Synth appearance
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- KVRAF
- 21195 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
The bottom line is this. There's just no good reason to put together a sloppy GUI in this day and age. None.
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- KVRAF
- 3959 posts since 10 Sep, 2010 from A shit hole (Ireland).
'heavily biased'. That means I shouldn't really trust your opinion... In my opinion. It's like a yo yo this.aciddose wrote:I'm willing to admit my opinion that aesthetic is the most important factor of an audio plugin, "period" is heavily biased by my own experience.
In the same way no one should trust my opinion. Uh oh...aciddose wrote: For both free plugins and commercial though, I urge authors to consider GUI and aesthetic the very most important feature of their plugins. Audio quality is important, features are important and so forth but when you have people with the opinion "I'll never use a bad looking plugin no matter how great it sounds" it should be clear that crossing the GUI hurdle with the bar set as high as you are capable is the first step to success.
And I counter your urge with one of, 'get the sound and functionality right', then make the look as good as you can. I (or we) are a paying customers therefore are opinions are more important than yours. No customers no vsts. Although, I'm bloody glad the developers exist and to those I say, thank you.
If it does'nt look as good as the best of the best - Don't worry, if it's good they will buy it. Personally, I think, considering were not using any substantial evidence here per se', I'd wager that the majority of people who buy vsts/plugins, buy them for the quality and functionality, looks is surely a secondary consideration?
The fact one or two people chimed in and said, 'they won't buy unless is pretty' is absolutely meaningless.
Some others said they opposite. So no ground gained there.
They are not a very good barometer of customers. If it was in a poll and hundreds had a similar view, then it might be worth looking at. That is to say, it might be worth testing further (if you were arsed), but that initial poll would still not indicate proof.
I will take the Lord's name in vain, whenever I want. Hail Satan! And his little goblins too. 
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- KVRAF
- 3959 posts since 10 Sep, 2010 from A shit hole (Ireland).
Yes that's very true. But it needn't be a Da Vinci either.wagtunes wrote:The bottom line is this. There's just no good reason to put together a sloppy GUI in this day and age. None.
But please lets not have any artifacts in the GUI that drives me mad. Or worse, the freakin' knobs don't turn or turn too fast.
I will take the Lord's name in vain, whenever I want. Hail Satan! And his little goblins too.
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- KVRAF
- 12555 posts since 7 Dec, 2004
Note that I never said "focus on the GUI exclusively because audio and functionality doesn't matter", I said simply that the aesthetic elements are the most important.
Do you see any commercial plugins being released with plain looking GUIs at the moment?
If so, were any of them reviewed with great praise for and focus on the sound or functions?
I stand by what I said, the GUI is the most important hurdle to overcome. If you don't deal with the aesthetic issues people will judge your plugin long before they've heard it and likely won't care for the functions as they'll never use the plugin.
Once the aesthetic is dealt with, then people will become more interested in the audio quality or functionality.
I'm coming from the assumption as a "developer" myself that anyone working on audio software has an interest in audio software. They know what quality and features they are looking for! So this is a non-issue. If you know nothing about audio and have no idea how to use audio equipment / software you don't stand a chance to build a good quality plugin in the first place.
"Users have no idea what they want but they know when your software doesn't have it."
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/why-steve ... customers/
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
I think it is sad that people seem to turn off their brains when someone says something like that. So that means we ignore what people say, because people are wrong? Ah, but he didn't say that, he said designing a product based upon users' opinions is very difficult because they don't usually know what they want!
So why do people do this "half-and-half with brain shut off" interpretation where they misinterpret what someone says without thinking about what they mean. They take their misinterpretation in the most strict literal way possible...
What it means is that people can't really tell you what will be best, they can only tell you what they prefer after they've experienced it. That means you can ask people for their opinion but you have to keep in mind they have limited experience and are not often very creative in their responses.
In other words, what users say must be interpreted and understood by taking into account what the users experience and knowledge are.
Do you see any commercial plugins being released with plain looking GUIs at the moment?
