The Pro features fully-illuminated caps on the Record Arm, Select, Mute and Solo buttons that leave you in no doubt as to the state of your mix.

Where it has been beefed up in this area, though, is in the vastly improved button design, the newly weighted and more positive-feeling jog wheel, and the improved Penny + Giles faders, which seem smoother - although that could just be due to their newness when compared to those on our rather aged Mackie Control. In terms of layout, nothing's changed, with all of the Control Universal Pro's buttons, knobs and faders arranged identically to the previous model's - very much a case of not fixin' what ain't broke. Despite the USB port, the new Mackie Control actually has more regular MIDI I/O than ever before, with three pairs of ins and outs via which to hook up a trio of C4/Extender Pros, hardware synths, effects boxes and the like. It's class-compliant, so no drivers need to be installed under Windows or OS X, and if you don't happen to have a spare USB port, you're still free to hook it up via MIDI DINs in the old-fashioned way.

The most significant new feature though is the long-awaited addition of a USB port, finally doing away with the need for a MIDI interface in order to get it hooked up - surely a prime requirement of even budget-end control surfaces.

Drivers mackie control universal pro