Im not sure where avid is as a company. They did a lot of own controllers I think. But they bought EuCon that seems to have a different mindset. The ones I have tried are good. A totally different class than Icon, Beheringer or Steinberg. But still it is only a box with knobs and leds. For cubase users, it is Steinberg that is the limitation not the hardware, but that is also true for the much much cheaper devices from Icon, Beheringer and Steinberg. (I have never tested Nuage though, some serious knobs there too). But it is all about software, and lot of the design of cubase does not translate well to controllers.