It's the <i>convention</i> to use realism in audio software, but that doesn't necessarily make it an effective interface.<p>It reminds me of the bizarre interfaces in Kai's Power Tools:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kai%27s_Power_Tools.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kai%27s_Power_Tools.jpg</a><p>At the time, artists gushed over how fun and innovative the user interfaces were, but such interfaces are rare in today's graphics software.  Few people want an interface where each dialog is a little puzzle, where you can only have five presets because that's all that the UI designer thought looked good in the layout, or where the dialog's background exerts undue influence on your choices of color or texture.