My encouragement to the minimalist design…)
I thought most DAWs supported moving sliders with the mouse wheel? I didn’t use them in quite a while, so can’t remember
They probably do, but my point wasn’t that Ardour was somehow unique in this capability, only that it’s easier to scroll on a bar than on a knob, especially if the knob is small.
I love that thing with the wheel. Super useful.
I’d love it even more if the incrementes/decrements were 1dB (or whatever is set in a preference)
The scroll wheel = the poor person’s control surface. 
Exactly 
(Still love it 
)
It appears that the scroll wheel in normal use moves the level by a % of travel. However, if you hold the control key down while using the scroll wheel, you will get exact 0.1 dB movements… nope I am wrong. Just trying it here and at the 0dB area I do get 0.1dB increments but even at -10dB it is more than that. So after some playing around… I found that my scroll wheel on my monitors (I don’t know if monitor resolution changes this) is about full scale/30 (might be 32) and control scroll is 10% of scroll. Both of them act as if you were using the scroll to directly manipulate the fader bar (pretty much what any control surface would do). You can also click on the level display that shows the dB level and directly enter an exact dB level.
The only place I could find mention of the use of control with the scroll wheel in the Ardour manual… is in the panner controls. In fact I could not find anything on using the fader bar at all… I guess it is too obvious to the manual writers 
Aren’t faders designed to have more detail closer to unity i.e. logarithmic in nature? It doesn’t make sense to me to have such small increments so low. I’m pretty sure this is one of the arguments for using trim to roughly level tracks so that subsequent movements on the faders are happening in the area of greatest resolution.
Absolutely correct. Ardour’s faders (like those of all other real DAWs) are non-linear volumetric. The volumetric part differentiates them from those silly “volume” knobs found in some audio playback software, which doesn’t account for the way hearing works (i.e. a linear motion doesn’t result in a smooth change in volume). The non-linear part refers to the way that the fader is much more sensitive to motion near +0dB (“unity”) than far from it.
That is interesting. If they were straight dB they would already be logarithmic but these are log on top of log. The problem with a dB scale is that by the time the fader got to the bottom it would only be -50 or -60dB. Variable resistors don’t work that way without extra circuitry and the user wants infinite on the bottom anyway. So we get our faders from analog devices like: https://www.cw-industrialgroup.com/getattachment/ff841b57-256b-4469-bc76-6bcc317306b2/pgf3000_brochure
I believe Ardour’s math for converting linear control to gain was copied from an analog console. Note that P&G calls it “log audio taper” which means log on top of log. Ardour expects all control surface input to be linear (0.0 to 1.0, 0 to 127, etc) including the GUI and mouse wheel. The only exception is OSC, which also allows direct dB values. Ardours controls are based on a gain range of 0.0 to 2.0 which is why the faders top out at +6 rather than the +10 seen on many analog consoles (some digital consoles use a gain of 4.0 or +12dB). If this seems like a limitation, there are trim controls (which are audio taper rather than log audio). With analog faders, the markings are set by internal gain staging, 0dB can be set anywhere on the slider by changing the interstage gain (actually, I think they put the marks on the fader and then make the preamp trim controls tiny and poorly marked so that the engineer effectively uses trim to align the fader).
Edit: Ardour, rather than using a double log uses an exponential math to do the same thing. And the fader limit of +6 can be changed by hand editing the config file.
Watched the video. Amazing how succinctly everything is pointed out. Really great- reusable material in that critique. I hope some of these small things can be addressed in Ardour. I do like the logo- so don’t worry about that! 
(Is it Okay to be wrong?)
It’s super important to point out that Tantacrul’s video is by no means a bagging of Musescore. In fact Sibelius (Which I used extensively in a past life) is rightly pointed out as being a usability nightmare. And in comparison, Musescore is exemplary in that area.
Just. Fix. The. Little. Things.
Then get into full extreme Ardour7, Live killer 
Thank you Len!
Yes, I suspected it had something to do with % of travel.
Not a big deal, and I use the “enter the number directly” a lot.
