Controllers
In the picture on the left you see the stuff that I use the most in my studio. On the bottom you see my Master Midi Keyboard. It is an Edirol PCR series keyboard. And Editol is actually Roland. I play almost everything on that. My first synthesizer ever with a keyboard was a Roland D-10. And I learned to play with the Roland joystick. So I still prefer that over modulation and pitch-bend wheels. Above that you can see me two PC keyboards with two mouses. One on the left and one on the right. And yes I can do that with my right and left hand ;) Then on top of that a very important controller in my studio. It is a Roland V-Studio 700 console. It looks like a mixer but it is a control surface that connects over USB with my PC. The faders you see are motorized so they actually can move on their own. Everything you do on it is send to my Sonar software on the PC and everything I do there is send back so you can also see what is happening in Sonar on the console. It integrates perfectly with Sonar and I really love it. You can read more about it when you click on the list menu on the left and click the console.
Another very important piece in my studio is this Jazzmutant Dexter. It is right left of the V-Studio 700 console. It is kind of a stand alone PC that connects with Ethernet to my network and talks over the network with actually both my PC's. There is standard software installed that acts as a DAW controller. It gives me 8 extra faders next to the faders on the Roland console. The great thing is is that it is a multi touch controller. You can can grab multiple faders with your fingers and move them independently. And the are more functions where that is very useful like a EQ screen where you can grab multiple EQ points in a graphical display and move them around. Very intuitive. But the coolest thing is the surround panner that represents your sound sources as dots in a room that you can independently move around with multiple finger or even rotate the whole room or zoom in or out on all of them at the same time. I really love it. But now there are also some nice applications for the Apple Ipad. That wasn't around when I bought this one, but I am considering getting one of those too.
But there is more stuff I use. Like the wireless Frontier Tranzport. When you click on the menu item called 'list' on the left, you can see what else is there and read some more information on the controllers.