Just an fyi to anyone making or thinking of making one of these:<p>Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of.
I don't know why audio apps/DAWs fall so hard on skeuomorphism here when the interface just doesn't make sense in the context.
Unless the implementation is really bad, you actually have more control over these knobs than you would have over sliders. You could technically remove the knob completely, replace it with just textual number you click on and move your mouse, but the knob is easier to read.
A 20 pixel knob has considerably greater resolution than a 20 pixel slider with its max resolution of 20. I don't think I have come across a digital knob that you have to turn with the mouse since the previous century, just drag up or down or left or right.
It allows for dense controls and everyone's used to them. I don't find them to be a problem, they aren't intuitive in that you might think you're supposed to grab the knob and "turn" it with a circular cursor motion or something, but once you learn to drag linearly, they're an easy to use and consistent interface. And as giancarlostoro mentioned, you can map them to a MIDI device if you want to twiddle knobs while playing/recording live.
I'll add in addition - the skeumorphism here is generally pretty functional, you touched on this when you said "everyone is used to them"<p>But the layout of these buttons, while certainly not standard, is generally familiar across various filters, etc. So if you are dealing with a complex interface the skeumorphism absolutely helps to make the input more familiar and easily accessible.<p>This is what skeumorphism is for and this is a great place to use it.<p>Imagine if the symbols for "play" "pause" and "stop" were changed simply because it no longer made sense to follow the conventions of a VCR, then multiply that by an order of magnitude.
If not using hardware, you just click and move horizontally or vertically; not sure what a better interface would be? Though I do like it when the numeric value shows when changing. I really don't know what other UI would work well here. Usually there are so many knobs it makes sense to be compact. Though really it makes sense as well to match the visualization of the knobs on my midi controller anyway.
> Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of.<p>I'm racking my brain thinking of what a better interface would be for selecting a number between a range of values, where the number is a point on a continuum and not any specific value, and can't think of one. The equivalent "traditional" UX for webapps would be a slider control, but that's functionally the same and you'd be going against many years of domain-specific common understanding for not much benefit.
I personally prefer the good old number box but they have their problems and you actually have to read each and ever box to see what the state is, with sliders and knobs we can see the value of a great many controls at a glance.
Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel? Hover and use that? Do they do that?
> Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel?<p>Probably not, a lot of musicians develop on the go (planes etc) so they're dealing with built-in trackpads pretty often. You can still scroll but it's not as ergonomic.
Most have click+drag and a shift modifier for fine adjustments.
most daws allow you to map hardware to the dials so u dont need to tweak by mouse. that being said, good automations are a fair replacement depending on your style of music. lfos, adsrs and pattern tools for automation lanes aswell as ability to record automations (to keep em consistent, modify manually etc ), and ofc humanization algorithms that u can apply to automation lanes.<p>i never use 'hardware', totally happy doin what i do. (thats music i think. enjoying your craft). most ppl i know using similar tools do have midi controllers to have more of an instrumental interface. theres tons of options. no need to discourage anyone...
The amount of time it takes to have 1 debate about the choice is more time than I'll spend in my entire life figuring out how all the specific "knobs" I'll ever touch work. It's just not a real problem.<p>Reaper has a standard UI for controlling plugins you can use instead of the VST UIs, other DAWs probably do too. It's an awful, lifeless sea of sliders and check boxes that hurts to look at, and instantly drains one of all creativity.
Isn't the entire idea that you hook it up to physical hardware?
No. MIDI controllers have their place, but many people work without one, or only use one for live performances. There are often also way more knobs in the various FX chains in a DAW than you would reasonably want to map to a controller, but still want to touch at least a few times while making a song.<p>Knobs are confusing when converted to a mouse paradigm because there can be a few strategies to control them (click+drag up/down, click+drag right/left, weird rotational things, etc), and you have to guess since each FX studio and software may implement it just a little different.
On the other hand turning a knob with a mouse wheel is the best interface I can think of.