Slashdot Mirror
Why Are There So Many Knobs in Audio Software? (theoutline.com)
John Lagomarsino, writing for The Outline: Skeuomorphic design, where user interfaces emulate the appearance of physical objects, has been popular for pretty much the history of personal computing. The ideas of "files," "folders," and the "recycle bin" in Windows could be considered skeuomorphs, intended to help transition early computer users from analog to digital, as could the idea of an "inbox" and "outbox" in email and the paperclip that symbolizes attachments. More recently, a lot of early iOS apps were famous for their heavy-handed skeuomorphic elements, with felt textures and chunky drop shadows. But no area of computing has so thoroughly gone for it more than audio software. The first Billboard #1 single that was recorded to a hard drive instead of tape was "Livin' La Vida Loca" in 1999; 18 years later, in 2017, most audio software still looks like the designers attempted to replicate physical equipment piece for piece on a computer screen. Faders, switches, knobs, needles twitching between numbers on a volume meter -- they're all there. Except you have to control them with a mouse. Winamp may have been Patient Zero in this gaudy epidemic, but it has spread far and wide. I spend a lot of my time mixing and editing audio, and that often involves having multiple audio plugins (essentially applications that run inside the main audio program) from multiple vendors running simultaneously. But all audio software, for what I suppose are historical reasons, features the most egregious skeuomorphic design in all of software. Alone, each plugin is hideous in its own unique way. A panel of 3D knobs here, a pixelated oscilloscope there.
...so many users are knobs.
I'll be here all week. Try the fish!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Is a knob.
Without knobs how would I turn it up to 11?
I've even gone so far as to search for plug-ins that DON'T rely on skeuomorphic designs, and came up mostly empty. Plug-in designers put waaaay too much effort into making their front panels look like brushed aluminum and their needle velocity just so, and not nearly enough effort into making their interfaces intuitive and effective.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
That'd the real way to get away from skeuomorphic paradigms. :wq!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
What's easier to conceptually understand: a dial or a text field?
Audio engineers are not programmers? Well usually anyways.
They like to mimic what they know, mixers, synths, filters compressors etc. The H/W variety works with knobs, so the S/W variety mimics that to help, you know, real audio engineers.
Are you referring to devices or people?
Whenever I hear, "Look at this! Isn't it cool!?" I cringe.
Ah no, your UI is unintuitive cumbersome and anyone who actually has to use it will hate it. And touch screens just suck! It's slow, inaccurate, it's all too easy to hit the wrong things.
There's a reason why serious musicians for the physical controls over touch screens or other GUIs. Nothing beats physical hardware for user controls.
What the article should have said is this:
I use GarageBand and only GarageBand and this is how GarageBand works.
For what it's worth, CoolEdit and Audacity don't work that way. I've never used GarageBand so I can't speak to what it does that you apparently can't live without and/or think that nothing else can do, but I've used Audacity for editing and CoolEdit for sophisticated transformations and neither of them look anything like GarageBand does.
I'm not amongst the new "skeuomorphic design is evil" school of thought at all, but anything can be overdone -- and some audio software is the perfect example of that.
If you think MP3 players are bad, try pro Audio stuff. VST synth Plugins, filters, compressors, stompbox emulators, all of them, to a tee are the same. Reason Actually have pictures of stuff tapes to a rack. The virtual cables swing around when you plug and unplug them. Omnisphere, while being a fantastic synth has this horrible blue interface from the 80s. The vintage emulators from Arturia look pretty much the same as the real equipment, scratches on the woodwork included. This is not a good thing, the user interfaces often suffer horribly for it.
Exception include some of the newest things from Native Instruments, Kontour and rounds for instance as well as Zebra and Serum, the hottest VST synth at the moment.
Curiously, there is a lot of innovation in designing advanced input devices to make music. Roger Linn, the guy who built the classic Linn Drum Machine in the early 80s is a big fan of this idea, bringing out the Linnstrument. Other things that are very innovative are the Roli Seaboard, Eigenharp, some of Keith McMillen's stuff, Reactable, Continuum and many of the buttony things such as the Ableton Push. It is also a cool place to play with Arduino and embedded electronics. Making Bluetooth Midi things that use your body to control synths is really fun.
