Re: What does 0dB refer to? (Logitech USB Speakers)

[John Rigg <aldev@sound-man.co.uk>]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 05:42:47PM +0200, Wolfgang Woehl wrote:
> Florian Faber:
> 
> > How about this: You do what you want with the consumer boards, and
> > leave the pro guys alone. Pro drivers are not 'broken' if they
> > don't implement such a 'feature', they are pro drivers.
> 
> Would you take a minute and reconsider this old distinction 
> between "consumer" and "professional"?
> 
> In the end it's not the card, it's not the freaking driver. It's the 
> person, of course.
> 
> If I would have to make a living from handling expensive audio gear 
> responsibly I'd reach for the right hardware fader *before* I ran 
> anything that could come up rolling and screaming.
>

I will often fire up a software mixer in the middle of a busy remote
recording session (where I don't have the luxury of a mixing
desk for monitoring) to send a headphone mix to a musician. It's a lot 
quicker to use a mixer that starts muted by default than to run back and
forth between headphone amp racks and the computer setting levels. Is it 
irresponsible of me to prefer the convenience of just having to set the 
levels in the software app? There seems to be some hostility towards the
idea that people who rely on this stuff to make their living might
have some requirements that are different from those of the average
computer user.

I don't have a problem with the average desktop user wanting
their sound cards to be easy to use. I just have a problem with
the idea that the tools I rely on to do my job might be broken
by a "one size fits all" approach to all audio interfaces.

John