We have had a TON of requests for a MIDI controller designed to launch clips in Ableton Live over the last 2 years. There were a couple of competing products in the market, and we worked with our customers to identify their strengths and weaknesses in order to design the best controller available.

We’re proud to announce the Disaster Area DMC-6D. This controller is built on our DMC-6 platform, and incorporates a 4-digit LED display to give instant visual feedback to the performer.

The DMC-6D lets you access 20 banks, each of which can trigger 6 MIDI notes. A dedicated “All Access” bank provides six more commands that are accessible from any bank.

In addition to the 6 buttons on the controller itself, the DMC-6D has two inputs for expression pedals, and one expander input for connecting two footswitches. The expression inputs may be mapped to any of 127 different MIDI CC messages. The expander input may be assigned to bank up / down, two dedicated messages (like Stop or Tap,) or it can expand the controller to operate with 15 banks of 8 footswitches instead of 20 * 6.

The DMC-6D incorporates both USB MIDI and standard 5-pin DIN MIDI, and the two MIDI interfaces are bridged together internally. This means that you can send MIDI from your host DAW or Ableton Live, and the DMC-6D will pass these messages along to a DIN-connected device. You can thus launch audio clips for your worship service and the DMC-6D can tell your Timeline, M9, H9, etc. to change patches. If you’re already using our DPC-5, then you can change all of your non-MIDI pedals too!

Here’s a few videos showing the basic use and setup of the DMC-6D:

The DMC-6D will begin shipping in October, and we have it available for pre-order in our shop right now:

DMC-6D PREORDER