[linux-audio-dev] Project: modular synth editor

Dave Robillard drobilla at connect.carleton.ca
Fri Jan 16 20:47:07 UTC 2004


On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 15:08, Joost Diepenmaat wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 02:39:36PM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote:
> > Not once in my fiddlings with LADSPA plugins in a modular synth have I
> > said to myself "Damn.. these things need a big spiffy GUI".  Honestly, a
> > bunch of sliders works just fine for me - I don't really see the need
> > for more.  Sure, VSTs that look like shiny audio hardware are nifty...
> > but who cares?  
> 
> I agree in general; the only time this becomes helpful is when plugins
> have *lots* of control ports, I think. (disclamer: I've been mostly
> using Buzz on win32 for audio use, but the situation is much the same
> there - most plugins just let the GUI be generated by the host, and
> of those that don't, only a couple actually improve the situation -
> actually, the only one I can think of is the default mixer plugin,
> which has 16 channels with about 7 controls per channel - that just
> too much to represent as a bunch of vertically aligned sliders)

This is a good example, but I _REALLY_ don't want to turn this into /yet
another/ endless LADSPA GUI discussion that will come to nothing.

> I would not like a (to my mind) artificial split between modular synth
> plugins and general LADSPA plugins either.
> 
> The only thing I'm really missing from the LADSPA specs at the moment is
> the availability of 'recorded' streams (so you could implement a sample
> player as a LADSPA plugin, or play recorded tracks backward, etc.)

Use a sampler app for this.  What's the point of being able to do it in
a LADSPA plugin?

-Dave




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