On the hardware input side there is a lot of innovation. On the software side it is Retro, Retro and more Retro. When it comes to the newly active field of analogue or half-analogue synths anything that looks like a digital bit is screamed down by the purists. It really is a shame, there is a lot of innovation that looks and sounds very interesting.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Does this refer to the developers or the potentiometers?
Do you really expect audio producers to have to learn a whole new interface that has nothing to do with the physical equipment it's digitally emulating? That makes no sense. If you sit someone down who has produced audio on professional (physical) equipment, and they have a choice between one that has familiar controls in a familiar arrangement, and one that has some totally different interface (for arguments sake, let's say it's all number entry boxes and drop-down menus, like it's MS Office or something) that doesn't have the 'feel' of what they're used to, which do you think they'll pick? TFA sounds like it was written by someone who has never used real audio equipment in his life.
Because physical gear is the holy Grail for bedroom producers, who make up the most of the market of those plugins. Second thing is familiarity - the second demographic is older studio engineers who like what they know. So mimicking the appearance of well established analog gear helps sales.
Keep in mind a lot of these plug-ins can be controlled by external hardware. That is, I'm turning a knob on my controller, and the knob on the screen is turning at the same (relative) rate. It may not fully justify the reason for having such designs, and certainly doesn't explain the need for the brushed aluminium finish mimicry. I think it's also owed to a lot of people who use the software, would absolutely love to use the hardware solutions if they were available - because knobs and lights are awesome after all. So the whole skeuomorphic design is firmly footed in marketing.
They're designed that way to keep the learning-curve as shallow & short as possible for guys that are used to vacuum-tube amplifiers with physical-spring reverb tanks and effects pedals with germanium transistors. Knobs, buttons, switches, and sliders are what they understand and so skeuomorphic-style GUI digital audio workstation software is what they tend to be more comfortable with and hence to buy, so naturally that's what is most-produced.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yeah, because skeuomorpism actually works - people work well when what would otherwise be meaningless random crap on their screen represents something in the real world. Just ask anyone who's had to deal with Apple's UI since they decided skeuomorphism isn't important. Everything post SL and post iOS 6 has been confusing, muddled, inconsistent shit that you just have to memorize, whereas it used to make perfect sense. Computer UIs need to work for every-fucking-body, not just the programmers. Yes, it can sometimes be overdone, but better overdone and usable that missing and completely ape-shit useless except to the dozen or so people who designed it in the first place...
John Lagomarsino submitted his own article to Slashdot?
What a knob.
Unthinking avoidance of skeuomorphic design severely impairs the ability of a graphical interface to inform.
If a properly implemented interface element looks like a real-world object, it instantly communicates function.
What can replace a recognizable image of a knob that can instantly communicate to the entire population of the technology-using world that it is an interactable element having a specific function?
Oh where oh where are my mod points today?! Most of the reason why "UI designers" hate skeuomorphism is because they got bored, and wanted to change things. Just exactly like the way my mom had to rearrange the living room furniture every year.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
It's so easy to criticize without offering a solution... Beyond the brushed aluminum, what is the proposed alternative that would provide an intuitive and efficient to use interface? (Though I completely agree that image of a patch-cable setup in the linked article is ridiculous.)
And they're both the worst
Marty, that reminds me.....don't hookup to the amplifier, there's a slight possibility of overload.
How else is the audio level, and the setting of a control going to be represented? Yes, I guess raw numbers should be enough, and you can use a Curses-based VT100 interface and hotkeys to control your audio instruments.
But nerding out that way is only relevant to a certain degree.
I don't understand the problem with a knob. Most knobs work with up/down mouse movement, they don't require circular motion. You can look at it to tell its current setting. Is he suggesting like a text field into which you enter the numeric values?
They look that way - because they have to. Audio Engineering is about finite control. That control comes from controlling many elements - elements that interact with each other, and affect each other.. also you may not be aware that many physical audio processors have been virtualised.. and therefore it makes perfect sense for them to look the same (Check out UAD plugins for example).