If so, were any of them reviewed with great praise for and focus on the sound or functions?
I stand by what I said, the GUI is the most important hurdle to overcome. If you don't deal with the aesthetic issues people will judge your plugin long before they've heard it and likely won't care for the functions as they'll never use the plugin.
Once the aesthetic is dealt with, then people will become more interested in the audio quality or functionality.
I'm coming from the assumption as a "developer" myself that anyone working on audio software has an interest in audio software. They know what quality and features they are looking for! So this is a non-issue. If you know nothing about audio and have no idea how to use audio equipment / software you don't stand a chance to build a good quality plugin in the first place.
"Users have no idea what they want but they know when your software doesn't have it."
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/why-steve ... customers/
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
I think it is sad that people seem to turn off their brains when someone says something like that. So that means we ignore what people say, because people are wrong? Ah, but he didn't say that, he said designing a product based upon users' opinions is very difficult because they don't usually know what they want!
So why do people do this "half-and-half with brain shut off" interpretation where they misinterpret what someone says without thinking about what they mean. They take their misinterpretation in the most strict literal way possible...
What it means is that people can't really tell you what will be best, they can only tell you what they prefer after they've experienced it. That means you can ask people for their opinion but you have to keep in mind they have limited experience and are not often very creative in their responses.
In other words, what users say must be interpreted and understood by taking into account what the users experience and knowledge are.
Free plug-ins for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Xhip Synthesizer v8.0 and Xhip Effects Bundle v6.7.
The coder's credo: We believe our work is neither clever nor difficult; it is done because we thought it would be easy.
Work less; get more done.
The coder's credo: We believe our work is neither clever nor difficult; it is done because we thought it would be easy.
Work less; get more done.
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- KVRAF
- 21195 posts since 8 Oct, 2014
When I first started looking for VSTi to download, I went to KVR and dug through the database. I noticed there were thousands of synths. So which ones did I download to try out? The ones that at least looked nice. Otherwise, I'd still be downloading free synths today. The ones that looked like crap I immediately discounted.
As for paid for synths, I've seen very few with GUIs that are God awful. Those are the exceptions and not the rule.
Now, for me, and what might separate buyers on a more minutia based level, all I really care about when it comes to a GUI is that I can read all the controls and that it doesn't look like it was designed by a kid with crayons. Others might be more picky, but I seriously doubt there are more than a handful of people who will pay good money for a GUI where you're essentially hunting and pecking and "hoping" that you turn the right dials to make a sound. It's why I'm so disappointed with the Arturia synths, even though they sound "good" to "great." The GUIs, outside of the SEM, are train wrecks. I can't program them to save my life because I can't read the damn controls. And the sad part is, the actual designs are excellent. It's the size that kills these synths. And if you talk to most Arturia owners, they'll tell you the same thing, which is why Arturia finally announced that sometime this year, the GUIs WILL be updated. So even they know what a train wreck they are.
Today, I will never buy a synth with a bad GUI. I don't care if it can sound like everything from a mini moog to Schmidt. If I can't see the controls, i want no part of it. Which is why the following synths are still not part of my collection even though I love the way they sound.
Symtohm
Rhino
Enzyme *
Helix
Surge
Sytrus
The last one is one of the most amazing FM synths I've ever heard but I refuse to buy it until they fix that ghastly GUI that I can't read.
So yes, for me, the GUI is the deal breaker and not the sound of the synth. Because synths with good design visually, even if the sound is just better than average, will find their way into my collection if I think they add something sonically that I'm not getting from other synths.
That's why I own synths like
ART Pyrite
Podolski
Synth1
TAL Bassline
TAL Elek7ro II
TAL Noisemaker
TAL U No 62
Tyrell N6
Just to name a few. These aren't blow the competition out of the water sound wise, but they sound decent and the GUIs are fine. Yes, they're all free. With paid for synths, I'm a little pickier but not much. Give me something usable that's reasonably priced with controls that I can read and I'm fine.
