[LAU] another control surface question

[Simon Wise]

On 03/07/14 23:27, Len Ovens wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Jul 2014, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>
>> You would use belts to get "endless" faders, to avoid motorized restore?
>> I guess people who like it tactile, prefer to feel the position of a
>> fader knob and btw. we likely want that it appeals to all senses, IOW we
>> also want to see the fader knob positions.
>
> I have been trying to think what things are about tactile feel are helpful to
> doing the job and what parts are pure resistance to change. One of the things I
> have seen more than once on this list is "use your ears not your eyes". Fader
> positions can be represented as LEDs or on a screen. I note that while control
> surfaces generally use motor faders, they do not use motor pots, but rather
> encoders. Some control surfaces have no indicator where the virtual pot is, but
> rather show the effects on a screen beside all the pots, for example a picture
> of the frequency responce for a group of pots used for eq. Others have a light
> ring, but the light ring even for something with 128 or more values only has 12
> LEDs to show position. Some highend surfaces have a dial shaped led display that
> might have 20 or so LEDs right above the encoder. It seems we can only tell
> aproximatly where things are with our eyes anyway.

The old fashioned very large round knobs with a reasonable amount of resistance 
as faders were very good for positioning by feel ... angular position, 
especially during crossfades between different sources but also in terms of 
adjustment by a few degrees, is nicer to work with in many ways than linear 
faders ... the main advantage that a bank of linear faders has is the 'graph' 
they draw with the position of the handles, and that you can easily find the 
ones that are up by feel without looking. But as soon as you don't have motors 
(or dedicated faders) you lose that advantage. Then probably rotary knobs, if 
large and solid enough, are better. A ring of leds isn't expensive or difficult 
for feedback and going a bit further so there are maybe two or three on at once, 
with brightness controlled to give more than just discrete positional info, and 
perhaps different patterns like fill or spread for different purposes can really 
communicate a lot if you want to get detailed ... so channels used for pan, eq, 
level etc get different patterns assigned.

Simon