Frank Rogala

Faderport 2 on Studio One – what you need to know!

Faderport classic to Faderport 2 on studio one

I migrated from Faderport to Faderport 2 on Studio One.

If you use Studio One and purchase a Presonus Faderport 2, there are a couple things you need to know in order to get everything up and humming. There won't be a mention of any of this in the box (at least there was not in mine!).

I originally got Faderport (classic) many years ago when I was stuggling to deal with understanding digital audio production after being in the analog world since 1980. Having a tactile "flying fader" seemed like a huge luxury and a necessity. Since that time, I have learned I am fine with just a keyboard and mouse, but I found the Faderport to be so useful that I kept the drivers updated and kept using it with my various DAWs (from Protools to Sonar to the present - Studio One).

My original faderport was working but he play button stopped responding. When I looked it up online, it appearred to be an issue of drivers (Presonus Universal Control) needing to be installed while the unit was plugged into a USB 2.0 port. I also needed to install a legacy version of Presonus Universal Control. This is a software that rolls up all presonus drivers into one file. One issue is that nothing in the install gives me a choice to specifically install drivers for Faderport. Every other product is listed. At a loss I initially tried installing every driver available (checked all the boxes). Of course, after uninstalling my "up to date" Universal Control and then installing this old version - nothing changed. When I saw there was an issue with USB 3.0 I knew I was at a dead end. My new DAW only had USB 3.0. Having realized I have used this unit for maybe 15 years or so, I figured I had my money's worth. I ordered a Faderport 2.0. I uninstalled the legacy Universal Controller and installed the current version. Plugged in my new Faderport and NOTHING! After some searching online I saw that out of the box the unit needed to have it's firmware updated. The notice of the need for a firmware update was prompted in Universal Control (BTW due to lack of a specific choice of a Faderport driver in the list of softwares that are given to install - I again just installed everything). After a successful firmware update the unit still was not responding. I went to my Windows 10 computer's device manager, then expanded the tab Sound, video and game controllers and found that Faderport was indeed recognized and listed. I was about to call my representative at Sweetwater when I thought to do some more searches. Actually search results came up with instructons on the Sweetwater site. There were instructions on how to make the unit work with various DAW's. Supposidly it is will work with Studio One out of the box. Mine did not. I found that there is a start up procedure that needs to be done in order to make the unit work with Studio One. From Sweetwater - 

Follow these steps to change the DAW personality.

  1. Turn the Faderport off, then hold the first two Select buttons.
  2. While holding the buttons, power the unit back on. The display will show Studio OneMackie, and HUI.
  3. Press the select button to set it to the appropriate personality.
    • Studio One: Studio One

That did the trick. I hope this may help you as well.

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