> Turning a knob with a mouse is the worst interface I can think of.

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.

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ofalkaed 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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mjr00 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Some newer synths do this where it makes sense. e.g. in Phase Plant the wavetable frame is a number, since wavetable positions are discrete values from 1 to 256.

Ultimately I see two problems though,

1. sometimes the number doesn't matter or make sense at all. A good example is a macro knob. The value is somewhere between "0" or "1", and synths do let you set it manually (since this is how recorded automation works), but a macro slider doesn't make too much sense IMO.

2. lots of controls deal with logarithmic values. Anything that corresponds to a frequency is going to need finer control when you're tweaking values below 500Hz vs changing a value between 10000Hz and 10500Hz. Knobs mask this pretty well. I'm sure you could build a slider that dealt with this, but a number box would be very weird since you'd want the scroll step to be much smaller at lower values.

	▲	ofalkaed 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Number boxes can be log or expo or even an arbitrary list, and they can have a fine tune through holding shift or the like. They also generally allow you to just type in the number you want. They definitely are not the best solution for all situations, just my preference.

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jrm4 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel? Hover and use that? Do they do that?

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ubercow13 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Some audio software lets you do this but mouse wheels are incredibly imprecise compared to the mouse sensor itself so this isn't really useful for many types of control which require precise adjustment.

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mjr00 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Is it fair to assume most mouses have a scroll wheel?

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.

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ofalkaed 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This is one of the things which helped sell me on Thinkpads with their three physical trackpad buttons and trackpoint, middle click+trackpoint gets you your scroll wheel and it is quite ergonomic.

	▲	camtarn 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Huh, I had one of those Thinkpads and I had no idea that this was a thing!

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bandrami 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it's even more fair to assume the user has a MIDI device with a bunch of knobs on it?

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bigyabai 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Most have click+drag and a shift modifier for fine adjustments.