[ubuntu-studio-devel] Audio plugins

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 2016-05-04 at 07:18 +0200, Set Hallstrom wrote:
> i prefere my hardware, not for the sound, but the interface. having
> dedicated knobs is a limiting factor that allows me to navigate the
> infinity of sounds i can create.

I bought a Korg nano Kontrol, it was and perhaps still is the cheapest
MIDI remote available. The problem with the nano Kontrol is, that the
Linux software needed to assign controllers to the knobs, nano_basket,
doesn't allow to save and load the settings. I don't know if nano_basket
works at all, for later releases of the nano Kontrol, because the design
changed, so at least not all knobs can be programmed.

It's ridiculous how much value is put on OSC by the Linux community,
while at the same time, the available MIDI tools aren't supported, let
alone that nobody is working on improving the MIDI jitter issue.

A lot of hardware suffers from the same issue as software does. Knobs
were removed from many hardware. Synth are intended for usage with
presets and remote controls and at least cheap effects require to push
complicated knob combinations to control them, so the only advantage of
much hardware over software is the sound quality, resp. that they don't
cause DSP load to the computer. Yoshimi and Zyn e.g. provide a setting,
to reduce the sound quality, for the benefit of faster interpolation.
Proprietary software reverbs sometimes have a switch to chose between
different sound qualities. The best sound quality might be as agood as a
hardware reverb, but then you can't run a DAW session on the same
computer anymore, to use it together with a DAW, you need to reduce the
audio quality and it's well noticeable, not only for engineers.

Regards,
Ralf