[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

[Ross Johnson]

On 5/12/2012 9:01 AM, Thomas Vecchione wrote:
>
> For the record, that is how some of us work;)  More correctly I have 
> basic starting points and then tweak with the ears without looking at 
> teh numerical readout at all.  Mixbus is great for this in fact, I 
> very rarely look at the numerical readouts compared to what I adjust.

Have you ever been tweaking something only to realise that that 
particular control is not active?

I have and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. That's because I often prefer 
to make changes only after I've heard them in my mind, but sometimes 
that means I anticipate changes rather than hear the actual change. It's 
very difficult to switch between modes of listening sometimes and so 
visual confirmation is a good thing.

What you don't want is visual indicators that change when they aren't 
actually having any effect, like a graphic EQ envelope when the EQ is in 
fact in by-pass mode.

>
> Also for the record I am not against having GUIs in plugins, I feel it 
> is a benefit, and your basic idea isn't necessarily horrible to me, 
> but you have several assumptions I have just disagreed with or tried 
> to correct in my post and I am not yet convinced you have researched 
> what you have slammed as being 'inadaquete'.
>
>     I don't agree, in general, and the process sounds dubious to me
>     (why not clip it in software then? They say that "those"
>     converters clip gracefully and add a bit of analog saturation
>     before clipping, but I'm not convinced), especially as it is a
>     "mastering" process which should try to preserve sound quality as
>     much as possible, while making everything louder, and not degrade
>     it deliberately for the sake of making everything as loud as
>     possible (take Californication, for example, a prime example of
>     HEAVY clipping).
>
>
> Actually there is a difference in physics between digital distortion 
> and analog.  Analog distortion tends to add odd harmonics to the 
> signal, vs digital which tends to add even harmonics.  As humans we 
> tend to prefer the former vs the latter, which is why digital 
> distortion sounds so bad to us so quick.

Don't you mean valve (predominantly even-order harmonics due to the 
softer saturation) versus transistor clipping (the result approaching a 
square wave is predominantly odd-order harmonics - a square wave is only 
composed of odd-order harmonics). Both are analog.

Digital clipping is like transistor clipping. We prefer the even-order 
harmonics over the odd-order harmonics.

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