Read about half of it so far. I love exploring UI for music, so I'm happy to see this, though I've got to make my complaints, eh? (Also it's a Friday :P )

About the "tiny windows" section, Fabfilter has had interfaces very similar to what they're describing for a long time. I think they're some of the most intuitive visual interfaces for these musical tools. I'm really surprised they weren't mentioned.

Their limiter [0] easily lets you see volume before (light blue) and after (dark blue) limiting, as well as what gain reduction (red) is being applied over time and RMS (white line in the area between -10 and -16).

Their EQ [1] lets you see the affect each individual band has (blue and green), the overall eq curve (yellow) and frequency spectrum before and after.

> There is a bigger underlying issue: we are making decisions that will affect the whole recording based on this tiny real-time view of the world. This is like trying to decide on which filter to use on an image by shifting a tiny square preview around the image, trying to imagine what the whole thing will look like try it below:

I disagree with this though. Visuals tell so little compared to your ears. It's not like deciding an image filter by scanning a small square across an image, it's like deciding an image filter by converting the image to a .wav and listening to the output. The Fabfilter plugins have great GUI's but you can't make a mix by turning off your speakers and only relying on visuals.

About envelopes, for example. On my hardware synths, I'm comfortable with the position of the ADSR knobs and what effect it will give. I know that if I want a plucky sound, the decay knob goes to a certain point. With visual envelopes, the shape seems more intuitive, but because they scale their lengths to fit within the display, it actually gets very hard to tell exactly how long something is just by looking. In Massive, if you turn the release up to 10000ms, setting decay between 50ms and 500ms provides almost no visual difference because it stretches the envelope graphic. So you end up using the virtual knob positions anyways and ignore the graphic for the most part. I don't use Logic, but I get the same vibe from the screenshot.

You often do not want "their values in proportion to each other". For example, changing attack time doesn't change the sound of the decay/sustain or release sections, so they should not affect it visually. Serum is the only synth I've used where the envelope graphics actually add a lot to the value of the interface. The way you can draw curves or steps is also genius. [2]

The ADSR model also responds to your playing, unlike the programmatically made examples. You can't hold two notes, let go of one and have it slowly release while the other is still sustaining because you're pressing the key. Would singing the envelope or using an audio sample to generate the initial envelope data be useful? Maybe, I'd certainly like to try. But my first guess is that it wouldn't be that helpful. Most of my time with envelopes is spent adjusting values by milliseconds or so to get it to sound perfect, and not by a whole second or so. I couldn't achieve that accuracy with my mouth, and dialing in an initial envelope is already easy enough that I wouldn't want to plug in a microphone instead.

I'm really interested in better interfaces to musical instruments, or sets of them, especially in real time. There are some amazing things people are doing with grid controllers like the monome or Push. PXT-Live-Plus is one I've been playing with. One of my favorite additions is the drum mode where you can set pads to not be an individual sample, but a set which rotates to the next each time you hit it (so it's entirely deterministic and predictable). From a small number of pads you can build really intricate melodies/rhythms by managing what notes/samples will be available to you next, it's a very different way of thinking.

[0] http://www.fabfilter.com/images/screenshots/screenshot_pro-l...

[1] http://www.fabfilter.com/help/pro-q/images/analyzer@2x.jpg

[2] https://www.audiotent.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/lfo.jpg