First impressions of the Euphonix MC Color

The EDITBLOG on PVC by Scott Simmons

The delivery guy walked in the door just over a week ago with a box containing a sparking, new, fresh off the assembly line MC Color control surface from Euphonix. For those who aren’t familiar with this unit, it’s a brand new entry into the affordable (relatively speaking at $1,499) trackball based hardware support for Apple Color. The Euphonix unit has the Tangent Wave square in its sights with a similar price point and similar functionality. In fact it’s hard to talk about one without comparing it to the other, which is inevitable. This first impressions article is a short summary of early reactions to the MC Color and less, at this point, about a direct comparison to the Wave. It will take a lot more time to dig deep into the features and get really comfortable with the MC Color, but like I did with the Tangent Wave, I wanted to write down a few first impressions. I’ll be doing a full review after I’ve used it for a few more weeks.

Unboxing the MC Color

Unboxing the MC Color you’re presented with the unit itself wrapped in a plastic sleeve. There’s a thin membrane protecting the display surface to be peeled away as well. The three trackballs have to be removed from the packaging and placed in their sockets. There’s no bevel or tabs to hold the tracks balls in place so be careful once the unit is setup on a desk, say when you might turn the unit over to fold out two support legs that can raise it up like a keyboard or all four support legs to raise the entire unit. Since the MC Color doesn’t draw power for a USB connection the unit has to be plugged in with the supplied AC adapter.

Under the foam packaging there’s also a supplied Ethernet cable as well as two risers that can be snapped to the bottom of the MC Color to raise the entire unit up a bit. Like the Tangent Wave, the box has a handle and the smaller size might make MC Color more friendly for the traveling colorist though I would probably get a more sturdy travel case if using it on the go a lot. But the Ethernet connection (you can’t connect the MC Color via USB) might require a bit more thought into the setup if you were taking the MC Color to a facility where you couldn’t get easy access to the CPU’s network port. The unit can also be plugged into a router, which is necessary if using the MC Color in conjunction with other Euphonix products. That’s one place that Euphonix excels over some of the competition: while the MC Color is a wholly self-contained unit there’s other Euphonix products that can be added like an audio mixing interface or a dedicated transport control as well, depending on what application you are using. read more...