There are plugins that try to make things simpler.. but often these are for "color" and do not have the depth do the miniscule adjustments that are needed when tweaking audio.
I know two types of people:
1) People who think a DAW and a shitty MIDI keyboard is all you need to make great music (these are often the people who bitch about this the most), and
2) People who have a decent setup with some outboard gear, covered in- you guessed it- knobs and buttons.
When all you interact with is sliders, knobs, and buttons all day long... A lot of audio plugin interfaces don't phase you. In fact, it's kinda nice having a unified interface for everything, even if one is purely digital. Some are a bit overdone, but for the most part it's not as bad as the article suggests. It feels a hell of a lot more natural staring at a screen full of knobs and buttons than it would a screen full of raw decimals and borderless text that I'm supposed to know is a button.
Again, I never hear about creators complain about this stuff in the industry. It's always some guy who thinks he's doing awesome shit and has never touched a real mixer before. Sure, some plugins have bad UIs, but we're talking 1/20 here. The rest are perfectly usable.
just be thankful you don't have this audio UI
https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-world-60713dc86950
"You have to control them with a mouse".
Or a MIDI keyboard such as my Nektar LX49+, or a mixer like the Novation SL Mk 2, the Mackie Mix 8, the Behringer BCF2000, or the Faderport 8. A mouse! This ain't the Dark Ages, you know!
Garry Knight
It turns out that knobs are pretty space-efficient considering the function they perform, when physical or digitally presented. When doing live sound, having quick access to as many adjustments as possible with a simple reach is invaluable. One of the things I dislike about most modern digital mixing consoles is that they tried to limit the number of knobs which in turn leads to more buttons being pushed to switch between channels.
Long before Winamp or mp3, midi composer software was already doing this.
If the panels accurately reflect the layout/design of comparable analog boxes that perform that function, then someone skilled at using the digital version would likely have an easier time learning and using the analog equivalent. Also, vice versa.
While the OP isn't wrong about wanting interfaces that aren't held back by....legacy....considerations, I still see a lot of analog devices in use.
Have you ever met a true musician? You know - those that actually are good, and make music for a living, not only a boy/girl with a guitar or a "Home studio" in moms basement.
Music is ALL about the FEEL. And musicians are often very visual as well as aural, they tend to really LOVE their hardware, and by hardware I mean their Guitars, saxophones, trumpets, drumset, keyboard, violins and whatever floats your boat. In fact - it's almost like a girlfriend or boyfriend to some, this instrument makes them feel they can perform, it's a trusted friend - it's a companion - it's something you wouldn't let go for dear life!
So when you see all these controls and knobs, it is intended to give the user complete VISUAL control and emulate the "unplugged" feel of the electromechanical gear that costs a FORTUNE if you actually want the real thing (like external mixers, harddisk track recorders, Tascams, keyboards, sound-modules etc.). It just makes you FEEL better, that there's something there - real hardware - that you can touch, control and FEEL.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Except you have to control them with a mouse.
No, you fools.
High end audio software ties into physical knobs and sliders and shit on your high end boards. You control the digital knob with an actual knob.
All other software apes the high end software, but most of it can't tie into actual hardware dealies and even the mid end packages that can often don't because the low end users don't have such hardware.
You can look at a plain Jane, all slider interface of your VST with numerical value fields if you so desire.
Probably it is because most audio engineers use real equipment at some point in their careers and you learn to glean a lot of information quickly by looking at the knobs. But this guy can't even figure out that in Logic (and probably Garageband, too, I don't know) you can change the view in all of the native plug-ins to 'controls' and then it is just text and sliders. But I have no idea why you would want to. It is extremely difficult to figure out what you are looking at.
I have a physical box here with three controls; power button, eject button, volume knob. The rest is done through the remote. It's an "integrated home theatre system", as in a receiver with built-in dvd player and scart/hdmi.
That volume knob I can turn as much as I want, but if I turn it too quickly (anything above "arthritic sloth" speed) the thing will simply not pick up the changes. It doesn't have a potentiometer but an angle detector attached, that apparently isn't being checked remotely often enough by the software running the thing.
