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Is number or symmetry perfectionism a hinderance for touch interface adoption by musicians?
I've watched a midi controller presentation recently by a legendary German electronic musician, who also was an early adopter of the iPad, Touch OSC and that stuff and he mentioned that "touch knobs" don't work for him because they aren't precise enough.
I've also analyzed my own behavior and have to admit that many times I try to nail the values, e.g. -3db must be exactly that and I'll adjust the knob until it displays -3db.
You probaly have experienced value shifts when lifting your finger where it's suddenly at -2.9 or -2.8db, or when you're unable to get the exact value right away, which of course is easier to do with quality knobs.
Now I'm trying to avoid it and just ignore the numbers. How about you?
Comments
I don't really think of myself as OCD but bad knobs drive me crazy. There are some very respected devs in this space who really need to 'up their knob game'! 2 particular issues I often encounter:
Inability to dial in a value I want when it matters (eg something pitch related where there just aren't enough values available in the knob to get it accurate
Knobs that are clunky or slow to dial in accurately.
Even some very respected devs in this space could really do with looking at how well their apps' knobs function.
Cheers
A stepped option would be indeed great for all volume and pitch related stuff. Lately I'm more and more gravitating towards building my own XY "Kaos" pads for filters and things I want to interact with, it's easy in Drambo with the XY module for example (you can hide the other modules) and I never think about the actual values when I'm using this type of knob.
Are the best possible knobs, sliders or faders without steppings good enough though for "OCD" people though? I'd take Logic and its faders as a reference, and there it also happened that the values changed unless I really pay attention to the (lifting finger) movement itself which of course takes you out of the flow.
I assume that some kind of tolerance for uneven values could make people forget about the "innate flaws" of touch interfaces, outside of pitch or volume of course where stepped buttons seem to be a good solution.
Btw, I would love to see a roundup video with the good bad and ugly on iOS in this regard. Keynote slides could work well in those videos. Some people I know who had content blogs are now structuring their videos like blogs and interlink their videos using the content silo method (e.g. top down from a roundup video to invidual ones). This was a good technique for blog seo for many years.
this is the main reason why some musicians love real instruments and analogue hardware, its because of the infinite adjustment of such machines.
even the current midi format is far from accurate at only 127 steps of resolution, midi 2.0 will change this drastically into the tens of thousands in resolution.
also, the ios touchpad in theory is capable of much higher resolution than midi 1.0 but in many cases the software just uses the midi format.
Wouldn't a higher resolution make it worse in many cases? I think stepped values could work better in many situations, 127 steps is neither fish nor flesh somehow, too little for smooth filters and too much for volume, pitch etc.
I don't have ocd but I find iPad "knob" behavior frustrating. Setting pitch is one of the biggest problems. Not being able to see what is under my finger combined with values changing when I lift my finger makes for an irritating experience.
I wish all music apps had options to snap to particular increments, or to type in values. Mostly I wish the "knob" paradigm would fade away and be replaced with touch-centric UIs like those found in apps like Patterning or SpaceCraft.
Oh god yeah, not being able to see the value because it is hidden below my finger is another thing that drives me. Amen too to the idea that we should be thinking above and beyond the knob paradigm. I dunno if this is more to do with lack of imagination on the part of devs or just user preference, or perceived user preference. These waters are also muddied now, perhaps, by increasing numbers of desktop ports and by more AUv3s being designed to also work on Mac.
@kirmesteggno I quite like the way Beep Street do their knobs, like in Combustor. Coarser movement in one direction, finer movement in another. It is genuinely useful for dialing in precise pitches. Can still be a little slow, from memory.
I do like when apps allow the ability to type values too, as my ipad is often connected to a Bluetooth keyboard.
I do have OCD, which is debilitating and makes it very hard for me to leave the house and generally function socially. I also find knobs behind glass frustrating but I don’t think it’s related to my OCD diagnosis. The knobs issue is just an irritant.
Loopy has me spoiled. For knobs and dials, hold the screen and drag left or right for a widening slider
And for others, I use larger sliders if need be and I've started using x/y pads (only using one axis) as quick setting sliders (or on-release - reset to center for panning or min/max for other quick changes that need to revert to a setting)
Hell, I use small loopy aus as well to make floating controls for specific auv3 controls (per plugin I pop up, a control panel specific to that pops up. For volume bar or quick preset selection)
I very much prefer tactile controllers, there's some dope workarounds available
I'm sorry to hear that. I mention OCD in the title but it's more meant as a synonym for detrimental perfectionism. I guess it's quite common with creatives and all have it to a degree.
I've changed the title now because it's not fair to people like you.
I'm not diagnosed, but I've taken radical measures like buzzing my hair to not get obsessed about hairstyles, getting rid of extra cutlery to avoid them piling up and stuff like that. Not caring about even numbers is basically just another life hack.
Gonna check Loopy out when it gets MIDI. It's obvious that a lot of thoughts about usability went into it. Koala Sampler is another one I like a lot because of the bold and simple UI.
Thanks mate. I can see where you’re coming from. Perfectionism is definitely part of the same spectrum as OCD. I do the same as you with my hair. My compulsions are mainly in my head rather than external though. My thoughts go through loops which I have to keep repeating unless they are completed perfectly. Things can spiral out of control quite quickly.
OCD is how I got into making music on my iPad. My therapist recommended taking up a creative pursuit and I found it really helps me a lot. I can get lost in it and stop ruminating for a while.
Being left handed makes everything a hinderance so I’m usually good with “close enough”