Massive X - the thread

[vurt]

[McLilith]

Still on the defense parade? I mean, can you actually defend an UI like that?

Personally, I'm going to wait till I get a comprehensive user manual, before I pass judgement on the interface. Things that seem awkward to me now might well seem intuitive, once I actually know what I'm doing!

I'm also optimistic about Massive X's future. Native Instruments is a large developer, with plenty of talent on hand. They've already stated that updates will be coming this year. I'm convinced they can and will make the synth even better than it is. I'm also patient about the updates. I just crossgraded from Kontakt 5 to Komplete 12. I have lots of new software to explore while they work on updating Massive X. I don't mind to wait a little for some updates. Ideally, I'd like to see 3 or more smaller updates by year's end, and not have to wait till Christmas or longer for one "massive" update, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

[pixel85]

Audio In - I hope they include it with VST3 version. It would be great to use it as eg. PM like now can be done with Noise Sources.

[Stefken]

Things that seem awkward to me now might well seem intuitive, once I actually know what I'm doing!

No, they won't be intuitive, but you might get used to it (to some degree).

Part of the art of making an UI, is to align it as much as possible with affordances, learned expectations, etc (what you might call intuition). If things seems contra-intuitive, than that's because they are.

[pixel85]

Still on the defense parade? I mean, can you actually defend an UI like that?

WARNING: different personal opinion.
Hmm... It's another day with MX for me. I'm making patches, tweaking it etc while making a new track. No problems here. UI is quite alright for me. I understood majority of MX almost instantly and the longer I work with MX the less I care about things like lack of visuals for ADSR or numeric indicators. Somehow it didn't stopped me from working with MX. Copy/Paste for Oscillators and lack of Bypass function bothers me but I can live without it for now.
So from my side UI is alright and MX only miss some functionality which is not a fault of UI after all

[McLilith]

Audio In - I hope they include it with VST3 version. It would be great to use it as eg. PM like now can be done with Noise Sources.

It sounds cool, but I think I read somewhere, they currently don't have any plans to do that.

[pixel85]

Audio In - I hope they include it with VST3 version. It would be great to use it as eg. PM like now can be done with Noise Sources.

It sounds cool, but I think I read somewhere, they currently don't have any plans to do that.

I read somewhere that they plan to make VST3 closer to end of the year and VST3 have Audio In included natively so I suppose it shouldn't be hard or long task to implement it (thought I never programmed VST plugins so it's just a guess).

[EvilDragon]

VST3 doesn't have audio in natively. It's up to the developer to include it or not.

VST2 instruments can also have audio input, that's not a problem really.

[pixel85]

Of course It's up to the developer to include it.
From this video/description audio-in is available for all VST3 instruments supporting side-chaining which I guess it should easy up the implementation process in case if developer would liek to do it.

[McLilith]

Regarding using Massive X as an effect unit, here's the official NI response that my fuzzy memory barely remembered a little earlier in this thread:

https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... ned-en-us-

Note, they did say "at this time", which leaves the door open, should they decide to change their mind later. However, I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime soon. I think their top priorities will be completing the user manual, fixing any remaining technical issues, and adding whatever unfinished features they've already made plans to implement in future updates. Then after all that, maybe, just maybe, they'll add some major features that originally weren't planned for, like audio inputs. These are just my personal predictions, based on working with other software companies in the past.

[Stefken]

Sounds very probable. [SynthX] as an FX is usually an after-thought.

[realtrance]

Hah, I didn't even see that one!

I suppose it shows which features were planned early on, but to meet the deadline they had to cut them. Could very well be that updates will bring lots of goodies (but who knows)!

Well, that's the good news. I guess we can expect a sequencer and other goodies later on.

Plus a button to check email, please.

[Functional]

Hah, I didn't even see that one!

I suppose it shows which features were planned early on, but to meet the deadline they had to cut them. Could very well be that updates will bring lots of goodies (but who knows)!

Well, that's the good news. I guess we can expect a sequencer and other goodies later on.

That should be pretty obvious. It's been stated so many times by now.

Also, I must say, anyone saying that the guy who designed this UI should lose his position has been smoking something a bit too much. Aside from the envelopes missing graphics (which is unlikely up to that person), the UI is extremely clean and very pleasant to the eye. The vague retro aesthetic paired with minimalism works well.

Hating the UI even as it is just feels like someone really has it against Massive X, up to an irrational scale.

[Daru925]

I'm using almost only massive and fm8 (although i demo lots of synths, heck i'm still demoing massive x), maybe that's why the gui doesn't bother me at all. I like it. The workflow feels the same.
Its easy to experiment. Drag and drop, done. The harmonizer is a nice addition in that regard and I would love a midi record option compatible with ableton, to further refine chord sequences in a piano roll.
Animations, other goodies and a manual will be welcome, but i've used enough adsr sliders to vizualise the envelope curves in my head in the meantime.
Massive is the same. Not much numerical info or real time visual feedback, use your ears.
Don't get me wrong, i too think it's best to have visual feedback as well, but it doesnt make the synth unusable.
idc about presets, but they sounded on par with other current synths.

IMHO, the best (for you) workflow wins nowadays, because soundwise, lots of modern synths have equally amazing sound to unlock beyond flavor of the month sinewave.
So YOU -the knob twiddler- make the patch sound good or bad, in the end.
Wait and see for "GOTY massive X" with all the dlcs? or use whatever you like.

[realtrance]

People always have different opinions about UI. Heck, I’ve worked with professional UI design studios and the results aren’t always any better aesthetically than one guy with great vision.

What professional UI design can do is provide a better sense of flow after sustained and scientific observation (there are facilities for this, actually, with equipment that tracks movement, speed, reactions and records all of this as significant data for analysis, alongside human interaction analysis of course). But that only improves, to some extent, usage experience.

The aesthetics and familiarization aspects are, I’m convinced, absolutely arbitrary. Simply, the more innovative the UI, the stronger the initial reaction, until users adjust.

I’m sure NI has the resources to work with all this, so I’m not as aggressive as some have been in claiming the UI is “bad.”