[sdiy] dave smith *instruments*

[Tom Wiltshire]

On 2 Feb 2010, at 10:35, cheater cheater wrote:

> I truly cannot come up with an idea of where in a musical studio
> encoders are a good idea. Maybe alpha dials to move through menus
> quickly. But for editing values?
>
> On a musical instrument you want to be able to change the sound to
> what you have in your head quickly, and you get there by remembering
> how the knobs were set up and how they were positioned.

Encoders are a solution to the ancient problem of knob positions on a  
programmable instrument. You're completely right that people want to  
change the sound quickly, and they mostly want to do that by patch  
recall, not by setting the knobs up again - that was the 70s, man.  
And in the 70s people responded by having a stack of keyboards set to  
different sounds so that they *didn't* have to change all the knobs.
As soon as you put programmability on a synth, it's easy to have a  
situation where the knobs don't tell you anything. LCDs and encoders  
are one attempt at a solution to that problem. I'm not saying they're  
perfect or even the best solution, but I think it's worth remembering  
why they're there and what they are good for.

T.