Why Are There So Many Knobs in Audio Software? (theoutline.com) 214
John Lagomarsino, writing for The Outline: Skeuomorphic design, where user interfaces emulate the appearance of physical objects, has been popular for pretty much the history of personal computing. The ideas of "files," "folders," and the "recycle bin" in Windows could be considered skeuomorphs, intended to help transition early computer users from analog to digital, as could the idea of an "inbox" and "outbox" in email and the paperclip that symbolizes attachments. More recently, a lot of early iOS apps were famous for their heavy-handed skeuomorphic elements, with felt textures and chunky drop shadows. But no area of computing has so thoroughly gone for it more than audio software. The first Billboard #1 single that was recorded to a hard drive instead of tape was "Livin' La Vida Loca" in 1999; 18 years later, in 2017, most audio software still looks like the designers attempted to replicate physical equipment piece for piece on a computer screen. Faders, switches, knobs, needles twitching between numbers on a volume meter -- they're all there. Except you have to control them with a mouse. Winamp may have been Patient Zero in this gaudy epidemic, but it has spread far and wide. I spend a lot of my time mixing and editing audio, and that often involves having multiple audio plugins (essentially applications that run inside the main audio program) from multiple vendors running simultaneously. But all audio software, for what I suppose are historical reasons, features the most egregious skeuomorphic design in all of software. Alone, each plugin is hideous in its own unique way. A panel of 3D knobs here, a pixelated oscilloscope there.
Because... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be here all week. Try the fish!
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Re:Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
If your response to a usability complaint involves a command line in any way, you are part of the problem.
Re:Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no.
First, the author provides no solid complaint. Just that "there are knobs, and I don't know what most of them do". The latter is a matter of documentation, not UX, and for the former he offers zero in the way of alternatives. He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs? Does he suggest something like using mouseover-then-scrollwheel as opposed to drag-the-knob? No not even that. Instead he complains about retro app skins. At best he can point to a failure to herd cats into a more unified UX approach (even then, some behavioral variety may actually be desirable to help the muscle memory build.)
Now if you are a live performance musician or soundboard operator, you want everything you normally tweak to be in a known location so your muscle memory can get you there. Does TFA want someone to open a search box, type the first few letters of a control, select it from a dropdown, and type in a numerical value in a popup? Or use a giant cascading menu? Or some sort of touch-and-hold-then-drag thing on an inaccurate laggy touchscreen? Good luck staying in the pocket with any of those schemes.
No, you have two alternatives: 1) use a physical layout so your hands know where stuff is, either on the desktop or with peripherals and 2) use live coding [wikipedia.org]... which, is indeed a CLI thing and very popular.
Re:Because... (Score:4, Informative)
The latter is a matter of documentation, not UX
Only slightly less bad than a command line is a UI where you have to read documentation.
He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs?
Knobs don't belong in UIs, full stop. Use sliders instead. They convey the same information, but are natural to use with the mouse.
UIs should look like what other UIs on the same OS look like. Clarity and high contrast beats wood paneling.
Now if you are a live performance musician or soundboard operator, you want everything you normally tweak to be in a known location so your muscle memory can get you there.
Muscle memory won't carry over from a physical panel to a mouse. That's just not what muscle memory is. Awkward controls won't make things better.
Putting the controls in about the same place on the screen as they are on the physical panel? Sure, that part makes sense. But knobs on a screen is just exasperating in its stupidity.
Re:Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Knobs don't belong in UIs, full stop. Use sliders instead.
Sliders mean precisely one thing in audio: attenuation.
They convey the same information, but are natural to use with the mouse.
No. To an audio engineer, they convey that they control is for adjusting the relative volume of a channel, because that's how we've used them for the last eight decades or so.
UIs should look like what other UIs on the same OS look like.
No, UIs should look like what other UIs on the same functional equipment look like. I mean, sure, there are the brands who have their "weird" controls, and every board puts the different functional blocks in different places, but a mixer channel is basically laid out the same regardless of who built it.
