WTF Arturia?! 13.9GB and 670k files!!!?

[fmr]

TBH, considering how big games are nowadays... I couldn't care less about an extra 10 to 20 GB.

I don't game. Maybe that's why I noticed & care

You can't imagine what you're missing

Now seriously, complaining about 8, 11 or even 13 GB of space used to draw those great GUIs??? Come on... I'd rather have that "wasted" space than have something like those horrible "crayon draws" used by some other builders

I guess noone can please everyone

[Synth Master Jedi]

You wouldn't survive as a software company owner even one year with such an attitude.
Optimization is an integral part of a software development and has a very high if not the highest priority.
I guess you simply have no idea how software development looks like, thus your ignorance.

Of course I wouldn't survive, I never claimed that I would.

I guess it's a good thing that I don't run a software company and have no plans to.

I'm a user and I use software, I don't make software.

I also never mentioned anything about optimization, but what I did write was that my main goal would be to make as good software as possible, which would obviously mean that optimization would be a part of that process or it wouldn't be "good" software now would it.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Now seriously, complaining about 8, 11 or even 13 GB of space used to draw those great GUIs???

I know you test and/or do sound design for them, so please don't take offense when I say that I'd give their V-Collection GUI's 2 stars out of 5. Far from great.

Let's ignore the horrible waste of resources for a second and focus on some Graphical User Interface issues.

Cons:

• Long ass load times (no pass for that)
• Lots of wasted screen real-estate (virtual 3D rooms, virtual frigging computers)
• Advanced panels for stuff that could fit on a better designed GUI
• Advanced panels that sometimes force the whole GUI to get bigger meaning you have to scroll - or make things tiny
• Modulars (2600/Moog) with lots of vertical scrolling [ugh]
• Tiny parameters in some (lets put an amp in a room with a keyboard and make the knobs tiny)
• Some look blurry (Matrix 12 is soft, Farfisa is soft in spots, Solina was recently improved here)
• Lots of unnecessary clicks (Mellotron V is a workflow nightmare with the FX view, the Advanced View, the other view to load tapes)

Pros:

• Some of the newer UI's are clearer and waste less space (Jup-8 except for the Advanced panel, Synthi V, Buchla)
• On first glance they look pretty ("ooh look how real")
• Better than average preset browswer
• Clear and pretty advanced MIDI learn system (I'll give them credit for how it's implemented in the GUI)
• Consistency across plugins (everything is where you expect it be, macro controls on the bottom, etc.)

They're basically a case-study in everything that can go wrong with overly skeuomorphic designs. No real benefit to end users. Designed to attract newbies with a lot of "wow factor" but not much substance.

And they take up a sh*t ton of space!

Seriously, if Arturia overhauled every single product in a virtual room and brought the advanced page to the fore-front, or even just a tab, they'd do their users a world of good. But there'd probably be a lot fewer teens and newbies lusting for the V-Collection because the instruments look oh so real or whatever.

[digitalboytn]

They're basically a case-study in everything that can go wrong with overly skeuomorphic designs. No real benefit to end users. Designed to attract newbies with a lot of "wow factor" but not much substance.

Style over substance...

Rhetoric over reality...

Arturia,NI,Slate...the list goes on...

It's big business for those companies,but I just walk away because I don't want to encourage them

[fmr]

They're basically a case-study in everything that can go wrong with overly skeuomorphic designs. No real benefit to end users. Designed to attract newbies with a lot of "wow factor" but not much substance.

And they take up a sh*t ton of space!

Seriously, if Arturia overhauled every single product in a virtual room and brought the advanced page to the fore-front, or even just a tab, they'd do their users a world of good. But there'd probably be a lot fewer teens and newbies lusting for the V-Collection because the instruments look oh so real or whatever.

It's your opinion, and I respect that, but there are a lot of things to contrapose. It would be fastidious in a thread like this to go point by point, and I'm sure I would not convince anyone of those thatr dislike the GUIs, anyway.

Sure, Arturia runs a business, and the main point when doing an emulation is remaining faithful to the look and feel of the original. That's why the Advanced panels (if something, Arturia should be praised for including those features, not blamed because they are not in the main GUI window) are hidden in the first place. Only users who specifically want those will call them. The ones that not will have the experience of using the original instrument, with nothing else getting n the way (which is the main purpose of an emulation).

The "scrolling" in the modulars (I guess you mean the Modular V and the ARP 2600 V) are due exactly to the will of remaining faithful to the original look and feel. The originals were mounted in vertical layers of modules. Today displays have a more horizontal orientation, and they have more space available in width than in height. A rational option would be to change the way the modules are "mounted", but that would deceive the main purpose.

You may not like it, but a lot of others do (me included).

As I wrote before, noone will be able to please anyone.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

You may not like it, but a lot of others do (me included).

Hey, no hard feelings I hope. Obviously a LOT of people like it because Arturia sure sells a lot of licenses. I realize my opinion doesn't reflect everyone's. May even be the minority opinion across their entire user base.

I just think after you get over the initial "wow factor," which I acknowledge is there, that the usability suffers greatly because of those GUI issues I pointed to. They've been a little better about things recently, and I think their FX are pretty good about this (except for hiding advanced panels), but I think it's possible to make great looking GUI's without the usability issues. And if Arturia could figure out how to thread that needle, they'd be better products for everyone.

[pixel85]

You wouldn't survive as a software company owner even one year with such an attitude.
Optimization is an integral part of a software development and has a very high if not the highest priority.
I guess you simply have no idea how software development looks like, thus your ignorance.

Of course I wouldn't survive, I never claimed that I would.

I guess it's a good thing that I don't run a software company and have no plans to.

I'm a user and I use software, I don't make software.

I also never mentioned anything about optimization, but what I did write was that my main goal would be to make as good software as possible, which would obviously mean that optimization would be a part of that process or it wouldn't be "good" software now would it.

I got an impression from your comment that you would do the best software without looking at obstacles like how much space it will use (like Arturia do ). This is why I commented how I commented

[pixel85]

TBH, considering how big games are nowadays... I couldn't care less about an extra 10 to 20 GB.

Yeah, now imagine:
- to produce music and sound in several different genres = tons of audio software, plenty of TB especially for Kontakt libraries
- being a gamer - this part you already mentioned
- being a game dev = having a minimum of one game project which is waaay bigger than the size of delivered/packaged game + tons of game dev software

Of course in such case, from one side you starting to look at GB like on bits (or bytes) a few decades ago. But from the other side, some of us, who have to deal with a lot of software installed, having such software that is well developed (and not messy like in the case of Arturia) is a huge plus.