Moog Mariana VST/AU/iOS Bass Synth

[rod_zero]

Horrible design decision to have the master volume be on a separate page entirely from the two separate page with the synth mixers.

The entire plugin is long list of poor UI design decisions. What’s weird is that it comes from a company that’s well known for having some of the best physical synthesizer interfaces ever made.

their focus on skewmorphism leads to this.

Skeuomorphism is the modern boogeyman of UI design, but removing all visual cues that illuminate the purpose of an interface element usually does more harm than good. There’s nothing about Mariana’s style that couldn’t be done on a single page per synth, complete with a mod matrix showing all the current settings. It’s problem is that it’s designed for a touch screen and they didn’t bother to redesign the plugin version.

Live has been non skeumorphic for more than two decades and doesn't suffer form this, fabfilter too (but their last updates in some cases have been less good that previous ones), bitwig basically followed all the conventions Live invented, valhalla another prime example of that being a non problem.

The problem in the audio software world is that skeumorphic design really is exaggerated and it is done because it sells more, people unconsciously relate the realism of the GUI with the sound, I would bet some of the big companies have even done some research on this so they keep doubling down on this type of design.

[machinesworking]

Horrible design decision to have the master volume be on a separate page entirely from the two separate page with the synth mixers.

The entire plugin is long list of poor UI design decisions. What’s weird is that it comes from a company that’s well known for having some of the best physical synthesizer interfaces ever made.

their focus on skewmorphism leads to this.

Skeuomorphism is the modern boogeyman of UI design, but removing all visual cues that illuminate the purpose of an interface element usually does more harm than good. There’s nothing about Mariana’s style that couldn’t be done on a single page per synth, complete with a mod matrix showing all the current settings. It’s problem is that it’s designed for a touch screen and they didn’t bother to redesign the plugin version.

Live has been non skeumorphic for more than two decades and doesn't suffer form this, fabfilter too (but their last updates in some cases have been less good that previous ones), bitwig basically followed all the conventions Live invented, valhalla another prime example of that being a non problem.

The problem in the audio software world is that skeumorphic design really is exaggerated and it is done because it sells more, people unconsciously relate the realism of the GUI with the sound, I would bet some of the big companies have even done some research on this so they keep doubling down on this type of design.

imo Live does suffer from its strict 2d GUI, especially the built in instruments and FX, Wavetable was one o the first to have distinguishable differences from built in FX, also I feel it gets rough with mixing large sets in Live. Granted I’m not a fan of strict skeuomorphic design either, there is IMOa good middle ground, it’s mostly about crammed interfaces or too much wasted space and too tiny of interface elements

[rod_zero]

imo Live does suffer from its strict 2d GUI, especially the built in instruments and FX, Wavetable was one o the first to have distinguishable differences from built in FX, also I feel it gets rough with mixing large sets in Live. Granted I’m not a fan of strict skeuomorphic design either, there is IMOa good middle ground, it’s mostly about crammed interfaces or too much wasted space and too tiny of interface elements

I also think that how much this whole UI messes up with your perception is if you have experience with hardware, musicians and producers that use HW at any point do want to relate to those tools, a GUI that looks like a guitar pedal makes more sense for them than something by valhalla.

But the opposite is true, for those who learned to make music in a DAW the lack of skeumorphic elements makes much more sense, they don't have a point of reference.

I am into the middle ground for emulations, as Diva, but I prefer fabfilter as the actual real solution: interfaces designed to be used with a mouse.

[machinesworking]

imo Live does suffer from its strict 2d GUI, especially the built in instruments and FX, Wavetable was one o the first to have distinguishable differences from built in FX, also I feel it gets rough with mixing large sets in Live. Granted I’m not a fan of strict skeuomorphic design either, there is IMOa good middle ground, it’s mostly about crammed interfaces or too much wasted space and too tiny of interface elements

I also think that how much this whole UI messes up with your perception is if you have experience with hardware, musicians and producers that use HW at any point do want to relate to those tools, a GUI that looks like a guitar pedal makes more sense for them than something by valhalla.

But the opposite is true, for those who learned to make music in a DAW the lack of skeumorphic elements makes much more sense, they don't have a point of reference.

I am into the middle ground for emulations, as Diva, but I prefer fabfilter as the actual real solution: interfaces designed to be used with a mouse.

