And now from Tuna DJ Gear, a touchscreen botched with actual knobs !?
Back in 1995 as software based music emerged and almost every manufacturer emulated knobs, switches, sliders, look and feel, color of wood and anything else to make one feel as if they were using the " real " thing. By 2001, the variety and decoration of virtual knobs was raised to thousands of types. Emerging developers such as Novation, Behringer, Mackie, M- Audio, Korg and Akai ( and dozens more ) would start to ship hardware MIDI USB controllers of all kinds and sizes. Stacked and studded up with knobs and sliders, these controllers exalted the " realness " and " live " advantage, setting the order to control another set of parameters and knobs on screen, deep inside the CPU, essentially crunching numbers for audio. Round about 2009, the Apple Ipad based music controllers swiftly swept the game as the most favored scythe for many electronic music performers and producers. That monopoly aside, a few whacky D.I.Y entrepreneurs put out knobs on almost anything possible. MIDI guns, electric toys, kitchen appliances, Ataris and Gameboys : all to control virtual synthesizers. That too would not deter the evolution and near gag status of knobs and the fetish to feel the real thing from a completely virtual source - entity. Someone actually put a knob and two diode on a potato out there.
Many brands and veteran hacks would entice the younger rouse of producers with ridiculous notions that the use of software, no matter how authentic, economic or fake sounding, is always inferior, for the lack of something tactile. How can a knob make us ( amazing creatures who understand and manipulate synthesizers, be it hardware or virtual ) feel real ? Tactile advantages of a knob aside, the brands keep shoveling oddles of really crappy unimaginative controllers using potent technology. Such hyped gadgets and the authentic feats of the knob are at best marketing baloney. Or as vintage (pre'digital) audio-phile cum "knobbler" would often harp on the need to feel the " real thing " as done in the old skool days. The knob saga goes on, getting almost kooky and logically if not technically redundant. Going round & round, back to square one. Or should one say round one ...
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