So we've gone full circle: Stupid software bred stupid hardware.
http://www.akaipro.com/product... The knobs on the screen can be controlled with hardware. Some hardware also has powered knobs/sliders that can be controlled from the screen as well during playback (or manually).
How else would you control many many dynamic and constantly-adjusted variables in real time?
I know it's frightfully analog, but the fact is that things like drop-down lists, context-relevant controls, etc would just make this harder. If I need to drop the bass volume in the middle of live performance, I don't want to have to hunt for the control, I want the control RIGHT WHERE I EXPECT IT.
I can see ultimately someone crafting a better UI, sure, what can't be improved? But the UI controls have a lot of organizational inertia - I learned on a sound board, so it's going to be easy for me to switch to a digital representation of a soundboard, rather than something wholesale different.
-Styopa
Musicians and enthusiasts who use music creation software usually know very well why their software tools have an interface that depicts music hardware, so I'm a bit puzzled why it's a mystery to the author of TFA.
The reason is that hardware controls like knobs, sliders, percussion pads, 2-axis touchpads, multi-axis RF field interfaces, breath controllers and many others kinds are extremely interactive and immediate in their effect, and so their use comes naturally to music creators. All of these controllers are commonly provided with a MIDI interface today. This has been so for many decades, either baseband MIDI or today commonly carried over USB. Through MIDI, these hardware interfaces are bound by the musician to any desired control points in the software tools, and the result is extremely expressive and a pleasure to use.
The author complains that controlling the s/w elements with a mouse is pretty awful, and indeed it is, but nobody with any sense does that except before they've set up their MIDI control gear. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different kinds of MIDI controllers around, often costing very little, so it's a bit unusual to find a music maker who is not aware of them and of their purpose.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
there's always Renoise.
The one software genre that really burns me is Video editors. They all want to use some variant of the Edit Decision List, or "EDL". Rather than using the standard way we select things on most softwares...example...You select part of a sentence, cut it, move the cursor to where you want to put it, and then paste it.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Do they not understand that you can have midi controllers that interface with those knobs and buttons? With the proper MIDI controls, it's perfectly sensible.
In the 80's, as digital synthesizers came in to vogue, and started to take over analog synthesizers, the interface transitioned from knobs/sliders to menu-oriented. The Yamaha DX7 was a preeminent synth of the 80's and that with others set a lot of trends both in sound and design for later synths.
In the early 90's with the rise of various forms of electronic dance music there was a resurgence of appreciation for dirty analog sounds from older analog systems no longer in production. All these older systems had knobs. Music was made by manipulating these knobs in realtime, something not done too often before this age.
These analog machines, not valuable in the 80's, suddenly became quite desired and valuable in the mid-90's and later, worth more in some cases than the existing digital synths.
So the trend swung back to knobs and sliders, and around the late 90's and beyond "Virtual Analog" came into vogue, where you were hearing the output of a DSP but controlling parameters in realtime with knobs. Less menus.
A few years later PC's became cheap and powerful and synths started to be VSTs installable on a PC and useable in various programs. They keep the design of late 90's synths to indicate that live real-time control is possible. Though these days if you are serious about it, you map the virtual knobs to real ones on a MIDI or USB controller.
They've been doing this since the early days of Notator (Logic), Performer, MasterTracks and Vision. Keep in mind that the majority of plugins are emulating old rack gear which had knobs, buttons, and faders. It's familiar and much easier to control, especially with an outboard control unit like an X-Control, than an Event List editor with parameters in hexadecimal. There's nothing wrong with it.
I'm sure if you're just mixing 2 channels together, it doesn't matter much, but if you're mixing live music, we need identifiers that are unified across various systems. Sure you can put a color on a virtual DSP but not everyone will have the same color selected. In some cases, you actually have emulated real hardware and in some case the hardware is actually real hardware.
