Are rotary mixers better?

[jonesjohnson]

The title is a bit misleading IMHO. It's more like analog vs digital. After all, from an electrical point of view they're usually just potentiometers and you can build them either as rotary or as linear potentiometers, but it's just a wiper on a resistive conductive track... (of course there are exceptions that work differently and use hall effect or optical sensors).

The article only talks about the actual circuit that is behind that potentiometer.

Having built some MIDI controllers myself in the past, I noticed that rotary potentiometers allow you to better "decouple" arm/shoulder movements from hand/finger movements. I.e. when you're standing and and holding that knob, It's easier to make precise adjustments when there's a rotary knob you can "hold on to" and slowly twist your fingers, whereas with a linear potentiometer I usually have to keep a finger on the surface next to the knob to "compensate" for involuntary movements coming from my body and arm...

[Moru]

Yes, this is the same for controls in a car. Whoever thought a touch display was the way to go? Our old car had twisty-nobs that you could feel direction already on the grip. No need to look on the symbols what they adjusted. Our "modern" car has still twisty-nobs (we made extra sure of that) but you can't feel the direction because they are perfectly round with a tiny tiny nob for direction. Why do I get the impression development goes backwards?

[rivo]

This is also my experience. I'm not a DJ but I perform live electronic music using various MIDI controllers. If I quickly want to add or remove a sound, like a kick drum, to/from the mix, a slider is best. If I need fine control over a parameter, like a low-pass filter frequency, a rotary controller is usually better for the reasons you mentioned.

As alluded to in the article, rotary vs. linear seems to be a proxy for the circuit which actually influences the sound. I would think that anyone claiming "mixers with rotaries always sound better" does not fully understand how they work. There's a lot of those kind of claims in the music scene.

[magicalhippo]

Though it's easy to see why linear potentiometers make sense if you want to adjust multiple at the same time.

However in these modern days with motor driven potentiometers, I guess it is less of a big deal.

[intsunny]

How an entire article about rotary mixers fails to mention Rane or their legendary MP2016 mixer is wild.

It became one of the most commonly available rotary mixers, was the house mixer for many NYC clubs, and one of the mixers commonly found on tech riders of DJs who were the last to transition to CDJs.

Random bit of trivia: if you see old school photos or videos of rotary mixers in American clubs, sometimes it wasn't actually the Rane MP2016, but the Phazon SDX 3700: https://www.integralsound.com/sdx-3700-mixer It was the house mixer for Tunnel/Limelight.

[dspig]

Any headline with a question... Of course it depends on what you want to do and what you are used to.

Technically, regardless of the rest of the product design there are high quality potentiometers available both as linear faders or rotary knobs. I guess dirt is more likely to get into a linear fader and make it scratchy - especially in a club environment.

[letier]

I actually have a Taula 2 and a Xone 92 at home. I prefer the Taula 2, due to the simplicity and the fact that it has an isolator. The Xone 92 has a four band IQ and a filter, which I like a lot, but I have the impression that all the bells and whistles take a toll on the quality. At least in a home listening setup.

Anyways, it’s not the knobs that make the sound…

[comprev]

Xones are more like specialist precision tools that can be tweaked to a fine degree.

Pioneers have many options to quickly bail out of a train wreck mix!

[Animats]

What, no discussion of knob size, knurl, and operating torque?

At this point it's mostly a user interface problem.

[lowdownbutter]

Hello to other UK readers having a little chuckle to themselves.

[i_am_proteus]

Seems like ad copy for the recently-released Alpha Theta Euphonia.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Seems like ad copy for classic Veblen pricing, with rotaries being sold as a status symbol.

They cost more than most studio mixers with far more channels and features.

The margins on these things must be insane - probably 5-10X between production cost (including R&D) and end-user price.

[blablablerg]

You can't do (or it is much more involved) to do cuts with rotary knobs. So they serve only the DJ who does slow mixes, while with faders you can do both.

[miunau]

There's some that have a button for cut, same for EQ kills

[te_chris]

Can’t by design. It’s a different process. You can’t get the same smooth transitions as easily with the light faders on pioneer djms (the standard).

[kid64]

Yeah, maybe if that DJ ignores the crossfader.

[NikkiA]

Linear (travel, not resistance) pots are easier to clean, so no.

[DidYaWipe]

Not in a computer UI.

It's depressing that audio software still widely subjects users to this skeuomorphic failure, trying to do everything with on-screen "knobs." Ugh.

[prmoustache]

Totally agree. But I guess most audio software expect you to map those rotary potentiometers to actual midi controller with infinite rotary encoder and the UI serves as a way to see the status.

Having said that you can totally map a physical rotary encoder to a linear one in the software so this is not a good excuse.

[gsck]

Gets even better with a touch screen and trying to rotate the virtual knobs. It just doesnt work.

Piece of software I use frequently has most of the important programming and setup done through touch screen and relatively little through its command line which prior version used more off, the touch screen rotary encoders are just confusing and I can never seem to get it to the right value

[dist-epoch]

As someone which designed such audio UIs with knobs, it's not because skeuomorphic was the target, it's because there is no better way to fit 50 controls in a small space while being able to see them all at the same time.

[scott01]

Why do you think on-screen knobs is a failure? I personally find them very convenient for the purpose.

[jeffreygoesto]

Oh. I first thought it would be about blenders and thought "what other principles would be there?"

[WJW]

You could have at least three types of linear mixers:

- One where some type of spoon goes back and forth. This would probably just be worse than a rotary mixer though.

- One where the entire "basin" oscillates back and forth like a seesaw, like the machines they have at the blood bank to make sure the blood mixes well with the anticoagulant in the bag(s).

- One where the basin is airtight and vibrated up and down vigorously. I could see this work quite well for dry-ish mixtures of different particles, like if you have flour and sugar together in a container and want them mixed.

[krisoft]

Turbulent flow mixers. Typically operated in industrial processess where two or more products are pumped through a specially shaped manifold which causes intentional turbulence in the material to mix the different streams. Contrary to blenders or planetary mixers these operate in a continous fashion not on a batch-by-batch basis.

[grujicd]

Even when started reading I still didn't know what it was about. When DJs were mentioned I thought it was something related to turntables, as they are the rotary thing? Vinyl was mentioned in few places so it must be it? Then audiophiles were mentioned which is super strange since audiophiles don't use mixers at all. You're not mixing anything when you listen to music.

Turned out it's just about rotary vs linear potentiometers. Or I misunderstood everything.

[prmoustache]

You are not the only one.