Need advice on choosing a MIDI controller and/ or Interface?????

Hello all,
I’m doing some research on developing my own Linux based DAW using Ardour. My question has to do with surface controller’s. With the ever growing list of possibilities becoming available, I’ve broken this down to two categories…

  1. MIDI control surfaces designed to control software based mixers within the DAW environment…

  2. All in one control surfaces with mic-pre’s, AD/DA converters, and other interface connections similar to stand alone mixing consoles, digital and analog…

What I’ve been trying to figure out is in the case of Ardour and Linux compatibility with such devices. I understand that compatibility with Mackie control surfaces is still undergoing development and hence not yet compatible. I wanted to know if there was a list of controllers that are compatible and have been tested with either the stable and/ or unstable development branches of Ardour???

I guess it’s pretty obvious that I want to able to control the software mixer with a hardware mixer as opposed to a keyboard and mouse. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanx.

The Behringer BCF2000 is widely used as a midi control surface for Ardour. You can also use a Tranzport controller for controlling transport functions. I use a Behringer DDX3216 as both a control surface, transport control and an ADAT interface with an RME HDSP9652 (this is a good all in one soltuion). However it is not as configurable or diverse as the BCF - such as mute and solo buttons don’t work, but the faders and pan pots work, and the pan pots and faders can be assigned to control plugin parameters as well. The transport control works fine, and it even receives midi time code for making film/video post a breeze (when using ardour+xjadeo).