To replace everything with grey knobs is worse, hence why we have this.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Better yet, you click on (or hover over) the knob to select it, then spin the scroll wheel on your mouse to change the setting (you know, the actual, physical mechanical wheel that is a perfect "simulation" of a physical mechanical wheel).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Lots of settings to control - a 'modern' hamburger menu would be even worse. Nobody has had a better idea.
- It just looks damn cool when done right (ok, subjective judgment)
- It can be controlled with real hardware (ex: DJing software like Traktor tend to look like the real mixing table the user likely has)
- When real hardware is emulated, it is natural that the software looks like the hardware it emulates (ex: a TB-303 soft synth will have the same buttons at the same locations as an actual TB-303).
- Knobs are not that bad for screen-based interaction.
.. and why are they 5 x 5 pixels?
Your sig here!
Sound is analog ....
Oscilloscopes show analog signals.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
The current tide against skeuomorphic design is mostly a case of something that works but is out of fashion. It'll be back like skinny jeans before you know it. Who would have thought Microsoft would start this trend with Windows 8? There are real reasons for skeuomorphic interfaces in audio gear however. Interfaces that look and feel like their real world equivalents are fun to use. Audio geeks are notorious for collecting real gear, and having virtual gear that looks like the real thing lets us pretend we're getting the real thing for a fraction of the analogue price. (If we've paid for it at all, but alas that's another topic.) Furthermore, with analogue gear being in vogue, as a repudiation of their "cold" digital implementations of the 80s and 90s, skeuomorphic interfaces that recall vintage meatspace gear help sell the sizzle of carefully-modelled analogue circuits. Don't mistake a music producer for an audiophile â" the latter are particularly vulnerable to voodoo benefits of overpriced obscure gear. But both groups are drawn to legendary equipment, and that's perhaps the main reason that skeuomorphism lives on in the DAW world, which frankly I hope remains steadfast against the hate-on for skeuomorphism.
Flatscreen in the panel, and then it displays ancient instruments. Most often things like an HSI are still displayed that way. As if it wasn't easier to just fly to match the extrapolated track with the intended track. No, ancient instruments.
Multiple reasons. Pilots are old, and more often than not computer-illiterate. Once upon a time, an HSI was an expensive instrument, not everyone could afford one, now it's just a click away on the touch panel. Also, training syllabus. If you're required to be able to use it, it has to be there. Also vice versa, if you know how to use it because you have been trained, you might want to use it.
Sound engineers are all geriatric hippies who can't use modern software.
Please refrain from tasting the knob.
You can enable non-skeumorphic mode for VSTs in your DAW. You're just too stupid to know this.
He complains that you have to control the knobs with a mouse... as opposed to what, real knobs? Does he suggest something like using mouseover-then-scrollwheel as opposed to drag-the-knob?
I've read about similar problems with the volume control in QuickTime Player when it first went skeuomorphic. The issue was that linear motion is easier with popular GUI input devices than circular motion. So replace knobs, which require a circular motion, with sliders, which allow a linear motion.
Granted, a lot of the controls in the screenshots of the featured article already are sliders. But the sliders in the "glistening art deco aesthetic" screenshot have two problems: they are hard to read at a glance because they try too hard to look like physical sliders with highlights and shadows, and they are hard to study because they don't also provide a numeric readout of the current setting. Sometimes it's hard to even tell which color means on from which means off without reading the manual.
The "Retune Speed" and "Humanize" in the Auto-Tune EFX 3 (2016) screenshot are a good start: each is a slider with a numeric readout. "Tempo" is still a knob, but at least it has numbers. But the note name toggles for setting the piece's key (C, C#, D, D#, etc.) leave me guessing: is black, white, or blue on? And what's with the four rows of dots between the key setting and the "Humanize" slider?
Better yet: Why not just use the host operating system's styling for sliders, text fields, and checkboxes?
If you want to set an effect's intensity to 11 units out of 12, you can move the slider to 11 or click in the adjacent text field and pressing 1 1 Enter. Just don't use a knob, you knob.
There must be a way to make things simpler.
....on a volume meter."
Is that really a thing? I've used pro and consumer analog gear with LED meters since the 80s, and none of (admittedly limited) software I've used had faux needles. Are they that common in audio apps?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Digital knobs are such a great, intuitive way to interact, they're used almost everywhere now!
