[LAU] A defence of the straight line

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2017 15:03:21 +0200, Alessio Degani wrote:
>Hi Will,
>
>On 09/08/2017 14:14, Will Godfrey wrote:
>> Warning: I've been thinking!
>>
>> There seems to be a trend in recent years for everything to be
>> represented in various curves. They are very pretty and (possibly)
>> technically more correct, but is that what the user wants?
>>
>> Take a simple amplitude envelope for example, showing intensity V
>> time. Now that is often shown as a logarithmic curve, but the whole
>> idea behind such a curve was to give our ears a *linear* impression
>> of intensity change, so why do we now give our ears one impression
>> but our eyes something completely different?  
>I don't know if I've understand correctly what you mean, but I try to 
>reply :)
>
>Because our ears just work like that.
>But I think there are only a metter of visualization. For example, 
>complression curves are often reprented using dB scale. So that, 
>straight line correspond to a straight "feel" to our ears.
>With that in mind, one could represent amplitude envelope just like 
>that. The problem here is that an amp envelope can be 0, that means 
>minus infinite dB -> the scale of the graph must be "mapped" in order
>to suite clear visualization.

IMO the reason for this is business sense. I don't give a
damn about it. Those fancy graphs are completely irrelevant to me. I
never ever would even care about a K-meter, let alone about any obscure
graph. Those are just fashions. It's possible to provide those fancy
graphs and consumers like it. Good GUIs for audio would look like those
for military gear, planes and ships. Btw. seemingly even digital
natives, at lest those who are blind, are still able to make and mix
music without a two or more 24" 16:9 display, showing all kinds of
meters and graphs.