2006 Winter NAMM Show: Mackie introduced Mackie C4 Commander, a software companion product for the Mackie Control C4 plug-in and virtual instrument controller that allows users to control hardware MIDI devices such as keyboards, sound modules, guitar PODs and effect processors via the Mackie Control C4.

With C4 Commander, keyboardists can tweak all the parameters in their favorite synths, guitarists can tweak their guitar processors, and audio engineers can unlock all the power of their rackmount reverbs while staying in the monitoring "sweet spot."

Using an intuitive drag-and-drop visual interface, C4 Commander allows users to map parameters of hundreds of popular MIDI hardware devices to the V-pots and scribble strips of the C4, delivering hands-on control and visual feedback to the rest of your studio. More than 180 instrument profiles are included, and custom C4 layouts are easily constructed.

Users can map parameters of different devices to a single page on the C4 to use it as a live performance controller. (For example, it could be use to control  filter cutoff for all your synths, both hard and software, on a single C4 controller page.) According to Mackie, "The level of hardcore tweakability is limited merely by having only 10 fingers and 24 hours in a day."

More information is available at the Mackie site.