Round knobs on a computer screen

[Joachip]

It's quite obvious that the usually pleasant ergonomic experience of turning a knob with your fingers cannot be achieved on a computer screen, and besides the fact that they generally look nice and take up only little screen space, the usability involved in using round knobs on a computer screen is less than optimal to say the least.

The worst thing about them, is that there seems to be endless implementations, and every time you encounter a new UI with round knobs, you have to first figure out how it works. There's no standard behavior.

So that made me think that, if we really wanted to decide on a standard behavior, what would you people prefer? How should round knobs on typical plug-in user interfaces work, if it were up to you? Here's a list of the implementations I've seen. (I hope I didn't miss an important one.)

[mute]

up and down is pretty well standard in vst land at this point. i rarely come across anything else anymore. trying to emulate the movement in a circle/semi-circle fashion is the worst thing ever and widely considered bad design / panned. i havent seen anyone try to attempt that in a long time and thats good, because they shouldn't.

of more concern imo, is what else to add to it.. which many but not all do.

my favs,
ctrl-click or rapid double click (on label or knob itself) for default position
shift drag for fine tune, alt drag for super fine tune (or vice versa)

i hate it when things don't have at least ctrl-click for resetting individual controls.

[IXix]

^^What he said^^

[szaszhareen]

to piggyback on what mute said, i like right clicking to reset to default. i don't see this much though, in fact i can't remember which plugin allowed me to do this. but i liked it XD

[xenobioz]

Up and down is best. In my first VSTi with knobs I used rotary. I think it gave me higher resolution, but it's really annoying to control. After that I've used up and down.

[mute]

to piggyback on what mute said, i like right clicking to reset to default. i don't see this much though, in fact i can't remember which plugin allowed me to do this. but i liked it XD

true true... sometimes devs choose middle click for it too

[UNZ]

, i like right clicking to reset to default. i don't see this much though

mixio has it

oh and, up & down of course: THIS POLL IS OVER!
(also, support mousewheel and keyboard and fine tuning with say ctrl, and...)

ah fuck it, just look at mixio and copy it 1:1

[Joachip]

Well that settles it!

This poll certainly sends a signal to all the devs out there who went for a different solution than up/down. (Both Sonnox EQ and Waldorf Largo are 45° lower-left/top-tight for example).

[boombaxx]

I prefer hexagonal knobs that work in an exponential curve

[tinga]

Everybody seem to vote for the up down (and me too), maybe its because lot of vst work like that, left right is buzz sliders, and I like it also, of course circular is ridiculous.

[oskari]

I've never heard of anyone who has preferred circular. Up/down is better than left/right because of an obvious anatomic reason if you think about it.

[polac]

In pvst you can set the knob mode for vsts. It defaults to linear(up/down), but you can also set to circular mode if a vst implements it.

[Joachip]

I've never heard of anyone who has preferred circular. Up/down is better than left/right because of an obvious anatomic reason if you think about it.

I agree on that one. I just "feels right", and you can do it without even looking at the computer screen.

In pvst you can set the knob mode for vsts. It defaults to linear(up/down), but you can also set to circular mode if a vst implements it.

Oh nice. Pvst's feature set impresses me again.

[rav]

I voted for up/down option obviously, but there is one more type in the knobs universe. It's mouse wheel usage, which i prefer over click and drag routine.
If well implemented you don't even need to click on the gui, it is very helpful if you have keyboard focus on buzz machines.

[polac]

I also prefer up/down.

Also ctrl+lclick for default value,
shift drag for fine tuning,
mousewheel for fine tuning.

And it also makes sense to hide(and reset) the mouse cursor while tweaking a knob, some vsts do this, it's better to tweak if the knob is placed near the edges of your screen.