[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

[Paul Davis]

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 7:00 PM, Adriano Petrosillo
<ampetrosillo at gmail.com>wrote:

> > The theme manager already makes a lot of this possible. Looking at recent
> > changes in Ardour3 I expect it won't be too long before custom theme
> files
> > will be available.
>
> I have a feeling that it is very difficult to depart from the boxy,
> unappealing look of Ardour because it looks like it uses standard GTK
> elements,
>

false, at least as an absolute rule.

Mixbus is based on Ardour 2, so no MIDI, but anyway, I find Mixbus limited
> and limiting, I don't know about regular channel-strips, but there are only
> 4 group buses,
>

mixbus2 has 8 mix busses.


> and I don't really get the reason to "port" the limitations of hardware
> mixers in the digital domain, as there is no real "need" and it's most
> probably a deliberate desire to limit the application's functionality (for
> marketing purposes, maybe?).
>

one person's limitation is another person's rapid workflow, based on 30
years of actual experience of how to mix many different styles of music.


>
> Anyway, Mixbus is not what I had in mind, since it isn't really
> user-tweakable, I was thinking more along the lines of "I have a track
> template editor, I can "build" my channel strip according to my needs". A
> truly modular (since you talk about modularity) approach.
>
> For example, let's say you want to make a track template which features
> three sections (ie. comp, eq - which both use a specific, user-defined
> plugin - and send, with a track menu to choose where to), and each section
> has pots for fast tweaking of so and so parameters (for example, in the
> comp section, you might want to feature only an attack pot, a release pot
> and a threshold pot, setting all the other parameters, such as ratio or
> knee, to a fixed value, while on EQ you might want to feature three pots,
> one for bass - a shelving filter set to 80Hz - one for mid - a peaking
> filter set to 1kHz where Q gradually decreases from 5 to 10, and gradually
> increases from 5 to 0, so that, at high boost settings it becomes a wide
> peak and at high cut settings it becomes a narrow notch - and one for
> treble - a shelving filter preset to 12kHz).
>

other than the fact that there is no control over the GUI elements used
(which appears to be your major issue) all of this can be done in ardour3
already.

>
> This way, it would be very close to building your own mixer, combining
> different channel strips for your needs... but in software, and you don't
> even have to mess with plugins directly, but you have everything routed to
> direct controls which can be more easily MIDI assigned, for example (I
> admit taking inspiration from the modulation routing capabilities featured
> in many modern synths, ie. Waldorf Blofeld or Yamaha An1x). I don't think
> there is anything in the DAW world which allows this, and I think this
> would be a killer feature. Of course, this approach is even more useful
> with a diverse set of internal FXs, because that way, you could even
> include some preset track templates in the package to have an easy and
> quick way to start working (and, as time goes by, maybe think of making
> your own track templates with your favourite plugins).
>

you seem to making a huge assumption about the types of controls that exist
on a given "type" of plugin. an assumption that (a) isn't really true and
(b) isn't very useful even if it is true, because you cannot interrogate a
plugin to find out the level of detail about its parameters that would be
needed to support a mapping from "generic controls" to the specifics of the
plugin.


> I'll repeat myself, Reaper already does this, you can choose to have a
> full-fledged UI or a simple, no-nonsense one, it's totally up to you.
> There's nothing you can really lose by taking this approach, it's a win-win
> situation, you keep everyone happy, and Ardour gets more donations too ;)
> Of course, it needs some investment, but most things do.
>

work like this is never going to happen unless someone steps up to do it.
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