Take away that third part and it doesn't matter what the price is or how great it sounds.
It's not making its way into my collection. Not anymore. Not after the Arturia nightmare that was my own fault for not downloading the demos first. I made assumptions that I should have never made because every other paid for synth that I had gotten up until that point had GUIs that I could read. Now I know better and won't make that mistake again.
As for paid for synths, I've seen very few with GUIs that are God awful. Those are the exceptions and not the rule.
Now, for me, and what might separate buyers on a more minutia based level, all I really care about when it comes to a GUI is that I can read all the controls and that it doesn't look like it was designed by a kid with crayons. Others might be more picky, but I seriously doubt there are more than a handful of people who will pay good money for a GUI where you're essentially hunting and pecking and "hoping" that you turn the right dials to make a sound. It's why I'm so disappointed with the Arturia synths, even though they sound "good" to "great." The GUIs, outside of the SEM, are train wrecks. I can't program them to save my life because I can't read the damn controls. And the sad part is, the actual designs are excellent. It's the size that kills these synths. And if you talk to most Arturia owners, they'll tell you the same thing, which is why Arturia finally announced that sometime this year, the GUIs WILL be updated. So even they know what a train wreck they are.
Today, I will never buy a synth with a bad GUI. I don't care if it can sound like everything from a mini moog to Schmidt. If I can't see the controls, i want no part of it. Which is why the following synths are still not part of my collection even though I love the way they sound.
Symtohm
Rhino
Enzyme *
Helix
Surge
Sytrus
The last one is one of the most amazing FM synths I've ever heard but I refuse to buy it until they fix that ghastly GUI that I can't read.
So yes, for me, the GUI is the deal breaker and not the sound of the synth. Because synths with good design visually, even if the sound is just better than average, will find their way into my collection if I think they add something sonically that I'm not getting from other synths.
That's why I own synths like
ART Pyrite
Podolski
Synth1
TAL Bassline
TAL Elek7ro II
TAL Noisemaker
TAL U No 62
Tyrell N6
Just to name a few. These aren't blow the competition out of the water sound wise, but they sound decent and the GUIs are fine. Yes, they're all free. With paid for synths, I'm a little pickier but not much. Give me something usable that's reasonably priced with controls that I can read and I'm fine.
Take away that third part and it doesn't matter what the price is or how great it sounds.
It's not making its way into my collection. Not anymore. Not after the Arturia nightmare that was my own fault for not downloading the demos first. I made assumptions that I should have never made because every other paid for synth that I had gotten up until that point had GUIs that I could read. Now I know better and won't make that mistake again.
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- KVRAF
- 12555 posts since 7 Dec, 2004
Do you really find the arturia GUIs that hellish with regard to text legibility?
The only one I've seen that I really agreed with is cs80v, which yes is quite insane. I understand the issue though, the torches and pitchforks will come out no matter what, there are simply too many controls on the GUI.
Here I think they definitely should have eliminated all duplication and turned this into pages. I feel that if I were using the synth it would be way easier to page A/B back and forth to compare the two sections rather than needing to move my eyes. The signal flow graph should be eliminated or set on the "back panel". I think the keyboard should be eliminated. All the additional controls are a pain, but I'm sure they could be made more accessible as well.
Yet I feel despite how excellent I think the result would be, as I said the torches and pitchforks would still come out with screams in the night "burn the pageans! burn the switch!"
The GUI would look nothing like the real instrument, and the authors must have decided that the bias introduced by having the GUI look the same to have people more likely to say it sounds the same was well worth squeezing in everything to fit on the low-res screens (1024x768) of the day.
Are the others as terrible? Do you think they made the same sort of decisions for the same reasons or are there differences?
Okay, I've just seen vox continental and solina. If any of the other GUIs are like that I kind of get the picture.
The other plugins you listed though all seem to have one thing in common: they are complicated instruments and often utilize very dense GUIs with many pages in order to fit within a reasonable size window. Many of them use tiny "pixel" style fonts which seem entirely readable to me, although I can understand your point of view.
