It's preference. "Ready for prime time", meaning serious use? I'd say no. It's an alternative but lacking the tactile control of a dedicated device such as a Faderport 8, 16, automated mixer, or HUI mix controller with motorized faders.

For general multi-touch application, it's somewhat useful. Though mixing for all practical purposes is best performed with that hardware having motorized touch faders.

Even the Slate Raven II I tested, and it has additional functionality. Still, it lacked full control. It's advantages were that there wasn't a need for switching banks. Though the Raven works best with Pro Tools and with a Mac. There were then more control options and slightly better multitouch control.

George,
My experience with touch screen monitors is a little different than his. I think they are great.... with some limitations.

If you have a touchscreen laptop somewhere in the house or even just an Android tablet, you can test out touchscreen usability without committing any money. Load up the studio one remote app and give it a shot. Running Studio One on a touch screen monitor will be somewhat the same from a fader perspective but not so much from the plug-in side.

I tried a couple different brands and the biggest differences seem to be in the physical Hardware. I'm currently using two 24 inch Planar monitors that I bought because of their articulated stands. They let me put the bottom of the monitor down on the desk where it made sense

The good.
It's really intuitive to just reach up to the screen and move something. Especially changing parameters on plugins. It's so much easier than trying to remember which encoder you mapped ...
You will look like you were in a science fiction movie when you mix on a touch screen monitor. It's very Star Trek.
I think all touch screen monitors now support multi-touch so you can grab a couple things at a time like EQ points on the pro EQ plug-in

The bad.
Glass faders. You can't tell what you're moving without looking.
Some things are just too small like effects ends and cue sends.
By the time I angled my touch screen monitor back so that I could treat it like a glass mixing console, it reflected the overhead light from the top of my control room so badly that I couldn't see anything. And I really didn't want to rebuild my lighting scheme. so in the end I ended up leaving my monitors fairly vertical....
My finger is fat. So things like audio Bend are just not as accurate as using a mouse. So I find that sticking with a mouse for some of those functions is just faster

1 touchscreen monitor was great so I tried to add a second one. It's completely functional but my arms don't reach that far
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You've probably seen Steven Slate advertising how he can grab multiple faders on his Raven consoles and move them. Cool stuff like that is available natively out of the box with Studio One and a touch screen monitor. And you can get a feel for that by just trying out the studio one remote app. Some things are better like swiping horizontally on a large session console to see the channels that don't fit on the screen. Or swiping vertically on the lanes. And some things are worse. So my workflow is now a hybrid...

So the bottom line is you almost have to try it see if it will work for you. But from a purely functional software perspective, yes touch screen works great with Studio One. I think you'll find the limitations are more from environmental and physical things.

Thanks for the tablet suggestion, trying it now.


George

If your sound card has two monitor outputs can you leave the timeline on your conventional monitor, detach the mixing window and drag it to the other touch monitor?

Thanks,


George

The question was based on mixing and my points are towards that end. Still, it's good to point out the other aspects of a touchscreen with a DAW, particularly with Studio One.

There are many useful multi-touch niceties regarding plugin control, and that's always pretty direct, and intuitive. A good thing!

Multitouch mixing is much more of a hit and miss, and that's simply the nature of touching a flat screen vs tactile feel. Some people, particularly professional are less willing to guess, and prefer hardware. Understandable.

There's a few workarounds for touchscreen misses, such as automating the mix, afterwards. If one runs into a few errors, it's OK because the tracks could easily be corrected by redrawing, or re writing. It's all good.

Not much of a debate on mixer accuracy, if mutlipe faders are being handled. Tactile being the underlined word. Still. some have a budget, and will approach a mic with the necessary hardware. That's something each user has to decide on.
Cheers.

georgegidzinski wroteIf your sound card has two monitor outputs can you leave the timeline on your conventional monitor, detach the mixing window and drag it to the other touch monitor?

Thanks,

George

I'm assuming you meant "if your video card has two"... but yeah. One can be touch screen and the other one standard. ..and then you can swap which screen has what so you can test out touch control of the timeline as well. There's no special setup in Studio One, whatever is on the touchscreen monitor will be touch-enabled.