Re: [LAD] User eXperience in Linux Audio

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 11:01:54AM +0100, Will Godfrey wrote:

> > Tooltips showing the value instead of a description of the option IMO
> > are good.
>
> Debatable. If I'm twiddling knobs to get a particular 'sound' I'm not at all
> interested in what the numbers are. At a later date I might want to make a note
> of them, but if I can save the settings anyway, even that is moot.

Musicians and sound engineers will have a different view on that.

When I'm mixing, I *want* to know the values of e.g. equaliser
parameters, for two reasons. First to be sure I'm not doing
anything insane. Second, because that way I will learn the
relation between the values and the resulting sound, and be
able to do the same on different HW or SW without having to
search blindly by twiddling the knobs.

It's somewhat strange that musicians expect a sound engineer
to have this sort of competence and complain if he/she takes
too much time to find the right settings, but don't want to
learn any of it themselves. Not even the wannabe sound
engineers among them.

Some time ago I was editing a long radio documentary. At some
point we had to fix a badly recorded interview, so I launched
an EQ/filter. On seeing the UI (knobs only), the director (an
OSX user) said 'oh god, that's Linux, no graphical display or
spectrum analyser, how are we going to adjust that thing'.
I ignored his remark, set the EQ to what I knew was needed,
and only then activated it. The result was right on spot. At
that point I just said 'real sound engineers don't need toys'.
He refrained from making more silly remarks for the rest of
the production. Probably remembered that he came to me because
he wasn't able to get things right himself.

Ciao,

-- 
FA
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)
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