One major change that has crept in with the software revolution in the recording process is the replacement of hardware with software. This means less knob twiddling and more mouse or trackpad swiping. While the ability to automate and the repeatability is great this comes with the loss of the tactile connection that you get with actual physical knobs. When sweeping a frequency to find the sweet spot it is so much more satisfying to do this with hands on a physical object.
There are hardware controllers that operate on the software and this can be a great way to get the touch back but usually this means a complicated set up procedure for each parameter which can slow down the inspiration. With a hardware device there are dedicated knobs for each parameter but each knob will spend most of its time doing nothing or one or two knobs such as frequency and resonance will get all the action.
The ideal for me would be some kind of a system where there is a system of hardware knobs on a controller that adapts itself automatically to each plugin, soft synth or device so that things like ADSR, frequency, resonance, pitch etc fall under the same knobs each time without needing to be set up anew for each plugin.
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