Diva Pros needed for testing — Volta Skin/Theme/Modification [completed]

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Obsolete, please refer to viewtopic.php?f=31&t=466694

Hello everybody,

first of all, I am a faithful reader since a while now. Never had open questions because you guys are deep into it. I really appreciate the U-He team and the community for their passion.

The Diva is a extremely powerful Synth with lots of possibilities and fantastic sounding. But never really felt satisfied with the look. Not that it would be bad but deserves more. There has been a noticeable huge improvement in GUI-Design on the recent U-He product releases and I believe that the next big update on the Diva will be outstanding. In the meantime there is Diva Volta.

I’m going to release this theme very soon. Basically it is a completely new designed GUI for Diva with some modifications to it. I’m working on this for some time now and got finally the Beta status.

So what I need are 2-4 Diva pros who are interested to do some testing. I would provide a free version of Diva Volta to helpers.

Requirements on testing:

- Check if it works reliable on Mac/Windows/DAWs
- Check on Retina/high resolution display
- Check every parameter if it responds properly

Any critics are very welcome.

Would be great if somebody is interested in this, thanks so far.
Last edited by User Data on Sun Jul 17, 2016 2:41 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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Nice work,very crisp looking

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Wow, looks amazing, I'd be doing for testing.
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This looks amazing! I'll be down for testing!

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The UI elements look very nice, particularly in the top half, but the lighting effects and some text color choirces make the bottom half very dark and blurry IMO. The filter section suffers a bit from this too. I think a slightly different take on the lighting and maybe some slight changes to the colors to improve contrast would really improve the usability of the UI. Overall though, very, very nice looking.

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:…but the lighting effects and some text color choirces make the bottom half very dark and blurry IMO … some slight changes to the colors to improve contrast would really improve the usability of the UI.
I appreciate your arguments and you are right. I edited my post and uploaded a full resolution view of the working skin. I had to compress the images to upload them here so they became blurry.

Font-Smoothing or Anti-Aliasing is a pain. There are always decisions between readability and the main idea and emotional aspects. In my case I have no problems, but have to look on users opinion too. I think I could lighten the panel description about some percent.
As a side info, you can always increase the contrast in the Diva preferences.

Just a mention: I am more into simple and flat vector GUI's. :hihi:

thanks

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User Data wrote:Just a mention: I am more into simple and flat vector GUI's. :hihi:
Haha, glad you went in a different direction here.

So looking at the full version more closely, I'm able to give more specific feedback:

1. There appears to be strong shadows on the bottom right and left in particular. This makes Scale, Frequency, and LED color very tough to read. For instance, compare the legibility of "Scale" to something like "VCF Frequency" or "Phase Reset." They're very different in terms of readability.

2. The dark knobs are too close in color to the dark background. This makes it hard to see where knobs end and the background begins.

3. Your anti-aliasing choices with the font actually seem pretty darn good. It might be a tiny bit on the soft side if I'm being very critical, but the text on the top-half of the UI is very legible. The text on the bottom half of the UI is a medium grey, on top of a very dark grey, over knobs that are almost the exact same dark grey. So there's definitely room for improvement there IMO.

4. There appear to be shadows under the knobs. On the already dark barkground, with the dark knobs, these are just making it harder to differentiate the different elements of the UI. The knobs particularly get lost in the UI in the tweak panel.

5. Look at the words "Synth, Tweak, and Patch" at the top of the UI. The background is a lighter grey up top due to the lessened effect of the shadows. That's perfect. The text is very legible, the button borders are clear against the background. You may want to try for that level across the UI.

6. The ADSR Fader caps blend into the UI too well IMO. Look at the Key Follow fader in your UI quickly. It's almost camouflaged. The tighter line spacing you use on the VCF faders make the Fader caps stand out out more when compared to the ADSR where the printed lines are further apart.

Take as much or as little of this feedback as you deem valid. Keep in mind monitors vary greatly (I'm looking on a 23" ViewSonic IPS panel display), so it could be just me. I'm no UI/graphics expert by any means....

Anyway, as I said, this is a great looking skin. You're clearly very talented.

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That is probably the best skinning job I've ever seen.

So much so that I feel compelled to congratulate you on your excellent work!

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:6. The ADSR Fader caps blend into the UI too well IMO. Look at the Key Follow fader in your UI quickly. It's almost camouflaged. The tighter line spacing you use on the VCF faders make the Fader caps stand out out more when compared to the ADSR where the printed lines are further apart.
You mean KNOBS? :)

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Count me in for the test.

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My comments for now are very simple:

* I agree with shadows on knobs being a BIT too much. Tone them down slightly and it'll be perfect.
* Simple wording changes: GLIDEMODE should have a space between those two words. If it ends up being a bit tight, I'd change MICROTUNE to TUNING
* UP and DOWN don't mean much. Perhaps stylize it like this: UP - BEND - DOWN
* Similar with accuracy mode. Perhaps: LIVE - ACCURACY - RENDER might work better?
* I'd like to reduce the wording of RATE/QUARTERS to just RATE. I hate it on the original skin, I hate it here as well. :)

Some of these are a bit subjective, I agree. But...


Really can't wait to use this. I think going skeuomorphic and using the panel styles of the actual synths that are modelled in Diva is jackpot. I wonder how JP-8000 oscillator looks? :)

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:love: looks just lovely!
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Beautiful skin for Diva! :love: :tu:
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Wow ! A skin both beautiful AND non-flat, definitely worth a try :) Good job !

(nothing against flat, quite the opposite, but a relevant while non-boring flat design is one of the most difficult graphic design task to achieve)

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EvilDragon wrote:
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:6. The ADSR Fader caps blend into the UI too well IMO. Look at the Key Follow fader in your UI quickly. It's almost camouflaged. The tighter line spacing you use on the VCF faders make the Fader caps stand out out more when compared to the ADSR where the printed lines are further apart.
You mean KNOBS? :)
I meant the ENV1 ADSR faders in the full size version.

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