[LAU] project "droning": 10 years, 300 tracks

[Tim Goetze]

Cheers Louigi,

>EQ is not just the DSP. It's all of it - the DSP and the UI.
>
>Take, for instance, ZynEq 10. And let's say that it's DSP is perfect. The
>reason why I would consider it to be less usable than the EQ
><https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-learning/fl-studio-online-manual/html/plugins/Fruity%20Parametric%20EQ%202.htm>
>I'm using in FL Studio is because ZynEq is really limited: the bands are
>fixed, you cannot move them around. The Q setting is global: you cannot
>make one band wide and the other narrow. It doesn't allow you to change the
>slope type or band type. There's no way to solo a band. There's no way to
>store a state and switch between the current state and another one, to hear
>the difference.
>
>All of this reduces my accuracy and/or makes the process very difficult and
>slow. Regardless of whether I want to cut something out or just apply a
>broad fix.
>
>That's what I am talking about when it comes to EQs.

Thanks for taking the time to talk about what you expect in detail.
Now I think I can understand your disappointment, though I may not be
able to really help you here.  

With what's available in open source, one can emulate the filter
architecture you want using a stack of multiple parametric equaliser
filters; they do afford full control control over individual f,Q and
band activity.  To solo a band however would most likely take multiple
mouse or keyboard manoevers (or hacking your plugin host application).

As for graphical user interfaces: as a plugin and occasional user
interface developer, I think writing those on my own would be a
colossal waste of everybody's time.  Getting a user interface right is
*hard* and things break constantly in a fascinatingly abundant
multitude of unexpected ways.  I'd rather concentrate the (very!)
little that I can do on the actual audio algorithms.  

Given how little developer power there is in open source, leaving the
user interface to the host applications makes a lot more sense.  Of
course they'll be generic and only occasionally attractive, but that's
already better than a half-hearted effort suffering constant breakage
(such as I would certainly produce, if I had to).

I understand you want quick results (who wouldn't?) and not having to
hack and tinker everything together from smaller units, but I'm afraid
that is what open source audio software will most likely continue to
be like, however lofty our goals.