Now if you are a live performance musician or soundboard operator, you want everything you normally tweak to be in a known location so your muscle memory can get you there.
Well, yes. We don't exactly get much time to fix things before the audience notices, unless the house serves really good drinks...
Muscle memory won't carry over from a physical panel to a mouse. That's just not what muscle memory is.
It's not just muscles, though. It's also hand-eye coordination, and instant visual recognition of the controls. If I need to tweak a channel's gain, I know immediately I'm looking for a knob at the top of the channel stack. To change it to a slider means I have to look at something different and recognize it's the gain (rather than the typically-a-slider fader).
For another example, let's talk about pan. Usually it's a knob, but you're suggesting a slider. Since pan is a left-to-right control, it would make sense to have a horizontal slider. However, the fader is a up-or-down control, so it'd make sense to be a vertical slider. Now each channel is a wide and tall block, either wasting space or rearranging controls that have been standard for decades.
Awkward controls won't make things better. Putting the controls in about the same place on the screen as they are on the physical panel? Sure, that part makes sense. But knobs on a screen is just exasperating in its stupidity.
Now, the other thing to consider is that there is a reason the knobs are knobs on physical boards. The knobs are controls that rarely need adjustment. They're meant to be set at the beginning of a piece, and are typically left alone. Sure, there are a number of weird moments where the vocalist gets an effect bumped on, or the guitarist runs across the stage with his sound panning to match... but primarily, the knobs are just left alone. They're there if you need them, but you usually don't. Usually the primary control is the fader, literally sitting at your fingertips. From that perspective, it seems silly to turn knobs (which are very dense controls combining a display output with a range input in a small footprint) into sliders (which waste a lot of space with the unused slide). That's wasting valuable display space that I could be using for another effect, another monitor, or simply more channels of control.
To distinguish faders from non-fader sliders (Score:3)
Sliders mean precisely one thing in audio: attenuation.
And just about every continuous value in analog synthesis can be expressed as attenuation of a control signal.
If you need to make a specific visual distinction between sliders that were always sliders (such as the fader) and sliders that used to be knobs, then give the faders a rectangular thumb button and the former knobs a round one. A pan knob, for instance, could turn into a short horizontal slider with a round thumb button.
Instead of knobs, have sliders with numbers (Score:3)
He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs? Does he suggest something like using mouseover-then-scrollwheel as opposed to drag-the-knob?
I've read about similar problems with the volume control in QuickTime Player when it first went skeuomorphic. The issue was that linear motion is easier with popular GUI input devices than circular motion. So replace knobs, which require a circular motion, with sliders, which allow a linear motion.
Granted, a lot of the controls in the screenshots of the featured article already are sliders. But the sliders in the "glistening art deco aesthetic" screenshot have two problems: they are hard to read at a glance
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skids scoffed:
Actually, no.
First, the author provides no solid complaint. Just that "there are knobs, and I don't know what most of them do". The latter is a matter of documentation, not UX, and for the former he offers zero in the way of alternatives. He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs? Does he suggest something like using mouseover-then-scrollwheel as opposed to drag-the-knob? No not even that. Instead he complains about retro app skins.
Factually no. You're completely mischaraterizing the OP's complaint.
First of all, he in no way says or implies "I don't know what most of them do." Full stop. Secondly, his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go
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his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go" at the 12:00 position, shift the mouse slightly to the right, "grab" the knob from the other side, and drag it back down to adjust it from 50% to 100%).
Congratulations. You just condensed TFA down to the length it probably should have been in the first place. In fact, there is more of value in your paragraph above than that entire article, as it actually describes a problem instead of just complaining about "damn knobs". Otherwise it is worthless snide drivel making fun of people for creating skinning art. Well, I guess it did serve as a pretty screenshot gallery.
Now, you suggest one solution for fixing this type of UX knob. One that requires two hand
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skids responded:>/p>
his complaint about being forced to use a mouse to adjust rotary knob-style controls is entirely valid - and many (if not most) VST audio plug-ins for DAWs provide NO scrollwheel functionality. You HAVE to move the damned knob around its full travel via click-and-drag (which usually means you have to "let go" at the 12:00 position, shift the mouse slightly to the right, "grab" the knob from the other side, and drag it back down to adjust it from 50% to 100%).
