Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] read it and drool
From: Steve Harris (S.W.Harris_AT_ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Dec 04 2000 - 20:31:54 EET
On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 10:55:48AM +0000, Richard Dobson wrote:
> One knob for which I can't think of a slider equivalent it the 'Alpha
> Wheel'. You know, you can go on turning it through a full 360 deg. The
> primary use for one from my point of view is in doing a surround pan,
> placing a source anywhere in the circle around the listener. I set up
> one in the Creamware Pulsar environment, and it worked pretty well - the
> bigger the radius of the mouse movement, the more precision of movement
> you got (and a wide radius is easier to control than a small one...).
SGI make a GUI element which is like a vertical wheel, coming out of the
screen, you click and roll it up and down, equivalent to a alpha dial,
but more sane in a GUI.
I'm not going to defend it, bit I actually *like* circular controled
knobs in GUIs (if you have to have knobs at all). I can make rapid
changes by moving the mouse a little near the centre of the knob, and
fine changes by making small movements a long way away. They have to be
implemented just right, but they can be fantastic. Conversly I don't
get on with horizontal/vertically control knobs at all, they never quite
seem intuative.
The control software for the nord modular is brilliant IMHO. It has knobs
that work as obove, but in adition, when you give focus to them a little
up/down icon and the parameter value typin apears, which you can use
as you would image. Of course you also have a hardware box with very
accurate knobs on which ties in with the interface, which helps.
MIDI knob boxes are dirt cheap though, so we can all have 8/16 knob
control surfaces to control our GUI's, what we need is a good way of
indicating which physical knob controls which onscreen knob.
- Steve
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