PRESONUS ATOM Audio Mixer

It is what you might call ‘pleasingly compact’, sitting solidly on your desktop thanks to rubber feet, and neither excessively large nor small enough to get lost among your clutter. Atom is USB powered and dominated by 16 (initially blue) pressure and velocity-sensitive pads in its centre, which are very playable.

There are four endless rotaries (assigned to MIDI CC 14-17) along the top of the unit and 10 buttons on both left and right sides which select a variety of options. Bank, for example, allows you to select between eight 16-pad set-ups so you can control up to 128 individual sounds. Beneath that, with Full Level engaged, each of those 16 pads will trigger its target sound at maximum volume, while Note Repeat engages a repeat/roll effect at a user-defined rate by pressing and holding down a particular pad. The remaining controls are all assignable but are initially set up to navigate around your software or act as transport controls, or edit events.