Congratulations. You just condensed TFA down to the length it probably should have been in the first place. In fact, there is more of value in your paragraph above than that entire article, as it actually describes a problem instead of just complaining about "damn knobs". Otherwise it is worthless snide drivel making fun of people for creating skinning art. Well, I guess it did serve as a pretty screenshot gallery.
Now, you suggest one solution for fixing this type of UX knob. One that requires two hands, but still at least you suggest one. Others here seem to like the idea of replacing knobs with sliders. Still others are fine with knobs as long as after you click on them it is a linear motion to turn them, with the knob only serving to tell the app what thing to tune. Personally I'd say why make people click on them, just use the scrollwheel on whatever you are mouse over... and click/drag if you need to go fine grained.
But you're right I don't use this kind of kit, so go argue it over with your compatriots and come back when you have some solid suggestions, then maybe someone who knows how to code will help you out.
No, you still don't get it. Sorry.
This stuff is almost all copyright-protected, proprietary software, not open source. Nobody can legally "fix" it except the company or individual who made it to begin with. The problem both the OP and I am complaining about is that the UI's are resolutely "pretty", not practical - and they're going to stay that way until the UI designers acquire a clue about usability.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that.
Basically, those of
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I do use this kit (or did, anyway), and I agree with you.
Mouseover wheel functionality is phenomenal, and I've used a few tools that had it. Since I came from live mixing with physical controls, it seemed natural to just move to the control and turn the wheel (in my case, a side wheel on my mouse) to do the job.
I absolutely oppose the idea of sliders. That changes the size and relative position of the layout, and the visual appearance enough that it becomes a whole new beast to learn. For a digital product
Critical knob requirement (Score:5, Funny)
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True story: worked on satcom gear for military public affairs. At one point, we added a small mixer to the unit to support IFB audio so they could more easily do live interviews and what not. When we made up the labels for the mixer, I made sure our graphics designer had the markings going from 1 to 11... about 10% of my students caught the reference.
Sliders: 2 for $2 (Score:2)
If you want to set an effect's intensity to 11 units out of 12, you can move the slider to 11 or click in the adjacent text field and pressing 1 1 Enter. Just don't use a knob, you knob.
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Without knobs how would I turn it up to 11?
Why don't you just make 10 louder?
.....These go to 11.
Totally Agree! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've even gone so far as to search for plug-ins that DON'T rely on skeuomorphic designs, and came up mostly empty. Plug-in designers put waaaay too much effort into making their front panels look like brushed aluminum and their needle velocity just so, and not nearly enough effort into making their interfaces intuitive and effective.
Re: Totally Agree! (Score:2)
The only time this shit is acceptable is when they are emulating a specific model of hardware. Only then does the value of a familiar interface outweigh the travesty that is the digital knob.
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Absolutely. Whether it's a with a mouse or a touch interface on a tablet or a phone, interacting with fake knobs on a screen is painfully annoying. Physical knobs are good when you need precise quick control. Digital knobs are the opposite - as you say, a travesty.
Your mouse has a knob (unless it's an Apple mouse) (Score:3)
Re:Totally Agree! (Score:5, Insightful)
making their interfaces intuitive
Intuitive to whom? For someone who's used audio mixers before there's nothing more intuitive than seeing a picture of a mixer. For someone who does it professionally there's nothing more intuitive than plugging in a mixing control surface and binding the physical knobs to the virtual knobs.
Re:Totally Agree! (Score:4, Informative)
/thread.
It makes perfect sense as soon as you remember that MIDI control surfaces exist
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Having done thousands of live mixes, yes a mixing board is the most efficient way to group, adjust and display many parameters in a human usable fashion.
