DS-404 Is it me or the user interface the not intuitive?

[Caleb]

Well I must admit. I'm a complete anti-fan of the GUI layout on DS404.

I love the instrument to pieces - mainly because of what it offers to thousands and thousands of users: a sophisticated cross-platform sampler with a growing sample base (with AWave - almost unlimited) so that now anyone for almost no money can have the sound they're looking for in their music.

For the fiscally challenged everywhere, I believe this to be one the best products on the market.

But yeah - don't like the GUI at all. I can deal with it - but it doesn't bring me the same joy as VSampler. I never needed to even refer to manual to understand VSampler and it was the first sampler (soft or hard) that I ever owned.

But - ending with a positive - awesome piece of kit.

[Mr. Slater's Parrot]

I agree. It's a shame that a product with so much potential is saddled with such an unfortunate UI. That generic F1, ..., F4 button concoction -- this is *software* after all -- is possibly the worst UI mechanism in recent memory. Imitating the look of hardware is one thing. But imitating the worst part of a hardware user interface -- soley for the sake of making something look like hardware -- is just, well, ... a bad idea.

James

[Muon Software Ltd]

If you want to get into making patches on any sampler you're in for a whole steep climb up the learning curve if you've never done it before.

Making your own multisamples and patches is a difficult but rewarding process - it might *look* easy, but ask anyone who does it professionally (Squids?!) they'll tell you that it is simply not. A decent multisampled patch requires a lot of audio material to be recorded, cleaned, edited and looped. It takes time and there's an art to it. You won't learn how to do it overnight.

I'm sorry to say, in this age of instant gratification, that DS404 is sadly an instrument that you have to *learn* how to use. It has got a lot of functionality, and to be able to get the best out of it you are going to have to crack the manual and settle down for a long session - and read the tutorials in the mag too.

After all, lets say you bought a second-hand Akai S3000 with no manual - you would get absolutely nowhere within an hour of playing it. Even if you persevered, you'd still only be scratching the surface of what it could do after a week. I have an Akai S3000 right here - without the manual I daresay a lot of people who are bitching about DS404 would blow the SCSI fuse just plugging the thing in

I'm very amused to hear about they guy "losing his settings". I mean, doesn't ANYONE ever read the manual? or the FAQ just a few topics up on this forum? or the FAQ on our website? or any of the tutorials that have been in the magazine? Guys, a whole bunch of people have put hours, days, weeks into making sure you have all the information you need at your fingertips. Please go and take advantage of some it or we might as well all go take up knitting or something.

As for the "too many clicks" issue - I'd say that you have to click just as many many buttons and menu options to build multi-sampled patches in pretty much any other software sampler. Have a go making some multisamples in the demo version of Awave that was on the CM CD a while back and export them to DS404 if you think that'll be easier. Bet you'll find that it isn't

The UI didn't arsise out of any desire to emulate hardware because we believe that the hardware soft-key style approach has any particular intrinsic merit. As I've already said around these parts, it was a compromise to get the product finished within the timescales allowed by Future. They wanted it for the 50th issue and we wanted to put it back a month.

When developing something as complicated as this you've got to make a compromise somewhere when the deadline looms and that was it. For me, I find I can tap away on those little buttons quite happily and build whole multisamples in minutes - why not register your copy of DS404 at our website and go pick up the results of some of our work in the patch area? once you have used it for a bit you'll memorise the menu sequences and it'll be second nature. That, I guess, is the only intrinisic merit in the hardware-style softkey and menu-driven interface - once you've learned which page the parameter you want to change is on, you're off.

Whatever you think of the interface, it is here to stay. So get that manual out, read those tutorials and start sampling. When was the last time someone gave you a multi-timbral sampler with powerful synthesis features for the PRICE OF A MAGAZINE?

over and out....
Dave