Tangent Wave2 Control Surface – One Panel for All Your Apps

News

by Olaf von VossMay 14^th, 2018

After a long time in development, Tangent have revealed their all-new control surface for all kinds of color grading apps: The Tangent Wave2. If you have really deep pockets, the new Arc control surface might be worth a closer look, too.

The Tangent Wave2 is a direct successor of the almost 10-year old Wave control surface. At NAB 2017 Tangent had a prototype on display but now the Wave2 seems to be ready.

Tangent Wave2 Control Surface

If you compare the original Wave to the new Tangent Wave2 control surface, you’ll immediatley feel familiar. The Wave2 features some major improvements, though! First of all, it’s way smaller than the original Wave. And, even more importantly, the pickups of the trackerballs are now optical ones. The original Wave panel had mechanical pickups which offered less resolution and were more susceptible to dust.

New Tangent Wave2 vs. original Wave panel.

The best thing with all the Tangent control surfaces is their platform-agnostic design, though. You can use almost every app which make use of trackerballs, knobs and buttons with these panels. With the free Tangent Mapper software you can map your desired functions to the specific knobs, dials and buttons. There are quite a few pre-designes templates for your favorite apps already. For the Wave2 you can download mappings for Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Speedgrade, Assimilate Scratch and Autodesk Flame for example. Missing something? Yes, that’s one of the downsides with the Tangent Panels: pre-designed templates for DaVinci Resolve can’t be found here, unfortunately.

You can create your own mapping but the DaVinci Resolve integration remains a nagging issue with the Tangent Wave2 (and all other Tangent panels). BlackmagicDesign doesn’t seem to offer seamless integration and that’s understandable since they have their own lineup of control surfaces on offer (which, of course, work solely with DaVinci Resolve).

The new Tangent Wave2 is considerabley smaller than its predecessor. It oly covers 15.3 in x 11.4in (38,8 x 28,9 cm) on your desk which is far less than the original Wave panel. All the controls of the Wave can be found on the Wave2, too. Three trackerballs with detached lift/gamma/gain wheels instead of rings around the trackerballs. The OLED display is now white text on black and the whole unit is bus-powered so a single USB cable does the job of connecting and powering the unit. This is really helpful if your working in the field.

Tangent Arc

If you’ve got more money to spend but the original $30.000 DaVinci Resolve control surface is still a little to expensive, you might want to look at the new Tangent Arc. This $15.000 panel gives you all you need in terms of buttons, dials, trackerballs and knobs. Each button and knob has its own dedicated OLED screen which indicates its actual function. When you switch apps, these labels will update accordingly so you’ll never have to search for the right button again.

The Tangent Arc control surface.

Below the 4 trackerballs for lift/gamma/gain/offset (this time with rigs) there’s a space for a Wacom tablet. If Wacom decides to go with a different form factor in the future that’s not a problem since you simply can swap the underlying adapter and get a new one. On the left-hand side of the panel, below the button section you can place your keyboard. In conjunction with the tablet (not included, of course) and an optional keyboard you’ll get an all-in-one control surface for all your high-end needs.

The whole control surface consists of three dedicated panels but you can’t purchase them seperately for now. The Arc panel will be sold as an OEM product through your software manufacturer only.

Pricing and Availability

The Tangent Wave2 control surface is $902.50 (which is considerably cheaper than the original Wave!) and it’s available for preorder now. The Tangent Arc is due in Q2 2018, so it’s basically around the corner, too. You have to contact your software manufacturer for more info on purchasing one, though. If speperate modules of the Arc will be availbe for purchase remains to be seen.

If this is too expensive for you, maybe the tiny Tangent Ripple for $332.50 is the one for you.

Links: Tangentwave.co.uk

Is the Wave2 worth a closer look? Which applications are you using right now? Let us know in the comments below!