I use a digital mixer with ipad remote these days, but the only reason I do so is to save weight and not use long multicore cables. ( saves 100kg)
The downside is in speed of pulling a good mix at the start, on a real analouge mixer, it takes less than the first song, whereas the digital desk takes up to 3 songs to get near the same result, purely due to the
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The thing you're thinking of is called a "guitar". It's kinda cool... you have a string representing the waveform, and you manipulate it in several places with your fingers to change the pitch.
Of course, then there are effects, volume, pan, routing, and a number of other things that happen that don't really work by touching a "big ass touch screen".
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So you think a mix board is the epitome of an interface for doing audio?
So you think that Trump is attractive in a sexual way? I mean since we're not actually reading what the other person wrote and then just claiming they said something completely different to what they actually said and on a completely irrelevant train of thought I figure we can continue playing that game.
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Exactly. Up until recently, the vast, VAST majority of people using audio software were professionals who got their start by working with real knobs and real buttons on real mixing boards. Each of those controls was on that mixing board to serve its very specific, important purpose, and any audio software intending to replicate that functionality would need to provide some way for controlling the functionality provided by each of those knobs. Unfortunately, filling the screen with hundreds of pull-down menu
Re: Totally Agree! (Score:2)
A number up / down box serves the exact same thing and is smaller
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A number up / down box serves the exact same thing and is smaller
The exact same thing? I don't think so. If the number box offers integers from 0 to 10 and I want 4.3, I'm out of luck. If the box offers decimal fractions from 0 to 10 in increments of 0.1, the list is 'way too long.
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your fake knob has the same restriction, its not a analog thing, if your knob only increments in steps of 1, you still do not get 4.3, and likewise if its really high amount of steps, you have a fiddly thing using a XY pointing device to rotate an object (and even in good software that's still pretty irritating)
plop a number up / down box, type in 4, oh I want to fine tune that a little, click click click 4.3
its really not that hard
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Are you using a mouse from 1983? I can't remember the last time I saw one without a scrollwheel.
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Then replace two knobs top and bottom with two vertical sliders side by side. This way your 24 channels get 48 sliders across.
We'd get away from GUIs (Score:2)
That'd the real way to get away from skeuomorphic paradigms. :wq!
because (Score:3)
Audio engineers are not programmers? Well usually anyways.
They like to mimic what they know, mixers, synths, filters compressors etc. The H/W variety works with knobs, so the S/W variety mimics that to help, you know, real audio engineers.
Re:because (Score:4, Insightful)
Audio engineers are not programmers? Well usually anyways.
They like to mimic what they know, mixers, synths, filters compressors etc. The H/W variety works with knobs, so the S/W variety mimics that to help, you know, real audio engineers.
This! The last thing any audio engineer needs to to learn a new interface after having spent many years learning on that has started to look pretty damn standard. If you really don't like the mouse, why not buy a USB mixer control surface and plug it in to your computer. That way you can physically control all the software controls, just like on a real mixing desk.
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Audio is still a very analog type of work. So knobs and leavers more accurately represent what they are trying to accomplish.
They may be other elements that are better suited for computers. But for the most part the knob is probably good enough.
Inductive reasoning at its finest (Score:5, Interesting)
I use GarageBand and only GarageBand and this is how GarageBand works.
For what it's worth, CoolEdit and Audacity don't work that way. I've never used GarageBand so I can't speak to what it does that you apparently can't live without and/or think that nothing else can do, but I've used Audacity for editing and CoolEdit for sophisticated transformations and neither of them look anything like GarageBand does.
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It's not just GarageBand. Not even close. Take a look at any pro audio software and plugins, VST synths, Audio Unit stuff, it's a lot of the same. It makes life a pain for actually using them day-to-day.
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Rosegarden? [rosegardenmusic.com]
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Yep. My commercial pro audio software tries to emulate everything my mixing board can do, which is about 25 things for each channel (and the mixing board has 12 channels - small, but it has pro audio power levels and phantom power for my condenser mics). I can only record 2 channels at once though because that is all my interface supports and I haven't dished out for one that can do more. For me that isn't a big deal because I rarely need more than 2 channels at once (the exception is recording a drum kit,
Indeed (Score:2)
I'm not amongst the new "skeuomorphic design is evil" school of thought at all, but anything can be overdone -- and some audio software is the perfect example of that.
