NAMM 2025: Melbourne Instruments has announced ROTO Control, a new controller that utilises the company's groundbreaking motorised fader technology - as found on its Delia and Nina synths - to create a device that aims to revolutionise hardware or software control.
We first got wind of ROTO Control just before the NAMM show, with a teaser video announcing the groundbreaking desktop controller. But now Melbourne Instruments has officially launched the unit and given us all the glorious details about its new unit.
As you can see, ROTO Control is designed to tackle all studio hardware and software, and comes with the same type of motorised faders that appear on Melbourne's Nina and Delia synths. These allow instant recall of settings and user-defined levels of control and tuning.
ROTO Control can be set up to control all sorts of hardware and software parameters, with 16,000 memory locations available for instant recall. At the moment, ROTO Control links up best with Ableton Live, with pretty much instant syncing to control both the DAW's mixer and plugins. We're assuming that future updates or releases will include templates for other DAWs, although there's nothing to stop you customising the unit's controls to your DAW of choice.
The device has three modes to switch between: Mix, Plugin and MIDI with Motion Recorder. Mix syncs the controller with your Live Sets so that the track names and colours appear on ROTO Control's front panel, meaning you are less reliant on your computer screen. As all data is taken from the Ableton Live Set currently loaded in, ROTO Control automatically updates its displays as you change anything within the software.
In Plugin mode, ROTO Control syncs to Live's plugins using a one-time learning setup to recall everything later. You can set it up to control up to 64 plugins per channel with up to 128 controls (64 each for knobs and buttons) per plugin. That's a pretty exceptional number of options, and makes us feel inadequate that we'd never need that level of control in one of our typical projects.
Finally, you get MIDI Control with Motion Recorder. This mode enables you to control any MIDI device - that could be software, hardware, or lighting - and use the Motion Recorder to record automation data via the motorised dials, with up to eight parameters per setup.
ROTO Control is available now for around $419/£389/€419 and there's more information on the controller at the Melbourne Instruments website.
NAMM 2025: ROLI’s Piano is a larger keyboard for use with its Airwave hand-tracking hardware and music learning software, but is it large enough?
NAMM 2025: "This is the beginning of a really long journey": Native Instruments teams up with Akai, Korg, Novation and more to "empower millions of music creators"
