JazzMutant’s Lemur touchscreen turned a lot of heads, at least as a concept: precise, multi-touch tracking that could follow all ten of your fingers independently, and interactive, custom controller touch layouts looking like something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was the good news. The bad news: difficult assignments for OpenSoundControl (OSC), extra steps required for MIDI (especially in the early versions), controller layouts limited to pre-defined objects, no tactile feedback as with physical controllers, and a steep price (US$2500). Some dedicated electronic musicians loved it, and were willing to put in the time to use it. Many others just shrugged and stuck to far-cheaper, sometimes more-flexible hardware knobs and faders. Still, many at least acknowledged that the Lemur could be a first indication of the future of hardware, even despite its flaws.

Now, JazzMutant is back with something they call the Dexter? All-new hardware, right? Nope. The unit itself looks identical to the Lemur, which is too bad — part of what made the Lemur experience feel incomplete to me was its bulky and boxy case, which failed to reflect the innovation of the screen. A lower price? We just don’t know yet: pricing and availability is TBD.

What the Dexter is designed to do is to work more fluidly out of the box as a traditional DAW controller. There are pre-defined layouts for Cubase, Sonar, Logic Pro, Nuendo and Pyramix, and lots of new object features specifically designed to DAW editing.

Looking over what they’ve planned, I immediately see items that makes me say immediately say, “slick!” — and others that make me go, “huh?”