Pro Audio Plugins are the same (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think MP3 players are bad, try pro Audio stuff. VST synth Plugins, filters, compressors, stompbox emulators, all of them, to a tee are the same. Reason Actually have pictures of stuff tapes to a rack. The virtual cables swing around when you plug and unplug them. Omnisphere, while being a fantastic synth has this horrible blue interface from the 80s. The vintage emulators from Arturia look pretty much the same as the real equipment, scratches on the woodwork included. This is not a good thing, the user interfaces often suffer horribly for it.
Exception include some of the newest things from Native Instruments, Kontour and rounds for instance as well as Zebra and Serum, the hottest VST synth at the moment.
Curiously, there is a lot of innovation in designing advanced input devices to make music. Roger Linn, the guy who built the classic Linn Drum Machine in the early 80s is a big fan of this idea, bringing out the Linnstrument. Other things that are very innovative are the Roli Seaboard, Eigenharp, some of Keith McMillen's stuff, Reactable, Continuum and many of the buttony things such as the Ableton Push. It is also a cool place to play with Arduino and embedded electronics. Making Bluetooth Midi things that use your body to control synths is really fun.
On the hardware input side there is a lot of innovation. On the software side it is Retro, Retro and more Retro. When it comes to the newly active field of analogue or half-analogue synths anything that looks like a digital bit is screamed down by the purists. It really is a shame, there is a lot of innovation that looks and sounds very interesting.
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Oddly, I don't remember much of this from Protools back in the 2003 timeframe when I used it. That said, I was a Computer Engineer taking an audio editing course for my arts credit, and mostly stuck to the analog gear because it was my one time when I didn't have to use a computer. Besides, when else would I have been able to lay my hands on a real Lexicon DDL, Fairchild Reverbatron, or a Bode Ring Modulator (designed by Henry Bode himself)? Totally not practical in the modern era, but an absolute blast to
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Some of them have nice layouts showing the linear flow of the oscillators, filters and effects. Some of them have cables to set the dataflow. Some of them have NUMBERS to set the dataflow (Massive, I am looking at you), which is really dumb. Many of them simply copy the physical constraints of a 80s switchbox with patch cables in some pseudo-graphical form.
The best interfaces (Serum, Zebra) are great. The worst of them are just as bad as menu diving with buttons in the 80s.
Because it's VIRTUAL AUDIO EQUIPMENT (Score:5, Informative)
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Do you really expect audio producers to have to learn a whole new interface that has nothing to do with the physical equipment it's digitally emulating?
No, but virtual knobs are still stupid when sliders exist. They're close enough to knobs to be substituted and make good sense.
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L/R balance per channel is better as a knob. Fader should be a slider.
Channel level can be a knob but it's better as a slider.
FX returns are usually knobs and would feel awkward as sliders.
Mains levels can be knobs but they're also better as sliders.
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The problem with virtual sliders is that they take up more room than a virtual knob. VST plugins use a GUI that takes up as little room as possible. When you have multiple VST plugins running at the same time, space is at a premium. In addition, now a days many music artists use laptops in shows with even more limited desktop resolution.
When space is at a premium, knobs are king.
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Because you can visually see the position the knob is in at a much smaller level than the slider. When you have a slider less than a cm tall, it's almost impossible to tell where in the travel the slider is, is that 30%? 40%? 60%? who knows. but a knob of the same size you can immediately tell how far it's turned just by glancing at it.
The movement doesn't have to be limited to the size of the visual element either, you can move the mouse 5 cm for the full spectrum of motion on the control that's only 1 cm
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I understand you're point when it's an emulation of original hardware, but people are still making new, entirely digital instruments like this as well. It really irritates.
