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Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

linuxdaw.org

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Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#31

Post by dylan604 »

gkhartman wrote: post #30

This is great. Makes these tools much more discoverable. I can help but notice the drop in plugin ui quality one you click the foss filter checkbox. Something in me wants a foss plugin to come with a cool skin like the free ones do, but I know that's silly.

It really says something about designers when there's so few of them contributing to FOSS projects. It also says something about FOSS devs that they don't/can't find better UI for their projects. Especially for web based UIs where CSS isn't that hard to look at sites you want to emulate and get much much closer to a respectable UI.

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#32

Post by bigyabai »

jrm4 wrote: post #24
mjr00 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of. I'm racking my brain thinking of what a better interface would be for selecting a number between a range of values, where the number is a point on a continuum and not any specific value, and can't think of one. The equivalent "traditional" UX for webapps would be a slider control, but that's functionally the same and you'd be going against many year…

Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel? Hover and use that? Do they do that?

Most have click+drag and a shift modifier for fine adjustments.

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#35

Post by mjr00 »

jrm4 wrote: post #24
mjr00 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of. I'm racking my brain thinking of what a better interface would be for selecting a number between a range of values, where the number is a point on a continuum and not any specific value, and can't think of one. The equivalent "traditional" UX for webapps would be a slider control, but that's functionally the same and you'd be going against many year…

Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel? Hover and use that? Do they do that?

> Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel?

Probably not, a lot of musicians develop on the go (planes etc) so they're dealing with built-in trackpads pretty often. You can still scroll but it's not as ergonomic.

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#36

Post by mjr00 »

ofalkaed wrote: post #25
mjr00 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of. I'm racking my brain thinking of what a better interface would be for selecting a number between a range of values, where the number is a point on a continuum and not any specific value, and can't think of one. The equivalent "traditional" UX for webapps would be a slider control, but that's functionally the same and you'd be going against many year…

I personally prefer the good old number box but they have their problems and you actually have to read each and ever box to see what the state is, with sliders and knobs we can see the value of a great many controls at a glance.

Some newer synths do this where it makes sense. e.g. in Phase Plant the wavetable frame is a number, since wavetable positions are discrete values from 1 to 256.

Ultimately I see two problems though,

1. sometimes the number doesn't matter or make sense at all. A good example is a macro knob. The value is somewhere between "0" or "1", and synths do let you set it manually (since this is how recorded automation works), but a macro slider doesn't make too much sense IMO.

2. lots of controls deal with logarithmic values. Anything that corresponds to a frequency is going to need finer control when you're tweaking values below 500Hz vs changing a value between 10000Hz and 10500Hz. Knobs mask this pretty well. I'm sure you could build a slider that dealt with this, but a number box would be very weird since you'd want the scroll step to be much smaller at lower values.

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#37

Post by ofalkaed »

metalman wrote: post #14

it's an add for apps that cost as much as a box of decent used pedals and rack mount gear. though "linux musicians" does appear to be a thing, and the bot used to check if you are human, is amusing and fully automated. https://linuxmusicians.com/

I actually assumed the link was linuxmusicians.com and I bet I am not the only one who assumed that. It is not an ad, but a store that also lists free software.

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#38

Post by jennyholzer2 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #4
cpuguy83 wrote: post #3

Just an fyi to anyone making or thinking of making one of these: Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of. I don't know why audio apps/DAWs fall so hard on skeuomorphism here when the interface just doesn't make sense in the context.

Isn't the entire idea that you hook it up to physical hardware?

[dead]

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#39

Post by ubercow13 »

rasz wrote: post #17
cpuguy83 wrote: post #3

Just an fyi to anyone making or thinking of making one of these: Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of. I don't know why audio apps/DAWs fall so hard on skeuomorphism here when the interface just doesn't make sense in the context.

On the other hand turning a knob with a mouse wheel is the best interface I can think of.

It doesn't provide enough precision for many synth/music effect knobs.

Re: Linux DAW: Help Linux musicians to quickly and easily find the tools they need

#40

Post by ofalkaed »

mjr00 wrote: post #36
ofalkaed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally prefer the good old number box but they have their problems and you actually have to read each and ever box to see what the state is, with sliders and knobs we can see the value of a great many controls at a glance.

Some newer synths do this where it makes sense. e.g. in Phase Plant the wavetable frame is a number, since wavetable positions are discrete values from 1 to 256. Ultimately I see two problems though, 1. sometimes the number doesn't matter or make sense at all. A good example is a macro knob. The value is somewhere between "0" or "1", and synths do let you set it manually (since this is how recorded automation works),…

Number boxes can be log or expo or even an arbitrary list, and they can have a fine tune through holding shift or the like. They also generally allow you to just type in the number you want. They definitely are not the best solution for all situations, just my preference.
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