Wait a minute... that doesn't sound right....
Most of the pro-audio software I've used start with the assumption you'll be using something like The Raven a multi-touch audio controller that lets you tweak the virtual knobs and sliders in real time while mixing. If you're complaining about the interface only allowing mouse input, your job must not rely as heavily on audio manipulation as you say because I've considered buying one of these and I only piss around with recording/mixing my own music a few hours a week. Why? Because it makes the job a BILLION times easier than futzing with a mouse or even a touch pad.
For a cheaper solution, there's also things like Logic Remote for the iPad, that turns your iPad into a virtual controller for Logic.
There are solutions out there, but most of them cost a bit of coin. Frankly, I really, REALLY don't want tweakability removed from pro audio software and plugins just because some newblet doesn't understand they aren't built with the mouse-only desktop in mind.
Standardization would be nice, but I don't see the plugin companies and programmers ever agreeing on one simply because they all have a different idea of what the perfect interface would be. Just like not every hardware mixing desk is set up exactly the same, and not every rack chorus, reverb, or delay is set up the same.
Then you can interact with your virtual knobs and sliders as you would real ones.
It stands out to me author never worked in a studio or done serious audio work. He says he has used ES2 synthesizer in Logic Pro for 8 years and still cannot "come closer to understanding what any of its controls do, or why they are laid out like this".
Genuine audio engineering cannot be done with a single button at the bottom of the screen.
This article is written by someone who is not an audio engineer, not even a hobbyist. Why did this article even make it on slashdot?
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Exactly. Any good audio software can have its virtual knobs mapped to real knobs on a MIDI device (almost always USB these days, with adapters available to convert classic serial MIDI to USB). They will also usually include pre-programmed map support for the hundred or so most popular MIDI control devices. Not just audio editing (knobs, faders, buttons, LEDs), but music input (piano keyboards, pitch controls, variable-pressure drum pads) and DJ mixing (jog wheels, faders, knobs, buttons, pads, LEDs) as well. They all use USB MIDI, but the controllers and the messages they send are combined differently to match the standard workflows of each domain.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
When a game is developed for PC, I expect them to completely re-think the interface when it comes to consoles. Similarly, when a game comes out for XBox and then subsequently on the Wii. Different controller capabilities should lead to different interfaces.
Coming late to the discussion here, but I'd like to talk about Adobe Audition. It does not use knobs. Here are my thoughts:
I came late to the recording game. To clarify, I am an amateur recorder. That said, I have a fairly complete rack at home, and it has lots of knobs. Like, heaps! And when I am adjusting attacks/delays/etc the knobs are fine.
Switching to Audition, if I apply something like a compressor, each value has a slider and an editable number at the end. It is excellent - I can fine tune the values, write them down if I need to. I have never felt hampered by the lack of knobs and would hate it if they went that way. 'Attack' means something, and it doesn't matter whether you use a knob or a slider to enter it. On a rack, a knob uses way less space than a slider, but is also less accurate. Why would I possibly want that on a computer?
So there IS software that doesn't do this. That said, anytime you switch to VST plugins it is like switching to shareware hour in the 1990s.
Sliders mean precisely one thing in audio: attenuation.
And just about every continuous value in analog synthesis can be expressed as attenuation of a control signal.
If you need to make a specific visual distinction between sliders that were always sliders (such as the fader) and sliders that used to be knobs, then give the faders a rectangular thumb button and the former knobs a round one. A pan knob, for instance, could turn into a short horizontal slider with a round thumb button.
This stuff is almost all copyright-protected, proprietary software, not open source.
So is Windows. Yet a binary-compatible free replacement for Windows userspace exists, and it's called Wine. GNU itself is a source-compatible free replacement for UNIX. So why not commission a free replacement for these proprietary plug-ins?
The problem here is two fold, and the comparison to desktop interfaces and iOS is unfair.
Different than the examples given, skeuromorphism used in audio software wasn't appropriated to make the interface look more user friendly or familiar.... there are some practical reasons for it.