Because Musicians Aren't Geeks (Mostly) (Score:2)
They're designed that way to keep the learning-curve as shallow & short as possible for guys that are used to vacuum-tube amplifiers with physical-spring reverb tanks and effects pedals with germanium transistors. Knobs, buttons, switches, and sliders are what they understand and so skeuomorphic-style GUI digital audio workstation software is what they tend to be more comfortable with and hence to buy, so naturally that's what is most-produced.
Strat
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The (actual) Engineer in me always thought that an audio editing/realtime effects software styled on LabView would work quite well... Drop effects controls onto a workspace, then wire them up by running links between the boxes. Don't know if that's what modern stuff is like (I haven't done audio work since 2002 or so), but it's one of those things that always stuck with me as a sensible way of doing things.
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What is your (or their) alternate suggestion? (Score:2)
Eek! A mouse! (Score:5, Insightful)
"You have to control them with a mouse".
Or a MIDI keyboard such as my Nektar LX49+, or a mixer like the Novation SL Mk 2, the Mackie Mix 8, the Behringer BCF2000, or the Faderport 8. A mouse! This ain't the Dark Ages, you know!
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I faded out of recording just as USB controllers were taking off, so I'm not all that familiar, but do these controllers also interface with all the plugins? If you have a compressor or reverb plugin running, can you twist a knob on your controller, and it'll automatically twist the attack knob?
I see how it's fine for the 'mainboard' of your recording software, which does look like a mixer, but I think the poster is referring to all the extra bits: VST instruments, etc.. I had the original Halion VST instru
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They do interface with all the plugins, but you mostly have to link the controls to the controller manually, depending on the controller. Some controllers come with software that allows them to interface directly with built-in plugins in the DAW (such as my Nektar Impact LX49+ which integrates directly with Studio One and Live plus about 11 other DAWs), but many don't. And, though my LX49+ controls the Studio One plugins without further work on my part, I do have to link to the controls on non-factory VSTs
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Plus there's the annoyance with automap when it comes to the Novation, but that's a specific issue with their design choice and not about the input method per se.
Real-estate (Score:5, Insightful)
It turns out that knobs are pretty space-efficient considering the function they perform, when physical or digitally presented. When doing live sound, having quick access to as many adjustments as possible with a simple reach is invaluable. One of the things I dislike about most modern digital mixing consoles is that they tried to limit the number of knobs which in turn leads to more buttons being pushed to switch between channels.
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You shouldn't have to think about it, just look at any real mixer board, they already do exactly that, and you know why? Because that's what works best!
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Digitial/Analog crosstraining (Score:2)
While the OP isn't wrong about wanting interfaces that aren't held back by....legacy....considerations, I still see a lot of analog devices in use.
It's all about the musicians! (Score:3)
Have you ever met a true musician? You know - those that actually are good, and make music for a living, not only a boy/girl with a guitar or a "Home studio" in moms basement.
Music is ALL about the FEEL. And musicians are often very visual as well as aural, they tend to really LOVE their hardware, and by hardware I mean their Guitars, saxophones, trumpets, drumset, keyboard, violins and whatever floats your boat. In fact - it's almost like a girlfriend or boyfriend to some, this instrument makes them feel they can perform, it's a trusted friend - it's a companion - it's something you wouldn't let go for dear life!
So when you see all these controls and knobs, it is intended to give the user complete VISUAL control and emulate the "unplugged" feel of the electromechanical gear that costs a FORTUNE if you actually want the real thing (like external mixers, harddisk track recorders, Tascams, keyboards, sound-modules etc.). It just makes you FEEL better, that there's something there - real hardware - that you can touch, control and FEEL.
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Except you have to control them with a mouse.
No, you fools.
High end audio software ties into physical knobs and sliders and shit on your high end boards. You control the digital knob with an actual knob.
All other software apes the high end software, but most of it can't tie into actual hardware dealies and even the mid end packages that can often don't because the low end users don't have such hardware.
the ancient knobs work with ancient midi protocols (Score:2)
too many knobs and buttons? (Score:2)
How else would you control many many dynamic and constantly-adjusted variables in real time?
