I just checked out that DAW and I’m curious as a newbie — why are skeuomorphic “dials” considered good UX? They seem like the worst idea ever and yet I see them all over the DAW/synth landscape.

What am I missing?

They are controlled like sliders (swipe up/down to adjust) and contain the same information, but are much more compact.

Aha! I was trying to position my finger over the dial and turn it. Thanks for clarifying.

Ha, I couldn't work out what _isn't_ a good UX about them until you posted this. It's worth noting a couple of extra things about them too, while taking up much less space than a slider they operate in the same way - this often means you can get a lot more range / precision than if you'd tried to fit it in a slider as your touch can slide way outside the bounds of the control itself. The other is that there's a convention in touch-interface audio apps that double tapping the dial will return it to its default state, whatever value that might be. This arguably could be done with a slider, but I've not come across that on any of the apps I use.

Huh, didn’t know about the double-tap, I’ll have to try that.

You’re right about range and precision too. With knobs, the interface creator can fine-tune the precision without it being surprising. A knob that changes oscillator waveforms can have large, comfortable slices between each waveform, while an envelope length can be more fine-grained.

One could build in coarse/fine adjustments based on swipe speed, but that seems a lot harder to get right. I’m still quite hopeful about what VR synths and controls can bring. Synthspace may be the thing that makes me get a VR headset, and if someone ever ports VCV Rack to VR I’ll be there in an instant.

https://www.patreon.com/synthspace

It’s a hidden interface mapping for sure—you have to know about it before it makes any sense. It might help if a “ghost slider” appeared when you first press on it, but that could also clutter things up.

As I said in a reply below, I think the touch interface on flat glass is a stepping stone to VR synths where the skeuomorphism is more natural: grab the knob and spin it, just like hardware!