Hey,100F wrote:I absolitely love the sound of this thing. In term of sounds i preffer this over many others. But for the life of me i cant understand the mod matrix, and is not that i cant figure it, is just that its too horrible! I have to click and click and click and click and if you click in the wrong place you just mapped something you didnt want to map! I just cant take it!!!
Will there ever be a synth that sounds great and i dont have to use my mouse all the time?!?!?!?!?!
I really feel sorry that you find the mod system in Strobe somehow not workable. When I started working with the DCAM synths back in 2009, I instantly fell in love with the way it does modulation. I really feel it's the best modulation system for a one-page GUI. For me, it also beats the current and very similar approach with drag&drop as seen in a few synths recently (many reasons for it but I won't go into it here).
In terms of assigning a modulation by mistake....I can't recall that's ever happened to me, but of course it's not an excuse if it happens to you. All I can recommend is to aim for the middle of the knob/slider to change its value. If you do assign modulation by mistake, use he right click ' reset modulation' option rather then manually do it. It's quicker.
However, coming back to the mechanics of the mod system itself...think about it....it does not separate the actual GUI into the 'parameters' that you tweak to get a sound, and a 'mod matrix' which lives separately from the main parameters, ie: the knobs an sliders...so this unified design is simply superb for very fast and intuitive modulation experiments: select a mod source and apply modulation to any and every dial and slider in front of you. Simply, one does not need to think where to apply the mod source!
This is an ingenious design. It invites experimentation in a way that a 'mod matrix' design can never achieve, since the mod matrix separates your workflow and tells you to abandon the main knobs and sliders and go on a hunting mission in a separate spreadsheat-like window to apply modulation. I think the 'mod matrix' is archaic in comparison. It follows the 1980's hardware way of working too closely and I bet it would fail any professional UX design tests today (that is, a non-synth UX designer would fail it on usability tests - I have seen it happen actually).
I'm a great believer in this 'FXpansion-mod-system' and really wish more companies would use it. I also think it's a much better system for newcomers then the mod matrix design, since you just 'point and shoot', as it were, without the need to have to decipher a long list of mod matrix entries.
Anyway, apologies for such a long post, as a 'Transmod' believer I would go up the tallest mountain to proclaim its advantages.