Akai DPS 24 as control surface?

I'm midi illiterate but understand I may be able to use my DPS faders to control Reaper. At this time I would just be using the faders and mousing all other controls. My question is, What would be a good interface for this? Would I just use a usb/midi interface? Any suggestions on a specific one? Thanks in advance for your help. I'm new at this midi stuff.

i use mine as a control surface- faders and pans can send midi cc. i have had mine set up as follows- i have a user bank on the DPS24 set up to send midi cc. 12 faders and pans are assigned to do various things in either GenMce(the first9 faders and 10 pans- pans 9&10 are set hard left and right and control "bank up and down") or REAPER(the last 3 faders and 2 pans). DPS24 midi out to my soundcard's midi in (you could use a usb midi interface if you need to) i have installed "midi yoke"- in my PC.(basically a set of internal midi cables for your computer) i use a program called GenMce- it emulates the Mackie control universal. set up was pretty painless for me. once set up you can save as a pre-set and all you have to do is open the program and your ready to go. lots of good instruction on the GenMce pages for set up-just read through. i have Reaper set to receive MCU messages under preferences>control surfaces. the control output messages are sent from REAPER, via midi yoke, to a program that emulates a Mackie control display called "huskervu"- - this at least tells me what tracks are currently controlled. i know this may sound really complicated, but once it is set up it's a breeze to use. turn on the DPS24 > open GenMce > open huskervu > open REAPER and you're good to go. best of luck, don edit: the down side of this set up- there is no feedback to the faders and pans on the DPS24.

Thanks for the detailed post. I'll look into this now but am thinking another controller might be the way for me to go. If there's no feedback to DPS then there goes the motorized faders. bummer...