[LAU] Jack transport - was - Ardour/Muse Jack tempo lock

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 09:41:00AM -0700, Len Ovens wrote:

> To be honest, the reason I thought it would be nice is because I was
> looking at an app with no MIDI control in, but does have jack
> transport control. I was thinking that a master record enable was
> the one thing that traditional tape transports control clusters had
> that was missing. Of course just because it is traditional is not a
> great case for including it. On a tape machine all the controls are
> clustered for other reasons and the record arm sometimes does have
> more space around it or is sunken or has ridges on its sides.

For good reasons...
 
> Having said that, most control surfaces that include a transport
> section and for that matter, most sw that has a transport section
> laid out in the gui, has the record enable included in that group.
> So it is a tradition that is still in common use. What would be
> called a defacto standard or a standard by tradition. Again I don't
> know if it is a good standard or not but that is where the hand of a
> recording machine operator will look for the record button.

There is one other thing to consider. In most cases the transport
section of a control surface will control a single device, it's 
just a remote control. In that case it certainly makes sense to
have a RECORD button there, even more so if the control surface
also provides access to individual tracks.

OTOH, Jack transoprt is an API designed to sync multiple devices,
which just happens to be usable as a remote control as well.

If it makes sense to have a RECORD function there is not so easy
to decide, I can't give a definite answer to that question. What
*is* clear is that if this is added then the semantics should be
well defined and not leave room for interpretation. Does a RECORD
button talking to Jack transport have the same effect as the other
buttons - if enabled it means enabling record mode on all controlled
apps ? In that case there is a problem with apps that don't have
per-track record enables, they would be put into record mode even
if that is not wanted. Or is it a 'third level' of control, above
the per-track and per-app record enables ? In that case it's less
useful than you may want - it's still necessary to use the per-app
ones.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

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