You probably don't know how much I've learned from you in the past two years.
I once almost said "Because Ivan said so" once. lol
But as for the "theory" vs application thing -- I think back to when learned how to use a compressor. I'd twist knobs around and not notice much of a difference. Compression only made sense after I had been shown what each knob does. Of course the value of the person showing me how to use a compressor wasn't that I suddenly understood compression, rather that I learned how to learn compression.
Does that make sense?
Either way I'll go download a modeling program.
I remember when I TRULY learned how to use a digital reverb.
And it was NOT in a class about digital reverbs.
It was in a TEF measurement class and the discussion was about where to put the cursers to get a valid RT60 measurement.
It was during the discussion that "all of a sudden" it came to me. Things like a large room sound the way it does-what the initial time gap really tells you and so forth.
After that "all the light bulbs" went off and it became much easier to "twist the knobs" to get the particular sound I want.
IT is not just the reverb time that says it is a large room. Heck you can get long reverb times (like 10 seconds) in small rooms.
But when you have a long ITG (Initial Time Gap) and the reverb sound has a lot of HF rolloff-those are dead giveaways. A small room of equal RT60 will have a very small ITG and lots of HF in the "tail".
All this "audio stuff" is related, so learning about how something behaves can give insight into something else.
BTW I got a lot of my "learning" by simple "knob twisting" and "seeing what happens when we do this" and "OOPS I don't need to do THAT again" Now for the repair bill------.