IMO fabfilters interfaces are overrated, they waste a good amount of space on their logo and Pro G here isn't resizable. Plus they arbitrarily decide to hide elements as "expert". on top of that the thin ring around a knob as far as I'm concerned is not good UX design. None of this translates at all to touch screens. Unfortunately they're still in some ways better than most out there. I don't care at all whether a GUI is skeuomorphic, I care about crammed interfaces with hidden features, resizable GUIs, and some sort of uniformity between button slider and knob sizes. Unfortunately that's an issue whether a knob is 3D or 2D.

None of that relates to Live though, if every element on the screen looks the same, it's IMO a lot more of a problem than if something spends too much time on eye candy. You can 100% over compensate and IMO Live did this with the subwindow and every effect and instrument blurring into an amorphous mess. I love Live, used it forever, but eschewing all eye candy in favor of grey leads to IMO an unnecessary amount of time to dart around the screen looking for a compressor because it looks just like the reverb and gate. It would be the same issue if some company had a contiguous subwindow filled with skeuomorphic 1176 interface looking gates, compressors etc. etc.

We as end users accept weird limitations or clutter for all the good things about a DAW etc. Live also drops all VSTs into the same folder, so FX and instrument are mixed together, it's clutter but it hasn't changed in 20+ years.

[rod_zero]

imo Live does suffer from its strict 2d GUI, especially the built in instruments and FX, Wavetable was one o the first to have distinguishable differences from built in FX, also I feel it gets rough with mixing large sets in Live. Granted I’m not a fan of strict skeuomorphic design either, there is IMOa good middle ground, it’s mostly about crammed interfaces or too much wasted space and too tiny of interface elements

I also think that how much this whole UI messes up with your perception is if you have experience with hardware, musicians and producers that use HW at any point do want to relate to those tools, a GUI that looks like a guitar pedal makes more sense for them than something by valhalla.

But the opposite is true, for those who learned to make music in a DAW the lack of skeumorphic elements makes much more sense, they don't have a point of reference.

I am into the middle ground for emulations, as Diva, but I prefer fabfilter as the actual real solution: interfaces designed to be used with a mouse.

IMO fabfilters interfaces are overrated, they waste a good amount of space on their logo and Pro G here isn't resizable. Plus they arbitrarily decide to hide elements as "expert". on top of that the thin ring around a knob as far as I'm concerned is not good UX design. None of this translates at all to touch screens. Unfortunately they're still in some ways better than most out there. I don't care at all whether a GUI is skeuomorphic, I care about crammed interfaces with hidden features, resizable GUIs, and some sort of uniformity between button slider and knob sizes. Unfortunately that's an issue whether a knob is 3D or 2D.

None of that relates to Live though, if every element on the screen looks the same, it's IMO a lot more of a problem than if something spends too much time on eye candy. You can 100% over compensate and IMO Live did this with the subwindow and every effect and instrument blurring into an amorphous mess. I love Live, used it forever, but eschewing all eye candy in favor of grey leads to IMO an unnecessary amount of time to dart around the screen looking for a compressor because it looks just like the reverb and gate. It would be the same issue if some company had a contiguous subwindow filled with skeuomorphic 1176 interface looking gates, compressors etc. etc.

We as end users accept weird limitations or clutter for all the good things about a DAW etc. Live also drops all VSTs into the same folder, so FX and instrument are mixed together, it's clutter but it hasn't changed in 20+ years.

And that's my point, how does a compressor and reverb "have to look like"? It is completely arbitrary in a DAW environment. In Live then the text becomes more important, there is here a difference of how the users gets the important information and those without HW experience learn just to read what the controls are named, and a HW user is going to try to look to "something that looks like".

Maybe live is the DAW for the daw-natives devoid of contact with HW.

As for Fabfilter the biggest achievement is just trying to make thing confortable to use with a mouse, to present information in a more appropriate way for a monitor screen, they pushed boundaries in that regard in an industry that was frankly quite mediocre in UI design 15 years ago.

[machinesworking]

imo Live does suffer from its strict 2d GUI, especially the built in instruments and FX, Wavetable was one o the first to have distinguishable differences from built in FX, also I feel it gets rough with mixing large sets in Live. Granted I’m not a fan of strict skeuomorphic design either, there is IMOa good middle ground, it’s mostly about crammed interfaces or too much wasted space and too tiny of interface elements

I also think that how much this whole UI messes up with your perception is if you have experience with hardware, musicians and producers that use HW at any point do want to relate to those tools, a GUI that looks like a guitar pedal makes more sense for them than something by valhalla.

