I use the Mackie Universal Control as a transport and to set levels and occasionally actually perform manual mixing tasks with it. As far as precision control of an EQ, particularly Vienna Suites', I draw automation in the project window and/or write automation during playback using a mouse. I don't see any advantage to doing that with external hardware, it seems like there is a little bit of a lag anyway. It's worth it to me to have spent $1k on the device to have a transport that isn't tied to the GUI of Cubase and have some fairly precise faders, but trying external midi controllers for plugins has revealed no advantage to me, and I think we are kind of led by marketing to consider such a device as better than the mouse, tbh.