Fathom Synth Development Thread

[Teksonik]

Please be more specific on the dials, what don't you like? The shiny metal? The size? The colors? The relative size of the knob to the rim? The segmented meters?

As I said.....

They don't seem to mesh with the rest of the GUI style.

Shiny knobs may have their place but not against the soft rubber almost organic feel of the original GUI. Now they just look cheap and tacky.
But you say it's a work in progress so it would be better to wait until you're finished to post a screenshot.

The one complaint I constantly get with Fathom is that the GUI is boring and that it is too monochromatic.
People constantly say it needs more "color", more "bling", something "shiny". If you don't waht shiny Dials? What then?

Come on people? I was doing this for you?

If you want something shiny but you don't want shiny dials, my goodness, now I'm completely mystified.

I've never once complained about the GUI and in fact it was one of Fathom's strong points so you aren't doing anything for me by changing it.

You'll never be able to please everyone with a single GUI. The only way to get close is to allow custom GUI's or at least a choice of skins like many plugins do.

If you keep going in the direction you're heading you may get more complaints about the new GUI than you did about the original.

In my opinion there was nothing wrong with Fathom's GUI in the first place. It's elegant and easy on the eyes. If it ain't broke......

[dandezebra]

I love the old GUI but would welcome change... Especially if it included an option for the old version and some ability to customize colour and such. Example - sometimes I am in the mood for UA Sandman Pro and sometimes I'm not. Ha!

[skyscape]

I see so many threads on KVR get hung up on GUI design. Unfortunately, it does seem to be important for attracting a wider user base. My 2 cents, is that Fathom already has a good design, it's a fairly attractive synth. I don't have a problem with the new knobs, they are fine too. Allowing colour customisation will really help - it's amazing what well thought out colour combos can do. You'll also never ever ever be able to keep everyone happy with a design so there's no magic bullet. I would def do your market research though and check out what the most popular synths are doing, and those which are considered to have the 'best' design.

[FathomSynth]

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

Teksonik, Thanks for being honest, you've been with the project from the beginning so your opinion carries a lot of weight.

Actually I'm glad to hear that there was more support for the current GUI than I thought.

But to put everything in perspective, re-doing the GUI is just something I'm doing for fun as a hobby. In truth my primary focus for the next release is CPU efficiency, and that is actually the first priority. So most of this coming week I will be working on a new release which hopefully with improve CPU by around X 4. It will include a draft mode and ways to control how much CPU is devoted to stuff like table interpolation and modulating per sample or per block etc.

If I'm able to do what I'm planning for CPU load it should end up being one of the most important releases we've had in a long time.

[Tj Shredder]

For me the GUI isn't too important unless some elements are too small to grab or almost invisible. I prefer that the mental resources go into crazy synth algorithms.
But even answering GUI requests might steal time. To remove that part of dev discussion, the best is to have an easy customisable GUI. Have each knob as 2D or 3D model, the drawing and background colors, all packed into a script you could point to...
Oh shit, its a can of worms...
But if its done let the users design skins...
Only drawback, some skin creators might ask for more money than you ask for the whole synth...
Well, apply a license to force,them to give the skins away for, free...
And make a golden shiny skin, and sell it as luxury skin for $ 1200,- and proud users can show they supported you with the real value of the synth...

[yellowmix]

Re: GUI

My biggest gripe is the vinyl background texture. I like the Tolex vinyl vintage concept but the text is modern and placed directly above it which is incongruous. I would like the background to be a plain flat color to be honest. Dials could be plain as well. It'll also be more attractive to the EDM crowd.

[] Peter:H []

I actually bought your synth because of its good looks, so no need for concern.

I haven't had time to play with it yet (bought it yesternight) but I see a lot of talk about wavetables. It surprises me as all the demos I heard on the site were great but very synthy. Wavetables appeal to me very much, so perhaps that is something that could be added over time, to show the synth as more versatile.

If you like, please go to the artist page and check out the tracks that came out of One Synth Challenge. I can speak for my track which is full of wavetables...And please check out my patches as well, they are part of the official sound package, though they are a bit to rough and not polished...anyway probably they help to show just a little part of what Fathom could do in the hands of a realy experienced wt wizzard (i.e. not me)...

https://soundcloud.com/p-e-t-e-r-h/the-kybernetic-gods

Having said that, I would appreciate to get more tooling for wavetables in fathom like those found in other wt synths. For instance to import an arbitrary wav file and split it into 16 pieces that are imported into Fathoms wt slots. Personaly I would favour that kind of functionality over a GUI rework. But I would say this is a thing of priority and dev capacity and I trust Everett to find the right decision.

@Everett: Your Paypall promo seemed to work, at least 4 guys from the german forum I've shared your news updates, have announced they have bought Fathom!

[imrae]

The metal dials look nice, but their brightness makes it harder to pick out the grey-on-textured-black text near them. Might work better with slightly lighter labels which are printed on smooth regions?

GUI design is hard

[RPH]

You can’t please everyone concerning GUI..
Adding the ability to customize and proving a couple of options for the elements ( 2D / 3D ) should be more then enough.

[elassi]

https://soundcloud.com/p-e-t-e-r-h/the-kybernetic-gods

WOW!

[crawlingwind]

https://soundcloud.com/p-e-t-e-r-h/the-kybernetic-gods

WOW!

Amazing!

[zArt]

The 3 buttons on each side of the preset name field have the same color scheme as the 'non active' buttons on the bottom, like 'Expand' and 'Add Mod', it's confusing. When you hover them with mouse they change to black and blue, why is this?
When it comes to GUI, there's no consensus ever but somethings need to be better designed.

One other thing, the Freq on the Eq sliders should be shown all the time, i keep hovering them to look for the respective Freq. The Freq could be on labels and the sliders should show the gain.

[medienhexer]

If you really want to improve the GUI, think about grouping/segmentation of elements. That’s what hardware designers are really good at.

https://goo.gl/images/VqXEFh
https://goo.gl/images/DEpBXV
https://goo.gl/images/R8rgXm
https://goo.gl/images/iQ1hXY

[fluffy_little_something]

Whatever you change about the GUI, it can only get better. The GUI was what kept me from buying it during your little sale. It didn't look like a synth to me (I am used to Sylenth1), not to mention the poor contrast and frail fonts judging from the screenshots (my vision is not what it used to be).
It looked gloomy to me, dark and uninviting.

[BlackWinny]

Not a fan of the new dials. They don't seem to mesh with the rest of the GUI style.......

Me neither, the old ones were a better fit

I agree too. I preferred the former dials, highly.