So you are of the opinion that they should have been extremely large GUIs? What size screen do you own?
Common resolution these days remains 720 to 1080. That's often from 1280x720, 1366x768 to 1920x1080. It is often ill advised to take up more than 80% of a dimension of the screen, so a practical sized GUI remains 1100x620 to 1500x860 for most cases.
The only one I've seen that I really agreed with is cs80v, which yes is quite insane. I understand the issue though, the torches and pitchforks will come out no matter what, there are simply too many controls on the GUI.
Here I think they definitely should have eliminated all duplication and turned this into pages. I feel that if I were using the synth it would be way easier to page A/B back and forth to compare the two sections rather than needing to move my eyes. The signal flow graph should be eliminated or set on the "back panel". I think the keyboard should be eliminated. All the additional controls are a pain, but I'm sure they could be made more accessible as well.
Yet I feel despite how excellent I think the result would be, as I said the torches and pitchforks would still come out with screams in the night "burn the pageans! burn the switch!"
The GUI would look nothing like the real instrument, and the authors must have decided that the bias introduced by having the GUI look the same to have people more likely to say it sounds the same was well worth squeezing in everything to fit on the low-res screens (1024x768) of the day.
Are the others as terrible? Do you think they made the same sort of decisions for the same reasons or are there differences?
Okay, I've just seen vox continental and solina. If any of the other GUIs are like that I kind of get the picture.
The other plugins you listed though all seem to have one thing in common: they are complicated instruments and often utilize very dense GUIs with many pages in order to fit within a reasonable size window. Many of them use tiny "pixel" style fonts which seem entirely readable to me, although I can understand your point of view.
So you are of the opinion that they should have been extremely large GUIs? What size screen do you own?
Common resolution these days remains 720 to 1080. That's often from 1280x720, 1366x768 to 1920x1080. It is often ill advised to take up more than 80% of a dimension of the screen, so a practical sized GUI remains 1100x620 to 1500x860 for most cases.
Free plug-ins for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Xhip Synthesizer v8.0 and Xhip Effects Bundle v6.7.
The coder's credo: We believe our work is neither clever nor difficult; it is done because we thought it would be easy.
Work less; get more done.
The coder's credo: We believe our work is neither clever nor difficult; it is done because we thought it would be easy.
Work less; get more done.
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- KVRAF
- 10260 posts since 19 Feb, 2004 from Paris
Probablities analysis are the best of maths, because you can make them say just about whatever they say. My demonstration will take two easy lines :aciddose wrote:You are misinterpreting here again.Lotuzia wrote: So lets repeat it : I just dont care about the aesthetics if the sound is good. I understand some people care more than me, or are influenced by aesthetics. I can even understand that aesthetics could be the prime criteria to choose a .... muscial instrument for some.
But that all people should think/behave the same because we are all slaves of obscure marketing techniques : simply no.
I have never claimed that a specific subject will react in a specific way. We're talking about probabilities here. It is very likely that the same plugin with two different GUIs, one judged aesthetically pleasing and another judged to be not pleasing will have their audio quality judged proportionately to their aesthetic quality.Are you arguing this is untrue? I'd be happy to agree to disagree here, existing evidence and studies lend support to the theory being valid and if you were in marketing you could most likely write a paper on this if you were able to demonstrate it were untrue in this particular situation.It would be very exiting to learn that this judgement bias applies in other situations, but not when dealing with audio software.
1/ I've made good presets with some synths I dislike rather heavily the aethetics. But the presets are good, and the music might be good.
2/ There's a synth recently released that I enjoy very much the GUI/UI. I could just sit and watch the GUI for a while. But I dont like the sound. See, I like the GUI, not the sound.
So I'm simply outside of your boundaries. 101% outside.
