laptopsized 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Key features and specifications

The Dexter’s top feature is its unique multi-touch sensor, able to track an unlimited number of fingers at once. This transparent sensor is set on a top of the range industrial-class 12” TFT display. Compared to the average laptop monitors, the Dexter’s panel is much brighter, contrasted and it offers a much wider viewing angle. Thus, you can always see what is on display, even under spotlights or in a critical lighting environment.

The Dexter also embeds an internal CPU, a powerful GPU (graphic processing unit) as well as a FPU (floating point arithmetic unit), which makes it a quite independant pet for your laptop. In other words, since it manages video rendering and other processor-consuming tasks by itself, it will not overload the processor of the computer.

As any electronic device, the Dexter obviously needs to be handled with care. Nevertheless, no worry about that, you can use a Dexter in any situation wherever you are : although it is not unbreakable, it has been designed to comply with industrial product standards and it is robust enough to work in the most critical contexts. Indeed, the whole system is housed in a sleek, robust though lightweight aluminium enclosure. The sensor itself is protected with a vandal-proof coating that resists to scratches and humidity. And since it is glued on a 3mm glass plate, the touchscreen also protects the TFT display from being damaged.

The Dexter communicates with the host computer using Fast Ethernet connection, thanks to its built-in 100BaseT interface, which means that the Dexter is capable of exchanging thousands of control messages at once with your application. It also means that you can connect numerous computers and Dexters on a local area network and make all of them party together.

We are always working on improvements and new features. The Dexter can be fully updated with a new firmware by the user through the LAN interface. A checkout system prevents the systeme against improper programming.