I know it's frightfully analog, but the fact is that things like drop-down lists, context-relevant controls, etc would just make this harder. If I need to drop the bass volume in the middle of live performance, I don't want to have to hunt for the control, I want the control RIGHT WHERE I EXPECT IT.
I can see ultimately someone crafting a better UI, sure, what can't be improved? But the UI controls have a lot of org
Aim is to bind s/w interface to MIDI controllers (Score:5, Informative)
Musicians and enthusiasts who use music creation software usually know very well why their software tools have an interface that depicts music hardware, so I'm a bit puzzled why it's a mystery to the author of TFA.
The reason is that hardware controls like knobs, sliders, percussion pads, 2-axis touchpads, multi-axis RF field interfaces, breath controllers and many others kinds are extremely interactive and immediate in their effect, and so their use comes naturally to music creators. All of these controllers are commonly provided with a MIDI interface today. This has been so for many decades, either baseband MIDI or today commonly carried over USB. Through MIDI, these hardware interfaces are bound by the musician to any desired control points in the software tools, and the result is extremely expressive and a pleasure to use.
The author complains that controlling the s/w elements with a mouse is pretty awful, and indeed it is, but nobody with any sense does that except before they've set up their MIDI control gear. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different kinds of MIDI controllers around, often costing very little, so it's a bit unusual to find a music maker who is not aware of them and of their purpose.
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Worse than Audio software...Video Editors! (Score:2)
The one software genre that really burns me is Video editors. They all want to use some variant of the Edit Decision List, or "EDL". Rather than using the standard way we select things on most softwares...example...You select part of a sentence, cut it, move the cursor to where you want to put it, and then paste it.
Uh, MIDI Controllers? (Score:2)
Nothing new... (Score:2)
Because people need identification? (Score:2)
I'm sure if you're just mixing 2 channels together, it doesn't matter much, but if you're mixing live music, we need identifiers that are unified across various systems. Sure you can put a color on a virtual DSP but not everyone will have the same color selected. In some cases, you actually have emulated real hardware and in some case the hardware is actually real hardware.
To replace everything with grey knobs is worse, hence why we have this.
Several reasons (Score:2)
- It just looks damn cool when done right (ok, subjective judgment)
- It can be controlled with real hardware (ex: DJing software like Traktor tend to look like the real mixing table the user likely has)
- When real hardware is emulated, it is natural that the software looks like the hardware it emulates (ex: a TB-303 soft synth will have the same buttons at the same locations as an actual TB-303).
- Knobs are not that bad for screen-based interaction.
Normal (Score:2)
Sound engineers are all geriatric hippies who can't use modern software.
"....needles twitching between numbers... (Score:2)
Is that really a thing? I've used pro and consumer analog gear with LED meters since the 80s, and none of (admittedly limited) software I've used had faux needles. Are they that common in audio apps?
Re: (Score:2)
A VU meter is different than some LEDs. Most LED meters are peak meters that operate at Full Scale (0 db is the top LED, you can't go higher without clipping), meaning they'll show the volume of the loudest part of the track, the absolute peak of a waveform's transient. This is useful with digital, as you generally never want to clip or overshoot 0 dbFS. A VU meter has different ballistics (the way it reacts to incoming signal is slower) and acts as more of an indication of average volume of the signal. A p
Get a touch screen (Score:2)
Then you can interact with your virtual knobs and sliders as you would real ones.
Clearly a sign the Apple effect (Score:2)
It stands out to me author never worked in a studio or done serious audio work. He says he has used ES2 synthesizer in Logic Pro for 8 years and still cannot "come closer to understanding what any of its controls do, or why they are laid out like this
Audition? (Score:2)
Coming late to the discussion here, but I'd like to talk about Adobe Audition. It does not use knobs. Here are my thoughts:
I came late to the recording game. To clarify, I am an amateur recorder. That said, I have a fairly complete rack at home, and it has lots of knobs. Like, heaps! And when I am adjusting attacks/delays/etc the knobs are fine.
