I've been playing with Massive and the drag and drop assignment of modulators onto destinations is so intuitive to me, i'm wondering 'why doesnt everyone do it this way?'
its such a nice way of seeing at a glance whats assigned to where, and being able to see how much of an affect it has.

is it because its more of a modern software thing? I get that some people make plugins that strive to emulate the look and feel of older hardware instruments and dont particularly want to feel like they are playing an excel spreadsheet.

Is the list based mod matrix a throwback to older limited LCD screens?

The only thing i'd improve on Massive's system would be to see the 'amount curves' around each knob move in realtime with what is affecting them so you can visibly see the result of LFOs and envelopes. I think Razor does this..

any thoughts?

Massive system is great and visual, but sometimes it will take time to know what modulates what in complex patches (ime)

Also the number of sources of modulations per target parameter is fixed, and therefore limited, when in a standard matrix mod system you can modulate a target with more sources.

Alchemy and Dcam synths have also very powerfull and interesting modulation systems.

In Oxium there's an info page built on the fly that will show you all mod sources for the core modules, so you will know in a flash what modulates the pitch, filters, VCA etc. Good for pedagogy and deconstructing patches, as well as for adapting patches to context, sometimes some months after you have created it, and therefore have forgotten all about it.

In some other synths like ACE, Moog Modular, Xils3, you can see cables or pins showing the modulations, here again another type of modulation connexions visualisation.

In the FM8 you have a central page wich shows all modulations also, while in the Korg Monopoly or Albino, the Matrix mod is central but is splitted in several tabbed pages : Efficient, simple and also rather fast to operate

Well each system has it pros and cons ime. Massive is very cool to use.

LtZ