My main thoughts are: how quickly can you audition a midi file on the Yamaha? It's a main bugbear of mine, Ableton live is pretty cool with this; in that you can audition audio and midi files within its browser, emagic has it's own convoluted dedicated 'offline' sound editor.
I cannot fathom the (point, click and drag) then the 'processing' screen makes a fuss.
Novation’s unique ‘speed dial’; touch it to instantly control whatever your mouse cursor is over, was an idea of mine on the soundonsound forum. Basicaly anything you hover over with the mouse is then tweakable with an infinite potentiometer, why click a parameter; use a trackball (logitech) when your above the option to change tweak it with the 'speed dial'.
Now if we had this option with the 'speed dial' as well as a long slick fader. A pot and a fader; so point with the right hand, tweak with the left.
I know some DAW's offer the option to point and scroll in quantised jumps.
To control a DAW what is needed, a long throw fader, a potentiometer and access to 8 volume levels. The only disadvantage is you can't tweak two or more parameters at a time depending on your software.
Let's keep it simple stupid, something similar to the faderport with novations 'speed dial'
