[linux-audio-user] Usability vs Intuitability in Ardour

[Burkhard Woelfel]

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On Tuesday 26 July 2005 17:53, Paul Davis wrote:
> >  drag in compressed files and instantly use them without waiting for
> > them to be uncompressed to wav or fiddling with a cmdline to do this
> > beforehand.
>
> using either nautilus or konqueror, you can drag-n-drop any non-
> compressed file into ardour, in a variety of ways. ardour does not
> support drag-n-drop of compressed files for 2 reasons:
>
> 	a) no appropriate API for reading such files (about to
> 	    change as soon as libsndfile offers support for ogg)
> 	b) Ardour is intended to be used for music production in which
> 	    quality *matters*. Compressed audio is a temporary
> 	    manifestation of a temporary issue: lack of bandwidth
> 	    and/or storage space. No serious audio professional 
> 	    makes music by pasting mp3 samples into their work,
> 	    and neither should you. 

I'd like to have an easy way to import, say, a snippet of a rehearsal 
recording into ardour, to show it to the musician in context of what has 
already been recorded. Having the ability to drag-and-drop import mp3 samples 
could really speed up my workflow. I work with low quality recordings all the 
time and then rework things - that's just my favourite way of doing stuff. 

But this is composition and arrangement, not recording actually.

Maybe I shouldn't, but I feel like I always will use low quality material in 
early stages of production. 

> 	    Even if only because if someone 
> 	    re-mp3's or ogg-encodes your work, it will sound even
> 	    more deeply horrible.

You are right on the quality side. 

I think not to have mp3 drag-and-drop import is the right decision for most of 
the workflows you are designing for. If I had a few thousand euros to spend 
on hardware, I wouldn't try to make my point here, maybe.
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