Number one, physical control interfaces that tie to the software to give users an actual physical interface (such as midi controlers, sound boards, studio mixers and whatnot). Controls have to look exactly like them and behave exactly like them because it's more for monitoring rather than actual control.
Number two, they are replications of actual physical hardware that exists or existed, and part of the reasoning for them is to provide a lower cost replication of the actual hardware, for people who wants to mess with it, or for people who had those and knows how to use the original.
With those two reasons in mind, you can also consider that most professional audio software are developed with expandability in mind - that people getting seriously into it will eventually move to physical controls. And then, the other thing is how people are taught around it. Levels, knobs, buttons, digital led panels and whatnot are all heavily tied to certain types of effects or controls - it's better for you to learn that way because in the future you might be dealing with audio specific hardware instead of computer software.
So yeah, I can understand people wanting something less skeuromorphic and that can be more fit to desktop use or something like that, and I imagine there has been attempts to go that way... but much like FPS games using gamepads versus keyboard and mouse, I think for the vast majority of musicians, audio engineers, producers and whatnot, keyboard and mouse or touchscreens will never replace typical physical audio/effect controls. The physicality of audio controls is very much tied to performance and real time fine tunning.
GUIs are for losers!
I'm not convinced that going all minority report on my RED 3 compressor's UI is going to enhance my experience of using it, I like the way it looks like the actual unit but more importantly, I like the way it sounds.
If ever there was a title longer than it needed to be, it was this one.
Before the advent of modern electronics, you typical "golden ear"—who could hear things that no other mortal could hear—wandered about the desert bending everyone's ear about his dire need of acid-free parchment paper or single-crystal stone tablets.
No one need wonder why Theodore Sturgeon wrote Need in 1960.
On a side note, some believe that Sturgeon's Baby is Three was an advance paean to what ultimately become Dianetics.
First for the windows comment. Apple had folder, files, and trash can way before windows was around so lets give them the credit for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface
Second the purpose of recreating the midi interface in software is to train the person into using the hardware version. Companies that create the software also sell hardware to go along with it. If you don't have someone holding your hand and teaching you what every knob and switch does it is scary as no tomorrow.The software forces entry level people to learn the hardware interface and takes away that initial fear. The people that create the software/hardware make more money selling the hardware then they do the software. You can bet a user will use a piece of software for 10 years till forced to upgrade, but he will tear through new piece of hardware like a toddler handed a book.
Third I know what you are going to say "But what about software vendors and open source software that doesn't sell hardware?". Simple they copying all the other vendors that make their interface look like midi boards. Design is a bitch and it is easier to copy someone else then to create something new people might not use because it is different.
The primary reason why knobs are used in audio software GUI's is: because they are small, you can fit many of them in an interface. That space efficiency means you can make more controls immediately accessible, and that outweighs the fact a knob is hard to control with a mouse.
While knobs are sometimes used for skeuomorphism purposes, this is relatively rare and TFA is incorrect in assuming this is the primary reason why knobs are used in audio software.
The fact is: nothing you can do with a mouse or touch screen matches the efficiency of a physical knob that responds to a pinch and twist with the thumb and finger. There have been attempts to find virtual controls that retain the space efficiency of a knob while improving its responsiveness, but after all these years, this remains a major fundamental shortcoming of computer-based interfaces.
Knobs don't belong in UIs, full stop. Use sliders instead...
Try this on one of those audio software with a knob. Mouse click down on the knobs, move right, release.
Woh! It works just like a slider!
Now try this, mouse click down on the knobs, move left, release.
Woh! It also works just like a slider!
Just to let you know, it is a slider, but with a smaller UI.
A bit ignorant of the history here. I mean, little old me wrote a full skeuomorphic audio interface, back in 1994, and that was based on systems I'd seen during the late 80s. And WinAmp is an end-user playback module, it's not even used for audio production. Playback systems have in fact moved away from skeuomorphic interfaces to the general AV interface you see in WMP and VLC now. So, mentioning WinAmp as the "inventor" of this stuff is pretty much an epic fail and indicates a fairly high degree of ignorance.