Synths sounds are my domain of expertise. Like any other people I'm influenced by packaging when going to the supermarket, but a food expert will not be. The more you're approaching your domain of expertise, and the less you will be influenced by marginal phenomenons, and can concentrate on the things that really matters. Aesthetics marginal influence for a synth. Maybe for some, to a certain degree. First and nearly only criteria like you say. No. Ime. Exciting news like you said ? Probably not. Just another debate on kvr.
http://www.lelotusbleu.fr Synth Presets
77 Exclusive Soundbanks for 23 synths, 8 Sound Designers, Hours of audio Demos. The Sound you miss might be there
77 Exclusive Soundbanks for 23 synths, 8 Sound Designers, Hours of audio Demos. The Sound you miss might be there
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- KVRAF
- 11093 posts since 16 Mar, 2003 from Porto - Portugal
I am saying that to them since they launched the first "keyboard" synth (the CS80 emulation). And it would be so simple. What they had to do is simply copy what Korg did in their Legacy softsynths (an edit mode where there are only the editing controls on the panel). Unfortunately, they never listened. And while there are some synths that are "bearable" (like the Mini, because there are fewer controls, or the SEM), things like the Modular V, The Júpiter 8V, The Prophet V, the CS80v, are simply a PITA to edit. Matrix-12 V goes the same path, but it saw some improvements - we have that useless keyboard at the bottom, but at least the GUI is bigger and the modulation matrix is hidden behind the keyboard, which makes a better use of that space.wagtunes wrote: It's why I'm so disappointed with the Arturia synths, even though they sound "good" to "great." The GUIs, outside of the SEM, are train wrecks. I can't program them to save my life because I can't read the damn controls. And the sad part is, the actual designs are excellent. It's the size that kills these synths. And if you talk to most Arturia owners, they'll tell you the same thing, which is why Arturia finally announced that sometime this year, the GUIs WILL be updated. So even they know what a train wreck they are.
Last edited by fmr on Tue Jun 30, 2015 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Fernando (FMR)
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- KVRian
- 1351 posts since 30 Mar, 2011
And still Arturia synths mainly sell for the GUIs (and presets I guess), bought by people who get a kind of "Ersatzbefriedigung" (as we say in Germany - vicarious satisfaction?) from it.
They do not sound like the real stuff, and there are other synths that easily can reproduce their sounds (of course those synths don't look like a real "Jupiter, Minimoog" or whatever.) What they have is a ton of nice sounding presets from back in the day.
And this: Show my one great sounding synth with an ugly GUI which cannot be substituted by another synth these days.
They do not sound like the real stuff, and there are other synths that easily can reproduce their sounds (of course those synths don't look like a real "Jupiter, Minimoog" or whatever.) What they have is a ton of nice sounding presets from back in the day.
And this: Show my one great sounding synth with an ugly GUI which cannot be substituted by another synth these days.
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- KVRAF
- 11093 posts since 16 Mar, 2003 from Porto - Portugal
That's NOT the GUI - the GUI is the Panel window. Actually, you have very beautiful and well done GUIs in synths created with Reaktor (eg, Prism, Razor or Monark). Or even Molekular (but that's not a synth).izonin wrote:Easy - Reaktor2ZrgE wrote:Show my one great sounding synth with an ugly GUI which cannot be substituted by another synth these days.
https://www.amazona.de/wp-content/uploa ... Gesamt.png
Last edited by fmr on Tue Jun 30, 2015 10:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
Fernando (FMR)
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- Beware the Quoth
- 33156 posts since 4 Sep, 2001 from R'lyeh Oceanic Amusement Park and Funfair
yes it is. its Reaktor's own GUI. The ensemble's UI is what you get in the panel, not Reaktor's.fmr wrote:That's NOT the GUI - the GUI is the Panel windowizonin wrote:Easy - Reaktor2ZrgE wrote:Show my one great sounding synth with an ugly GUI which cannot be substituted by another synth these days.
my other modular synth is a bugbrand
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- Beware the Quoth
- 33156 posts since 4 Sep, 2001 from R'lyeh Oceanic Amusement Park and Funfair
of course not.2ZrgE wrote:Reaktor is not really a synth in the sense we're discussing here.
my other modular synth is a bugbrand
