Platform M+ : Exponentially speeds up your workflow

I have one of these permanently on my desk. It synchronizes with my DAW (Reaper) almost perfectly. The one issue I have is that I cannot get the zoom buttons to work. That's not really a problem for me, as I have set one of my extra mouse buttons to function as a "ctrl" button so I can zoom both horizontally and vertically with my mouse. I mention it here as it may annoy other users who don't have that mouse configuration. (I've deducted one star on handling to reflect this).

The faders have a really nice quality feel to them, and have just the right amount of sensitivity for me. The rotary encoders have a good feel to them and make it easy to position tracks in a stereo mix or hard-panning duplicate guitar tracks. The record arm / solo / mute / track select buttons are really handy, and backlit so you can quickly see which set of controls relates to an active track. It can get a bit confusing when using 2nd and 3rd banks (I've not needed to go as far as the 4th yet!) so being able to keep track of things is important.

The transport buttons are brilliant, it's really useful to have them at your fingertips. I've recently started taking audio samples from news stories to use in my music, and having these transports has made it much easier to navigate through a sound sample to snip out the exact part I want. The addition of the "mixer" button, whose function depends on your DAW, is really helpful here - in the case of Reaper, the mixer button places down a marker.

The jog wheel has a sturdy feel to it and is useful for scrubbing through tracks. Combined with the mixer button you can easily lay down accurate placement markers.

I've not used the "read" or "write" functions on the unit yet, so I won't comment on those.

My desk setup includes a ShuttlePRO v2 with some common shortcuts assigned to it. Combined with the Platform M+, I have all the common DAW controls under my fingertips. I can definitely recommend the Platform M+ for a mixing desk setup.