On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 02:14:54PM +0100, Remon Sijrier wrote: > On Sunday, November 14, 2010 01:01:17 am [email protected] wrote:
> > Let me guess: a combination of a badly designed widget that has no > > central position, and a print format that doesn't show the smallest > > step. > > Hmm, you never used Traverso I see ... at least not in the way it should be > used: there are no widgets in Traverso to control gain/pan values. I have a look at it every now and then to see how it's evolving. Last time it still was limited to stereo, and it crashed within minutes. Which does indeed mean I don't use it. > But you are correct that the pan/gain 'indicators' have less precision then > the actual gain/pan values. > > One of the reasons I didn't fix this earlier is due I've no idea how much > precision is needed. I.e. how small a step value do we want/need for gain and > pan, and do we actually want to show that in the indicator? E.g. a value of > -3.05 dB is a bit overkill? There's a simple rule: if the indicator says '-3.0' then the actual value should be -3.0. Not -2.96 or -3.04. In other words the indicator should have the required precision to be able to show *all* possible values exactly. Steps of 0.1 dB for gain are perfectly OK, even bigger ones. You have to 'smooth' the transition anyway if the gain changes. > Right now gain increment steps are 0.05 dB for gain, and there are 200 steps > for pan normalized between -1, 1 I hope '200 steps' means 201 positions. You need an odd number in order to have a central position. > Just some thoughts: rotary knob controls are better to control by the human > then sliders are, probably due the movements of the fingers are much more > precise? Real ones provide support so the user can hold the knob without moving it even in shaky conditions. > The use of sliders vs knobs in software imho still is a different issue since > you have to control those with a mouse, right? > And this mouse movement dictates how good the movement (and precision of that > movement) can be done in combination with how the knob/slider 'widget' is > implemented. E.g. the width of the slider is 100 pixels, then you can't use > more then 100 steps. You can, and in fact the sliders I'm using in some new projects do have sub-pixel accuracy, also visually. > Traverso does away with that by using the relative mouse moving distance, > allowing for mouse movements to be translated in relatively small gain/pan > adjustements in effect giving the user a much better control over the > gain/pan/other values. Relative motion is the only one that makes sense for a slider. There's nothing more useless than a control that jumps to the value you click on. > Side effect is that the mouse can be moved physically > for over long distances without being limited by screen sizes, so no matter > if > you're using a large or small screen, a large or small knob/slider, it always > feels the same, with much more precision :) Which in general is a good idea. OTOH, fader attenuation should 'go faster' for low gain values (e.g. below -40 dB w.r.t. the maximum), so a fixed step is not always optimal. Ciao. -- FA There are three of them, and Alleline. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
