Stream Deck

I wouldn't bother trying to remap your keyboard shortcuts or anything like that. The whole point of using a SD is to not have to think about that stuff. By the time you remapped all of your shortcuts for each DAW to be the same as what you're used to, you could have just created new buttons in a new SD profile (for each DAW), using the default shortcut keys for each DAW. By the way, you should have a separate SD profile for each DAW. That way you can set each profile to be tailored to your specific needs for that DAW.

I don't know if I'd say that your shortcuts would be overwritten. But, again, it wouldn't matter, even if you purchased an off the shelf product like Sideshow. Assuming that, in a DIY scenario, you spend the time to create buttons for all of the shortcuts you would normally use (or that an off the shelf product like Sideshow already has buttons created for all available shortcuts in a given DAW), you wouldn't really ever have to think about it again. I wouldn't let your concerns with shortcuts be the determining factor on whether or not you want to buy an off the shelf product versus create your own. There are other reasons to go one way or the other with that decision.

So don't get hung up on shortcuts being different from one DAW to the next. Just make buttons on the SD, using whatever default shortcut mappings that a given DAW currently has, and then you never have to think about it again. Do that in a separate SD profile for each DAW that you use. Or buy DAW-specific stuff like Sideshow, and let someone else do it for you. It's up to you.

One thing to keep in mind about shortcuts though, is that there are DAW specific shortcuts and then then there are OS shortcuts. OS shortcuts will work, no matter what DAW you're using (and will thus be the same across all DAWs) because those particular shortcuts are not talking to your DAW. They are talking to your OS. DAW shortcuts are only meant to talk to the DAW for which they are created. HOWEVER, if two DAWs happen to be using the same shortcut keystroke combination for something, even if it's for different tasks, that same keystroke combination will trigger something in both of those DAWs.

In practice though, those DAW specific shortcuts "should" only trigger something in the DAW that is active and in front, assuming that you have two DAWs open at once, unless you've changed the default setting on your OS to allow keystroke shortcuts to work on apps in the background. If you have, then you might have some difficulty. If you only ever have one DAW open at a time, that likely wouldn't matter anyway. (FYI, within KM, there is a way to send keystroke combinations solely to a specific app, to help avoid these sort of conflicts.)

If a shortcut doesn't exist, yes, that's where KM comes in, as you would have to create a macro to do what you want, and trigger it by directly connecting the KM macro to a specific button on the SD. Also, there are a lot of things that are a lot more complicated than what your typical shortcut action would do anyway. Shortcuts usually do simple things like toggle a particular setting on or off, not that a shortcut couldn't technically be used to trigger something more complex. At the end of the day, a shortcut is a trigger just like many other things can also be used as a trigger, such as a button on a SD. A trigger is a trigger is a trigger. And in the case of assigning shortcuts to SD buttons, you are actually using a SD button to trigger a specific keystroke shortcut (as if a human were typing said keystroke), which then in turn triggers your DAW to do a specific task. So it's a trigger triggering another trigger.

In any case, the primary use for macros is because macros can do much more complex things, and that's the primary reason to use them. In either case, you need KM for something like this. Or you could buy an off the shelf product where somebody has already made these kind of macros for you.

There's no magic in this stuff. It just comes down to whether or not you want to make it yourself or pay somebody else to do it for you. However, the paid products may not always do everything you want, where as you can make everything exactly like you want it if you build it yourself, using KM. Of course, you would have to spend the time to learn how to do this stuff. I recommend reading and/or joining the KM Discourse forum if you're interested in learning how to create macros. It might also help you with your decisions about whether or not you want to spend the time to learn how to make your own stuff or if you would rather just buy a turnkey product.

Yeah, same here. I spent a good amount of time organizing buttons how I'd like them, to promote muscle memory, group buttons together that I'd often be using at the same time, ergonomics, etc.

You should (I think?) be able to at least move buttons around on a Sideshow profile (drag a button to a different location, copy/paste a button to a different page, etc.), to make it more how you like it, but I like that I'm building my profiles exactly how I'd like them, from day one.

And that's not an unimportant thing to be considering. That's why I use solid color button coloring for various sections of each profile page, so that it's not so easy to get visually lost in all of the buttons. Different sections have different colors. I also have three columns on the right side of my SD XL that pretty much stay the same on most of my pages (I have like 15 pages now), no matter what page I'm on. These three columns are just for navigation.

Having those three columns seemed to provide a happy medium between losing TOO many buttons just for navigation, versus having no or very little navigation, and then having to menu dive for everything. I hate menu diving so, as I've got it set up, I can get to anything I want to do with a maximum of two button pushes. In many/most cases, I can navigate to where I want to with only one button push.

Also, using three columns for navigation helps to keep the rest of the "function/action" buttons down to a more manageable level on any one page, visually speaking. There are 20 of those buttons in 5 columns instead of 32 buttons in 8 columns, if that makes sense. (5 columns on left are for functions, 3 columns on right are for navigation)

That's why I suggested getting the 32 key XL. It's not that you might necessarily want or need 32 function keys on one page. It's just that having 32 keys gives you the ability to use a larger number of keys to provide access to easy, direct navigation while also still maintaining a reasonably large number of function keys on any given page. If you get the smaller SD, youre only option is to pretty much menu dive for most/all of your navigation, because otherwise you'll eat up all of your buttons just trying to provide navigation.

When I started in with Stream Deck, I had a goal to make it all as functional as I could, while still making it super easy to navigate around and find things in a visually uncluttered, intuitive manner. My two cents anyway. Everybody has their own preferences on this stuff. I just wanted to offer up some of the rationale behind how I designed my profiles, after going thru many iterations, in case it might help you with your design. It sounds like you and I may be somewhat on the same page, when it comes to visual clutter and trying to easily find things. I know you've mentioned not liking menu diving either, at least when we've talked about amp sims, and just wanting to have a more simple user interface.

You know who should be beating the doors down to use Stream Deck? Old Radar guys. The UI of a Stream Deck, when properly set up, makes the DAW experience much more similar to the "just push a button" experience of working with Radar.

I hadn't - thanks!


Not completely convinced about stream deck yet. I just don't know if it's actually going to speed things up for me. I've found it's sometimes slower than just doing it the way I've been doing it. And some of the shortcuts that do speed up the process can be done with Keyboard Maestro et al and then triggered by pretty much any midi device.