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Message: [QUOTE="Bombastus, post: 92290, member: 2178"] Impetus maps MPE Y-axis movement to eight bankable DAW faders, letting the same controls address tracks beyond the first eight. Banking is what keeps a compact control surface useful when a project grows from a sketch into a mixer full of audio, instruments, buses, and returns. The important detail is easy to miss. A bank is not another set of audio channels, and it does not move, copy, or reroute anything inside the session. It changes which DAW channel strip the current set of controls is assigned to. With [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/impetus-software-has-brought-impetus-control-to-macos.77649/']eight bankable Impetus mixer faders[/URL][/B], the hardware count and the session track count stop being the same problem. Eight available controls can work on one block of tracks, then another, while the DAW remains responsible for the actual mixer state. [HEADING=2]Banking gives eight controls a moving window[/HEADING] Traditional Mackie Control behavior makes the idea concrete. A standard eight-strip surface can address tracks 1 through 8, then move the active bank so those same physical strips address tracks 9 through 16. Another bank move reaches 17 through 24 without adding more faders to the desk. Impetus applies the same broad control-surface idea without requiring eight conventional motorized faders. Its fader layer is driven by MPE Slide movement, while banking changes the DAW channels sitting behind those eight available control positions. The gesture stays in the same place under your fingers even as the target tracks change. A useful mental model is a movable eight-track window, not eight permanently mapped volume controls. Mackie Control documentation commonly separates Bank commands from Channel commands because they move that window by different amounts. A bank step usually jumps by the full surface width, while a channel step shifts the assignment one track at a time. This distinction matters in sessions where neighboring tracks belong together. Jumping eight channels is fast when moving from drums to guitars or from instruments to vocals. A one-channel shift is finer when the eight-track window needs to straddle two groups, although exact commands available through Impetus depend on its own implementation and the connected host. [HEADING=2]The last bank does not always behave like a partial page[/HEADING] DAWs can make edge cases less obvious than the simple 1-to-8, 9-to-16 pattern suggests. Logic Pro, for example, keeps eight channel strips available when possible. In a 19-strip project, moving past tracks 9 through 16 can place tracks 12 through 19 on the surface instead of presenting only tracks 17 through 19. The result is overlap between neighboring banks near the end of the mixer. Nothing has been duplicated in the project. Logic has simply shifted the active control window far enough left to fill the surface, which prevents five otherwise usable control positions from becoming empty. The underlying idea also appears in [B][URL='https://patents.google.com/patent/US8849436B2/en']banked external mixer control[/URL][/B], where a limited set of physical faders is assigned to a larger range of software channels and the assigned range can move by one channel or one bank. The useful part is not the patent language itself but the control model. A small surface stays relevant because assignment changes independently of the mixer’s total channel count. Host behavior can still differ around hidden tracks, buses, folders, control-surface groups, and special mixer views. Logic can remember different channel-strip ranges for different views, while other DAWs expose their own rules for what counts as the next controllable track. Banking therefore follows the host’s control-surface map rather than blindly counting every row you can see on screen. [HEADING=2]Banking changes control assignment, not the mix[/HEADING] This separation becomes important when you are moving quickly. If Impetus is controlling tracks 1 through 8 and you bank right, the old tracks do not inherit the new fader movements. The eight Impetus controls are reassigned to another group, and subsequent gestures affect the channels now occupying those control slots. Mixer automation follows the DAW parameter being controlled, not an abstract fader number inside Impetus. A control move position three can therefore affect one track in the first bank and a completely different track after banking. Returning to the earlier bank brings the earlier DAW channels back under those same positions. Large sessions make this behavior more useful, not less. Forty tracks do not require forty physical faders if you are comfortable navigating fader banks, and an eight-control surface can remain compact without trapping you inside the first eight mixer channels. The practical limit becomes how clearly you can track the current bank and how predictably the host exposes its channel strips. Care matters after every bank change because the surface has changed targets even though your hands have not moved. Reliable track naming, a visible mixer, and deliberate bank navigation reduce the chance of adjusting the wrong channel when several neighboring tracks carry similar material. [/QUOTE]

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