KVR Audio

Frantz · Post by **Frantz** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 3:58 am

andy-cytomic wrote: Not the shift key, the Shift knob, it moves both filter cutoffs together in the same direction.

Oh right.

To be honest, I was confused about the Shift knob too. Since I only demoed The Drop without buying it, I have not spent a lot of time with it so far.

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 4:05 am

andy-cytomic wrote:... I removed the ring marks to keep things less busy looking, but that also makes it look less like actual hardware. So what do people prefer?

For me, it's definitely "ring marks on all knobs". It's easier to compare parallel values. It might look busier, but it's more functional and I think that takes precedence.

Frantz · Post by **Frantz** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 4:06 am

renderful wrote:I see your point regarding LFO shapes, BUT with The Drop's LFO's you can get a much wider range of shapes because you can dial in slight modifications to the overall shape using each control. The visualizer should help you in getting the correct shapes, since you can see them being dialed in. It should be more intuitive.

Yes, an LFO visualizer will really help. But I do think it's a case of over-engineering. Andy is very clever, adding a simple LFO would have been too easy. So he created the most flexible LFO ever designed.

But when a typical user sees it, the reaction is

.

I think Cakewalk did a good job with Z3TA+ 2 by giving you simple LFO shapes as a starting point and the ability to morph between two shapes if you need something fancy. Their visualizer makes it intuitive.

dayjob · Post by **dayjob** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 4:34 am

not sure what it is that bugs me about the new gui mock up.. perhaps the shape of the knobs. i'm sure i'd eventually get used to it but the existing gui just looks better. it was already perfect imo.. but i guess w/the added new features it all has go somewhere. shrug.

so, good luck! regardless i can't wait to hear it and use it.

edit: after looking at the latest mock up i feel better about it. looks fine to me. not sure what was bugging me about it..

this one i like a lot vvvvvvvvv

andy-cytomic · Post by **andy-cytomic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 4:41 am

dayjob wrote: edit: after looking at the latest mock up i feel better about it. looks fine to me. not sure what was bugging me about it..

this one i like a lot vvvvvvvvv

Thanks for the feedback! The previous mockups didn't have quite the correct lighting, I added a subtle blurry drop shadow to the latest render to make it look more solid and adjusted the darkness of the marking rings and all white markings on the UI to tone them down a bit. I also moved the modulator control knobs down a little bit to place them more centrally in each block.

Mogular · Post by **Mogular** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:00 am

My vote for ring marks on all knobs. The new gui seems to have less height than the beta version, a little more vertical space would help to uncramp the bottom further, but also allow you to put some more padding on all sections.
Also, spacing the pre/post/mix and spread/shift/glide knobs according to the ring marks (or just furhter apart) might work better as at the moment the spread and shift knobs feel like they are almost overlapping each other

andy-cytomic · Post by **andy-cytomic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:20 am

Frantz wrote: Yes, an LFO visualizer will really help. But I do think it's a case of over-engineering. Andy is very clever, adding a simple LFO would have been too easy. So he created the most flexible LFO ever designed. But when a typical user sees it, the reaction is .

I think Cakewalk did a good job with Z3TA+ 2 by giving you simple LFO shapes as a starting point and the ability to morph between two shapes if you need something fancy. Their visualizer makes it intuitive.

Yes having a visual representation of the shape will help people. The Z3TA+ 2 only has preset LFO shapes, there is no morphing of the shapes, only cross fading between two preset shapes (they have labeled the knob "morph" but it actually does an x-fade).

A Morph should be a structure preserving transformation bewteen two or more things, cross fading is just adding things together with different amplitudes. The Drop does a morph between Saw / Tri / Sqr / Exponential.

Here is a plot illustrating the difference between a crossfade and a morph using a triangle and sawtooth:

Frantz · Post by **Frantz** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:29 am

andy-cytomic wrote:The Z3TA+ 2 only has preset LFO shapes, there is no morphing of the shapes, only cross fading between two preset shapes (they have labeled the knob "morph" but it actually does an x-fade).

A Morph should be a structure preserving transformation bewteen two or more things, cross fading is just adding things together with different amplitudes. The Drop does a morph between Saw / Tri / Sqr / Exponential.

You're right. I couldn't remember if Z3TA's LFOs were morphing or just crossfading and you immediately caught my mistake.

Yes, The Drop's LFOs are more flexible. Hopefully, with the new visualizer, they will be easy to understand.

The plots are not only educational but pretty too.

pheeleep · Post by **pheeleep** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:46 am

Another difference is the black horizontal section in the middle. The older GUI has one shade of grey for the background.

+1 on preferring the older GUI but liking the new inclusion of the visualizer. Not too crazy about that greenish/brown color though..

andy-cytomic · Post by **andy-cytomic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:52 am

pheeleep wrote:Another difference is the black horizontal section in the middle. The older GUI has one shade of grey for the background.

+1 on preferring the older GUI but liking the new inclusion of the visualizer. Not too crazy about that greenish/brown color though..

Is the colour of the writing ok on the top bar? The final colour of the visualizer will be done programatically (not via colour shift in a paint package), so will match the existing colours properly.

andy-cytomic · Post by **andy-cytomic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:55 am

Frantz wrote: You're right. I couldn't remember if Z3TA's LFOs were morphing or just crossfading and you immediately caught my mistake.

It's not your mistake at all, the label on the user Z3TA user interface is "Morph"!

I was just pointing out to everyone that the results are quite different with the morphing LFO in The Drop and the x-fading LFO in Z3TA

Frantz · Post by **Frantz** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:09 am

andy-cytomic wrote: It's not your mistake at all, the label on the user Z3TA user interface is "Morph"!

Yes, it's mislabeled in the Z3TA GUI. I do own that synth but haven't used it in a long time. I was actually doubting myself as I was typing because I had a hazy recollection of it being a crossfade, not a morph. But thank you for clearing it up and illustrating the difference.

Nielzie · Post by **Nielzie** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:26 am

pheeleep wrote: Not too crazy about that greenish/brown color though..

I agree about the greenish/brown. It doesn't match well with the other colors on the GUI imo.

andy-cytomic · Post by **andy-cytomic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:35 am

Mogular wrote:My vote for ring marks on all knobs. The new gui seems to have less height than the beta version, a little more vertical space would help to uncramp the bottom further, but also allow you to put some more padding on all sections.
Also, spacing the pre/post/mix and spread/shift/glide knobs according to the ring marks (or just furhter apart) might work better as at the moment the spread and shift knobs feel like they are almost overlapping each other

The pre/post/mix and spread/shift/glide knobs are spaced evenly, the ring labels make them look cramped which is why I previously left them out. Spacing the knobs differently (even with the marks) will cause the gui to look odd, so the only other option is to remove all by the min / mid / max labels on those, which looks like:

Full Res: http://www.cytomic.com/files/drop-vis-mockup4.jpg

I've also added a colourized (so not final colour) plot of the LFO shape to show what I have in mind for the visualizer, I'll always keep the frequency response animating in the background, but overlay the LFO shape / Env shape on top of that

andy-cytomic · Post by **andy-cytomic** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 6:39 am

Nielzie wrote:
pheeleep wrote: Not too crazy about that greenish/brown color though..
I agree about the greenish/brown. It doesn't match well with the other colors on the GUI imo.

It's a bit difficult in a mockup to match colourized things properly. As I have said quite a few times, this isn't the final colour, only a mockup. The final colour will match the other colours on the gui perfectly as the colour will be set in code, not me roughly matching things using some colourize faders in a paint package. The original colour of the bitmap was pale blue, which is the default plot colour of the maths package.

Cytomic "The Drop" Resonant Filter