I don’t use Avid. But since you mentioned “what else” I thought I’d mention my controller: An old Midiman Radium keyboard that a friend gave me. It outputs Midi, fed into the DAW as control input. I added a scribble strip to it, to make icons above each key so I don’t have to remember what each key does. 52 of the 61 keys have my user defined functions to control my DAW. It also has 9 faders, 8 knobs that I don’t use at the moment (7 bit midi CCs don’t have the resolution I prefer).
It has improved my workflow to the extent that I’d feel crippled without it.
I tried to post a photo of it but couldn’t figure out how to make that work. Most forums allow me to post a photo from my phone camera or from a local file, but no luck. And with imgur.com removing all photos from anonymous posts, I’d have to hunt down another image hosting site I guess.