MIDI CC Control -- best way of achieving this?

[Michael McBroom]

Okay, just so's you know where I'm coming from, the sum of my experience regarding CC Control is only a couple of the CCs found  in the PRV. Mostly Volume, really. But I know there are many others and some of them I could definitely use. It can be a pita trying to use them with kb and mouse, though, so I'm thinking about buying something that will make the process simpler.

I already own a few keyboards that I'm sure I could set up as MIDI controllers, so rather than going the route of a kb controller, I'm thinking about what Sweetwater likes to label as "mixing control surfaces." I don't have many hundreds, or even thousands of $$ to spend on an item, so given a rather spare budget,  the surface that attracts me the most is the Korg NanoControl Studio. Reading through the reviews, I note that a few of the reviewers have successfully configured it to work with Sonar and CWbBL. So at least I know it works with CW with a minimum of effort.

But as always, I'd be interested in learning about other devices that may work as well, or perhaps even better, with CW.

And lastly, since I'm still scratching the surface with CCs and how to implement them, is there a tutorial anywhere you can recommend that will bring me more up to speed on this topic?

As always, thanks in advance.