to step or not to step?

[pan60]

ok i love gear i am a gear freak and as a result mostly broke, broke but happy with what ever new toy i just happened upon
so why dose all gear have to have stepped potentiometer's?
i remember the old note book days, ( well for me still the old note book day's ) and digital cameras are why nice for snapshots of gear setup's.
so let me ask is a stepped potentiometer needed on effect's, eq's, pre's, comp's, on every piece of gear or just some gear.
i think mastering gear would be very important for some things but what about the majority of studio gear?

[Kiwiburger]

My very biased opinions:

Rotary switches make good sense on preamps that have tapped transfomers (Neve style). Good repeatability.

Pots wear out and crackle. I don't really approve of detents on pots to make them behave like a rotary switch (and perhaps fool the gullible that a cheap preamp is comparable to a good switched multi-tap transformer preamp).

A pot is designed for full range 'analog' variability. Why fck with it, and encourage them to wear and crackle at the same exact spots. More things to break. If you want full bypass, have a full bypass switch.

EQ - the advantage of rotary switches on eq is that you can carefully tune your resistors, capacitors and inductors to have zero phase shift. Except few designers choose to do so. But basically - it's harder to make tuneable inductors and capacitors and would bump the price up. So switching in these components makes sense. Ease of repeatability is a cool spinoff - but again, if your cheap circuit uses a pot, why fck with it?

Digital effects, by nature, are stepped anyway and repeatability is not usually an issue.

[Reptil]

eqs - repeatabillity
comps - buscomps
preamp? IMHO not really - mic placement is different most of the time and I don't have a problem with finding the right gain
fx - mmm no I like to dail in something if possible without the steps

[not_so_new]

Preamps for me but honestly I don't worry about it much at all one way or the other.

I tend to find that I am not as exacting on preamps, I am tracking to digital and I shoot for low levels so I don't mind reasonably big steps in preamps, as long as the pres are running hot enough to add a little spice that is all I need.

I don't do any mastering so I am not really worried about exacting levels. I tend to run test tones through my gear that does not have stepped pots to get exact L/R levels and for the rest, ratio's, EQ points etc. I just use my ears.

Really, stepped pots are not something that I specifically look for. I would not turn away from a unit with them but I don't turn away from something without either.

All of that said, there is allot to this conversation right? Recallability is always nice. Stepped pots with too big a jump are no help, etc. Again allot mroe to this than I could post or anyone would care to read....

[Mike Caffrey]

Pots are notoriously inconsistent.

Iften when a piece of gear has stepped knobs, it's not a detended pot it's acutally a rotary switch. For both repeatability and fidelity, this is the best option.