But the opposite is true, for those who learned to make music in a DAW the lack of skeumorphic elements makes much more sense, they don't have a point of reference.

I am into the middle ground for emulations, as Diva, but I prefer fabfilter as the actual real solution: interfaces designed to be used with a mouse.

IMO fabfilters interfaces are overrated, they waste a good amount of space on their logo and Pro G here isn't resizable. Plus they arbitrarily decide to hide elements as "expert". on top of that the thin ring around a knob as far as I'm concerned is not good UX design. None of this translates at all to touch screens. Unfortunately they're still in some ways better than most out there. I don't care at all whether a GUI is skeuomorphic, I care about crammed interfaces with hidden features, resizable GUIs, and some sort of uniformity between button slider and knob sizes. Unfortunately that's an issue whether a knob is 3D or 2D.

None of that relates to Live though, if every element on the screen looks the same, it's IMO a lot more of a problem than if something spends too much time on eye candy. You can 100% over compensate and IMO Live did this with the subwindow and every effect and instrument blurring into an amorphous mess. I love Live, used it forever, but eschewing all eye candy in favor of grey leads to IMO an unnecessary amount of time to dart around the screen looking for a compressor because it looks just like the reverb and gate. It would be the same issue if some company had a contiguous subwindow filled with skeuomorphic 1176 interface looking gates, compressors etc. etc.

We as end users accept weird limitations or clutter for all the good things about a DAW etc. Live also drops all VSTs into the same folder, so FX and instrument are mixed together, it's clutter but it hasn't changed in 20+ years.

And that's my point, how does a compressor and reverb "have to look like"? It is completely arbitrary in a DAW environment. In Live then the text becomes more important, there is here a difference of how the users gets the important information and those without HW experience learn just to read what the controls are named, and a HW user is going to try to look to "something that looks like".

Maybe live is the DAW for the daw-natives devoid of contact with HW.

As for Fabfilter the biggest achievement is just trying to make thing confortable to use with a mouse, to present information in a more appropriate way for a monitor screen, they pushed boundaries in that regard in an industry that was frankly quite mediocre in UI design 15 years ago.

A color or interface element is faster than text. There's no way around that, until read all text is the same element visually, you can look at the entire interface and spot the red knob instantly, it takes longer to spot the word Limiter, even the mixer uses color coding to speed up the hunting process. It's why I mentioned Wavetable being better, as well as Operator, because there's visual elements to them that are different enough to where you never search the screen for them. I mean if text is king why not just use PD?

[zerocrossing]

You’re all missing the point. I don’t think that a knob, button or slider has to be photo realistic, though there is something to mimicking the style of a type of object if your software is striving to offer a similar style of sound. Live does a good job of establishing a visual style that still does a decent job of communicating function. Others developers, not so good. Serum is also great. People being up FabFilter, but I actually find their work to me not very good. Apple uses to be awesome, but now their iOS design kind of suffers from an overly flat look that obscures function. For instance, on the Watch, there is a way to silence your notifications overnight by touching the mute bell graphic and holding it, revealing more options. If you didn’t know that option was there, you’ll likely never find it. What they should do is give a bit of dimensional design to a regular button, and a different treatment for buttons that have additional functionality to them.

Anyway, Mariana’s UI issues have nothing to do with skeuomorphic design. A quick UX design pass could change the look very slightly, though I'd suggest making it more futuristic to imply the less vintage Moog character of its sound. It’s really a matter of layout.

[machinesworking]

I don't disagree with that, hidden elements are annoying, and Fabfilter is overrated, but I do think most of Lives embedded effects all look far too much alike. Only the ones with elements that differentiate them like the EQ really stand out.

[grrrz]

Maybe live is the DAW for the daw-natives devoid of contact with HW.

We've had daw for decades; so daw-natives basically means anyone younger than 60

[vertibration]

Why do you guys go way off topic and ruin threads like this? lets stick to Mariana, and why anyone would want to give their money to inmusic lmao

[machinesworking]

Why do you guys go way off topic and ruin threads like this? lets stick to Mariana, and why anyone would want to give their money to inmusic lmao

Because none of us care to argue about whether someone likes InMusic VS the actual companies that they own. IMO you have to think that a company is only as a good as the CEO or owner, and I've never thought that.

NI have some amazing products and developers, I've never appreciated their management, but it doesn't stop me from thinking Reaktor is amazing. Same with InMusic and Akai, and now Moog.

