i miss the days when vstis were fun to program and all one page

[Moe Shinola]

Being one page was something I always liked about Novakill synths, especially NitreousPM, but what really frustrated me was trying to work with Novation's Automap, even with simple-seeming synths. Talk about a million pages!

[1-2-Many]

A softsynth can have any number of pages - that doesn't kill my joy.

What does kill my joy however, is poorly laid out menu selections and bad preset browsers! As recenly as yesterday Albino3 killed my joy by 3%... when I had to continually find that tiny down arrow everytime I went searching for banks or presets! I hate tiny down arrows!

[Teksonik]

Albino3 killed my joy by 3%... when I had to continually find that tiny down arrow everytime I went searching for banks or presets! I hate tiny down arrows!

Huh? What Tiny down arrows? Just click anywhere in the bank or patch name area and it brings up the list....or am I missing something?

[1-2-Many]

Yes - that list is vertical & if your banks or presets extend beyond what it shows you get a tiny arrow at the bottom...that I might add, doesn't jump but inches down from the top...one item at a time everytime you're lucky enough to click it (makes more sense that it should jump since you're already seeing everything on the first page and obviously didn't want any of it since you're going to all the trouble to find that friggin tiny arrow!!!). IT's also annoying that it always starts at the top of the list, no matter what the current selection is.

iDrum does this too - drives me nuts

Man - now I've just lost 2% more joy just thinking about it!

[1-2-Many]

Ahhh - I've just regained the lost 5% of my joy and added another 4%

I updated to the latest version of Albino (3.1.1) and now the vertical lists are gone!

[awol9000]

Ahhh - I've just regained the lost 5% of my joy and added another 4%

I updated to the latest version of Albino (3.1.1) and now the vertical lists are gone!

There's some great VST's out there (free or paid) but if their browser sucks I find I myself barely using them.

Pentagon 1 rules with nBeat's Vostek skin FTW!

[ouroboros]

[H.Noury]

I discover today this conversation. I should have participated yet. I always hate the plug-ins where the oscillators are on one page, then the filters on another, and so on...

My wife is a painter. She's got just one brush and one palette. Not 150 plug-ins, just one!!

When I did my VST collection, I tried to organize the interfaces as : never you must change a page during the sound design if the inspiration must continue to drive what you do. I mean, soul and feeling drive the reason, if you must be logical at one moment, you stop this process.

I did my best in this collection :
http://www.hervenoury.com/syntheNS.htm

Now I program with Mac OS. I know that most of the people here work with Windows, but anyway... I did that stuff :


No slider (just one for the volume), no jack, no matrix, and the power of a big wavetable/modular system. The interface is analogic : I mean that what you see is an analogy of how it sounds. Never the logic stops the process of sound design. You're always in your feeling.

Next step in the history of the music synthesizer will be the GUI I think. We still copy the analog synthesizers interface with our computers : it is stupid. We must create new GUI.

[aciddose]

. i get lost with all the stupid controls in the software

It's not the software that's stupid.........

but using the menus it's all neatly laid out in my head.

i think a lot of the complaints about guis and so on come from people who can't picture the structure in their mind. they're either amatures, simply no good at it, or never bothered to invest the effort to really understand the structure of a synthesizer.

for me i don't think through things based upon what i see on a gui, i think of the sound, how i want to transform the structure of the synth and then i have to go looking for where those controls are assuming they exist.

so in my mind the process works like a menu-driven system, making that ideal for a real-world interface.

people who are "tweakers" to just nudge controls slightly not planning ahead or having any real direction or understanding of what they're doing obviously want to have a large palette of stuff to randomly adjust in the hopes they'll be able to select for desirable sounds.

seems backwards to me. stone-age.

go bang two rocks together. it seems to suit your level of intelligence.

[Teksonik]

Ahhh - I've just regained the lost 5% of my joy and added another 4%

I updated to the latest version of Albino (3.1.1) and now the vertical lists are gone!

Ahhh good news.........

[Teksonik]

go bang two rocks together. it seems to suit your level of intelligence.

Anyone who prefers to program a DX7 from it's front panel as opposed to a software editor is clearly an amateur......to not avail oneself of any tools available for the job is quite clearly the definition of ignorance

(I used DX Android running on an Atari to program my DX-7 back in the day....very easy to have things "laid out in my head" and made "planning ahead"
the essence of easy).

[Teksonik]

My wife is a painter. She's got just one brush and one palette. Not 150 plug-ins, just one!!

What a bizarre analogy since painters don't use plugins (unless their canvas is a computer). But she does have 150 or more colors at her disposal not just one !! Right?

No slider (just one for the volume), no jack, no matrix,

Do you really think that people who are annoyed by any interface of more than one page will find your system any easier? Or will they find it confusing and obtuse?

and the power of a big wavetable/modular system.

And a relatively mundane sound......

[jonahs]

I wish more plugins used MIDI learn or shortcuts to control tabs and to interface with the interface. On hardware synths as long as I don't have to menu dive after I hit a button to switch tabs to get to the parameter I want to edit I find them much faster to work with. With hardware it's much easier to use two hands to program it, which just feels more interactive to me.

Most plugins are seriously primitive compared to the basic functionality of everyday programs, like web browsers or word processing programs when it comes to interacting with them.

Aalto is a good example of a very complex synth [...] that's comfortable to edit thanks to a sensible interface.

[Gamma-UT]

My wife is a painter. She's got just one brush and one palette. Not 150 plug-ins, just one!!

One brush? O RLY? Even people who paint walls generally have more than one. Doing a background wash with a round sable #1 would take a while, wouldn't work very well as a wash and would probably destroy the brush before you'd finished.

[highkoo]

Some painters use only a single palette knife. They are real weirdos though. And they are doing it cuz it is a 'thing', not just by happenstance. And they most likely would not claim to have the same dexterity with their strokes as someone with a full set of brushes, like the vast majority of painters would have.

i love these "list everything you can think of" threads. so helpful.

+1
I dont get this one. Most synths are one page. Until recently that was the standard.
There are thousands of examples of 'one page' synths, and literally no reason to miss them. Your .dll wont wear out. You might miss new ones, but what would be "new" about them? Fresh GUIs maybe...

If you dont want your technology to change, thats fine. They are just tools to be used. But dont wonder why people want better tools.
Wtf are we even talking about...?

i think a lot of the complaints about guis and so on come from people who can't picture the structure in their mind.

Wow, +1.
I really think that is the root of it, at least with the recent complex synths.

Of course, some people dont know a damn thing. But, even people who do understand the basic parts of a synth will just jump into a complex gui and start twisting knobs they havent even read. So that is the start of a problem, and if the gui itself is not laid out sensibly, does not take into account the signal flow, the problem is compounded because the user is lost and the gui and signal flow are at odds.

And especially with todays complex guis the planning of the gui in relation to the signal flow becomes really really really important for me. With one page it is almost unimportant, with many pages/tabs it can make or break a synth, imo. And so much has been done/bought already...
I realized recently that sounds alone are often not enough. Now I only really end up buying things that are innovating somehow in workflow, or are at least scoring A++ there.