[LAU] [Zynaddsubfx-user] zyn and the art of software maintenance

[Folderol]

On Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:58:40 +1000
cal <cal at graggrag.com> wrote:

> Folderol wrote:
> > [...]
> > I can confirm that both the addsynth and subsynth parameter controls
> > seem to be working fine at quite a deep level, also effects reverb,
> > chorus, phaser & distortion are responding as I'd expect.
> 
> There's something I've wondered about regarding effects volume controls that
> you may or may not be able to help me with - as is, if it's an insertion effect,
> its volume control is straight linear in effect, while on a non-insertion effect
> it's logarithmic. I've wondered whether a log or pseudo-log characteristic on
> the insertion effect might yield good things. I'm leaving it alone until I
> figure out how, where and why to evaluate the results of such a change though :-).
> There's a few potential candidates for such a change, so I'm curious.
> 
> cheers.

Here be dragons!

While I would agree in general that a log scale would be better, both
from a usability point of view, and consistency with the rest, how is
this going to effect existing patches?

I have a *lot* of patches. Apart from Paul's default set, I've gathered
over a hundred from other people as well as creating about the same
number myself - I would be less than delighted if these all started to
misbehave!

I would be happy with apparent log behaviour without changing the
software's interpretation of the actual stored numbers, although this
might give a rather strange 'feel'. It would depend on how fine-grained
the actual numbers were.

The only other practical possibility I can think of would be build
in a parameter file conversion utility (I think this was done in Zyn's
early days) and put an ID tag in new files (this was not done!) so that
appropriate loading behaviour could be done.

To go this way would also need agreement with the main Zyn branch
otherwise we'd end up with two incompatible systems.

All in all, I wonder if it would bring enough benefits to be actually
worth the effort.

-- 
Will J Godfrey
http://www.musically.me.uk