I'm purchasing three InMusic Products today, Marina, OPX-4 and Flavor Pro. I don't see any reason to take any care about what people on the internet think about investment companies and what that means to them. The MPC Live II is a good product, nothing makes something special because it's boutique, more like more expensive.

IMO the GUI is less of a derialment than some virtue signaling pompous anti corperate posturing.

[vertibration]

Why do you guys go way off topic and ruin threads like this? lets stick to Mariana, and why anyone would want to give their money to inmusic lmao

Because none of us care to argue about whether someone likes InMusic VS the actual companies that they own. IMO you have to think that a company is only as a good as the CEO or owner, and I've never thought that.

NI have some amazing products and developers, I've never appreciated their management, but it doesn't stop me from thinking Reaktor is amazing. Same with InMusic and Akai, and now Moog.

I'm purchasing three InMusic Products today, Marina, OPX-4 and Flavor Pro. I don't see any reason to take any care about what people on the internet think about investment companies and what that means to them. The MPC Live II is a good product, nothing makes something special because it's boutique, more like more expensive.

IMO the GUI is less of a derialment than some virtue signaling pompous anti corperate posturing.

Hope you enjoy the Mk2 depreciation lmao

[DrWashington]

It really does have *something* to the sound, but I swear, that something should be able to be created with no loss of quality in a more optimized fashion. If Synapse and u-he can figure it out, so can Moog. But I have to say, the filter really does not hold up to my physical Minitaur. At all. THAT thing sounds like it has a Moog filter, because, hey, it does. If they'd just fix the mess of a VST plugin they have for it, I'd surely keep it and regard it as a classic. It has to be far and away the best bass synthesizer I've ever messed with: just sounds chunky and phat as hell and the filter still exudes tons of character with resonance all the way down, like Moog's best filters always do.

I'm just so sad about this inMusic thing. I'm almost certain they're never gonna fix the Loom II GUI disaster, so why should they bother with anything else important to musicians? Why does the world of audio software have to be such a crapshoot? You never know if your investment's gonna be protected, because a bunch of suits could just come along at any time and buy any small software house out and make it platform exclusive and stagnant (see: Apple > Camel Audio) or just let it gather dust till you start to get really nervous (see: Samsung > HARMAN > Lexicon > PCM Native Total Bundle > ancient GUI > my uncontrollable rage at the Korean chaebol company structure that just doesn't care at all about the peons that rely on its products that no one can seem to change).

[machinesworking]

Hope you enjoy the Mk2 depreciation lmao

Sad troll attempt at best, I bought the MKII for it's limitations and workflow, not for what might be coming in the future. I'm enjoying it a lot thanks.

[machinesworking]

I'm just so sad about this inMusic thing. I'm almost certain they're never gonna fix the Loom II GUI disaster, so why should they bother with anything else important to musicians? Why does the world of audio software have to be such a crapshoot? You never know if your investment's gonna be protected, because a bunch of suits could just come along at any time and buy any small software house out and make it platform exclusive and stagnant (see: Apple > Camel Audio) or just let it gather dust till you start to get really nervous (see: Samsung > HARMAN > Lexicon > PCM Native Total Bundle > ancient GUI > my uncontrollable rage at the Korean chaebol company structure that just doesn't care at all about the peons that rely on its products that no one can seem to change).

I think it's logical to worry, but Camel was bought by Apple, i.e. a small developer made the firm choice to sell to a major corporation, so in that sense how can you trust any company? Alchemy hasn't stagnated in Logic, I don't use Logic so like many I lost Camel Phat, Space, and Alchemy. Blaming large corporations is kicking water uphill, smaller companies will balk on VST3, resizable GUIs, Apple Silicon support and any other number of maintenance or improvement upgrades that require too much rewriting for the income flow they provide. Case in point would be U-He and the Ubick still being behind in support no Apple Silicon, VST3 etc.

I'm just as or even more annoyed about Loom II, it's unusable on Apple Silicon outside of Bitwig, which wraps the VSTi somehow circumventing GUI glitches but it still crashes. I suspect they'll do the same thing to it that they did to Vacuum Pro, now rebranded as Tube Synth, and sell it as a new product.

InMusic are doing right by Akai, it's Air in particular that's being weird, but I'm certain I'm right, they had to completely redesign the GUI's of the old Air products and they took the opportunity to make most of them work on the Force and MPCs. You can see than in their "new" products. I'm not super happy about the lack of acknowledgment that they're using older tech in their new products, but I don't think I paid over $50 for anything ever from Air, Loom at $35 might be the most "expensive".