In my particular case, it would just be more convenient when “uh, this is a little loud, let’s turn it down a dB”, and just roll the wheel. 1db or 0.5, or whatever I would choose in my preference.
Tantacrul actually helped out with MuseScore after the review.
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Got around to watching this myself. The guy is both seriously talented at UI and a brilliant comedian. The fact that he’s now working on the Musescore UI is also fantastic for that project – it can only be a good thing. If I were a DAW dev I’d be crossing my fingers that Tantacrul also dabbles in audio production. I’m not saying Ardour needs anything major either but I suppose it’s always fun to have a “consultant” make such videos especially when clearly there’s also a lot of love for Musescore underneath the quibbles.
Anyhow, it felt like watching a great lecture…informative and funny: a winning combo. I loved his repeated panning to the empty right editor pane. I must have missed the “borderline explicit” stuff
Just promise me that Ardour will never go the “ribbon interface” route. In my book, ribbons are used for recording, awarding at horse shows, and for describing things like mysterious cosmic energy bands. Never for UI navigation. MS Office, Sibelius, Wavelab…ugh.
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At the danger of turning this into a Tantacrul appreciation thread, he has already done a review of Reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PFRyONURSo
Considering that he is interested (to a degree) in open source (a few mentions in other videos) and he is a developer (not sure if it is limited to UI, I don’t know) may indicate it’s only a matter of time before Ardour finds his eye. Who knows.
He has a great video about Sibelius. In that video he states that ribbons can be done right. But that Sibelius has completely messed up the concept of a ribbon.
LibreOffice for a while now has had a ribbon type view option. (I’m not saying that’s the best implementation either).
Any UI element/concept can be misused. It’s up to the developers (proprietary or OS) to work out the best way to preset the software to the user.
The best takeaway from the Tantacrul situation is that when using MuseScore 3.3.3 (the latest) those changes have added up to make a difference. In a good way.
It could easily (and does every day) have turned into developers sticking their heels in and laughing off his suggestions. But it is clear that he was coming from a good place, and even though it was painful to watch, he only wanted the best for the software.
What made this a perfect storm is his clear and achievable suggestions. Coupled with his experience in UI - I think its refreshing to see this level of polish being given to an OS project. They deserve it!
EDIT: Now if MuseScore can fix up the Qt 5.13 font rendering issue I would be very happy! https://forum.manjaro.org/t/qt-5-13-font-issue/106933/6
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Yes don’t change how it looks. I looks so professional, my friends was like what software is this? whaaaaaaa
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It’s quite long time ago from last update …
Any news ?
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I only just found this thread but I’m curious… what was the attraction of Santa Fe ?
Not Paul but I can probably speak to it a bit. Santa Fe is one of the few places I have worked across the nation that is high up on my list of places I might consider living in, and the only one without a nearby sizable body of water which having grown up sailing is something I look for strongly even if I haven’t sailed in a while.
It is a town that keeps a fairly small town feel, even though it is the capital of the state, has a downtown area that you really enjoy walking through, and a sizable art community. Not just sizable but very active as well. Obviously you have the internationally known opera there just outside of town where I worked for I think it was 5 years and enjoyed every minute of it but you have a variety of performing arts, as well as other fine arts, an arboretum not to far from downtown. There are also some newer artistic movements developing there that are interesting to hear about that I want to check out at some point.
Because it is high desert in the summer it often rains for a brief period in the afternoons, and then clears out for wonderful sunsets. There are a couple of larger artistic and culturally focused festivals that happen there, and was a place that I lived in the summers that I could open the windows at night, close them during the day, and really not worry much about the lack of AC in the middle of the desert.
I just heard friends of mine were moving to Arizona, and I am actually taking that as an excuse to visit them and Santa Fe at the same time in the future:)
SeabladeInteresting… back in the 1990’s a work colleague moved to San Diego (California?) after he and his wife got offered high-powered jobs with a company there. Up until then they’d both spent their entire lives living in London so they were dreading a move to San Diego, which sounded like the middle of nowhere! But apparently they absolutely love it there!!