Switching to Audition, if I apply something like a compressor, each value has a slider and an editable number at the end. It is excellent - I can fine tune the valu
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing beats physical hardware for user controls.
I agree. There are many situations where physical controls are the best sort -- the prime example is in cars. Replacing physical controls with touch screens in cars is just downright evil.
But physical controls come with their own set of downsides: they wear out, they can't be easily reconfigured, etc.
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Replacing physical controls with touch screens in cars is just downright evil.
You'll just love the Tesla Model 3. All the dashboard gauges are gone too - no speedometer even. There's just a touchscreen panel in the center, quite a long visual distance from the road compared to the usual dashboard.
Well, at least there's a physical steering wheel .... for now.
Re: (Score:2)
quite a long visual distance from the road compared to the usual dashboard.
This is not even remotely unique to the Model 3, there are many vehicles these days that put the main instrument cluster in the middle of the vehicle instead of in front of the driver. It makes it cheaper to make international variants of the vehicle because you can use the same dash for both right and left hand drive vehicles.
That said, I still refuse to actually buy any vehicle that follows this horrible design principle, but let's not pretend it's just Tesla doing it.
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Unique to Tesla is the lack of any actual gauges or anything in this arrangement. There's just an LCD monitor slapped in the center of the dash. Hope the sun's not an an awkard angle.
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Not unique, there are other LCD gauge clusters, and other clusters mounted in that same horrible location.
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I don't believe there's another car with just a monitor in the middle - can you name one?
Yes, there are cars with one or the other of these bad design choices, but is Tesla unique in combining both? (Actually, I don't think an LCD dash in the normal place with good sun shading is necessarily a UI problem, though it may be a bad idea from a maintenance perspective.)
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You'll just love the Tesla Model 3.
That's hardly unique to the Tesla -- but you're right, that sort of thing makes it very unlikely that I'd buy one.
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Replacing physical controls with touch screens in cars is just downright evil
Yes, and no. I have a Tesla Model S, the vast majority of the controls are on the touch screen. When I first got the car I was really worried that they'd gone too far with it, and I was partially right, but I've also been pleasantly surprised. Basically the only control that I find I really wish they'd left as a physical button is the fog lights. everything else I've actually been quite happy with as it is. Now granted some of that is because of how much you can map to the steering wheel controls (which are
Re: (Score:2)
Once a product gets enough features, it's just not practical to have everything be it's own physical control.
True, but it's entirely practical to dynamically remap physical controls so that you can pick what they're actually controlling at any given time.
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For a mouse/kb? A slider is best.
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Well, some actually do (click-hold, move mouse up/down), but a knob suggests a circular movement which is less intuitive than a slider would be.
Re: Skeuomorphic interfaces (Score:2)
Have it sliding in a circle. That won't be hard to use with a mouse at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say it wasn't, just that a slider is more intuitive than a knob for a mouse. The comment I replied to compared textboxes with knobs, so I suggested a slider. I suppose if you know the range of values and how they scale, a textbox would work, but a screen full of them would require a lot of tabbing and/or mouse to kb movement.
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Gibble, gabble, gibble gabble (Happy lameness filter to you)
(Q) = Skeomorphic lameness rejection control set to 11
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Oh where oh where are my mod points today?! Most of the reason why "UI designers" hate skeuomorphism is because they got bored, and wanted to change things. Just exactly like the way my mom had to rearrange the living room furniture every year.
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The problem with Skeumorphic design is that it keeps with physical constraints. Imagine a fairly typical VST Synth where you can add effect or modify the data flow and filters with buttons. It makes much more sense for the interface to adjust to the actual dataflow than to have a fixed interface where you have to figure it in your head. ADSR envelopes are easier if you simply edit the curve on a curve instead of with pseudo-virtual buttons.
A virtual GUI interfacecan morph itself. A skeumorphic interface can
Re: (Score:2)
This is about dataflow through effect and envelopes and different oscillators to generate sounds. Much more complicated, and the actual signal path can change dynamically.