Towards Improving Overview and Metering through Visualisation and Dynamic Query Filters for User Interfaces Implementing the Stage Metaphor for Music Mixing

This paper deals with challenges involved with implementing the stage metaphor control scheme for mixing music. Recent studies suggest that the stage metaphor outperforms the traditional channel-strip metaphor in several different ways. However, the implementation of the stage metaphor poses issues including clutter, lack of overview and monitoring of levels, and EQ. Drawing upon suggestions in recent studies, the paper describes the implementation of a stage metaphor prototype incorporating several features for dealing with these issues, including level and EQ monitoring using brightness, shape, and size. Moreover we explore the potential of using Dynamic Query filtering for localizing channels with certain properties of interest. Finally, an explorative user evaluation compares different variations of the prototype, leading to a discussion of the importance of each feature.