9 Feb
2013
9 Feb
'13
12:05 p.m.
On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 12:03:41PM +0300, Louigi Verona wrote:
On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 2:29 AM, John Rigg
<ladev3(a)jrigg.co.uk> wrote:
By "dumbed down" I mean restricted in a way which may result in
inexperienced users making fewer mistakes, but will also inconvenience
more advanced users. An example of this would be a high mid EQ that won't
sweep above 8kHz. What if I need to EQ 12kHz? There's some excuse for this
kind of thing on analogue hardware, as component cost has to be kept down,
but in a plugin it's totally unnecessary.
Another pet peeve is lack of a text entry field on controls, as it makes
it difficult to set a parameter to an exact amount. Even worse are detented
controls. What if I need an intermediate setting? The reason for detents on
analogue hardware is for repeatability of settings, but it's totally
redundant in software, unless the developer has neglected to provide
text entry!
I will stress that I'm talking about audio engineering tools, not music
creation software here. I do appreciate that users of the latter have very
different requirements.
John
To be fair I wasn't really slagging off
Windows and Mac users. Most pro
audio
engineers are using those after all. I'm just bemused by the attitude that
audio processing tools should be anything more than that. Pretty pictures
and dumbed down control ranges don't help me make better mixes, they just
get in my way.
But why instantly "dumbed down"? Or are the generic LADSPA controls so
intellectual?
I think beautifully down interface adds to the inspiration as opposed to
stuff
that all looks like coding examples.