Massive X - the thread

[Firebird]

The only reasonable thing we can discuss here is to commission Wagtunes to release a sound set. Massive X badly needs more presets, the included ones are not plentiful enough.

Thanks. Not interested.

Just picked up the X-Squared Massive Soundset.
Going threw it now, pretty sweet, lots of usable sounds.

[pdxindy]

Yeah, that seems to be the biggest gripe - lack of automatable parameters.

the lack of automatable parameters, no support for midi controllers like breath or expression pedal and no midi learn also means it is not immediately easy to work around that by using midi learn to assign expression to a macro. The AT is channel only, no Poly AT and not that I expected it, but MPE would have been very welcome on a brand new synth today.

[pdxindy]

Just picked up the X-Squared Massive Soundset.
Going threw it now, pretty sweet, lots of usable sounds.

How are those presets organized? There is no way to organize user presets... no folders or directory structure, no tags or way to search or to sort by author

[Functional]

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.”

Mostly coming from a person who hasn't probably said a single good thing about MX. Aside from that performer view being hidden behind the performers, there's probably nothing bad to say about the UI. There's some quirks here and there that truly are not intuitive, but not so much related to UI.

I suppose it somewhat depends on what you consider part of the UI... I consider no numeric input to be a bad thing about the UI. Same with no undo/redo.

I consider it poor UI design that one has to go to the routing tab to turn off a module instead of just being able to click on the module icon as the primary method (which looks like it was there earlier in development from that older UI image)

There is no way to reorder the FX or use the arrow keys to step through presets... though the browser just gets an incomplete cause basically there isn't one.

The output meters on the top left have an arrow underneath. At first I thought that arrow did nothing cause I tried a couple times to drag it side to side... then I discovered you drag it up and down to adjust it. There are a number of little unintuitive things like that. The arrows underneath the envelope graphic look like editable controls for what I would assume to be loop point adjustment. Doesn't seem like they do anything.

It's a subjective thing, but so far the knob acceleration is a bad UI choice imo.

A lot of that is UI part (although the "no numeric input" for example isn't entirely about UI. I recently actually wanted a numeric display for filters and as it turns out (and now I actually know this in practice), the values don't necessarily transcribe so easily from a knob to a frequency. Of course, they could still just do 0-1 values (or 0 to 100 in other words) to make it happen.

However, I wouldn't know whenever that's really the job of the UI designer. He may have well designed the UI like that, but he isn't necessarily the person who has to do the "hard work". Personally I don't care all that much for values, with two exceptions: currently the spot for the filter to be in the perfect position for 100% keytracking that actually follows your keys is somewhere in the northwest and each time you have to tune it in manually. For example in Omnisphere all you have to do is just type "1" and it will give you 1khz which happens to be the spot for 100% keytrack to follow the keys. The other exception is wavetables: matching them is relevant when you want to play around with the phase.

For any other feature though, I wouldn't personally care about numeric values, but I can understand why some people want that and it probably will happen.

The modules / FX routing, have to agree on most of that. And if I can add, routing section requires way too much precision for what it is. As I've said before; I understand that kind of precision with routing cables in Reaktor, but not here, because it doesn't really get that messy when you only have like what, 12 modules to work with? That's the only argument that could be had for the required precision, but it doesn't work because this isn't anything like Reaktor.

The output meters on the top left have an arrow underneath. At first I thought that arrow did nothing cause I tried a couple times to drag it side to side... then I discovered you drag it up and down to adjust it. There are a number of little unintuitive things like that. The arrows underneath the envelope graphic look like editable controls for what I would assume to be loop point adjustment. Doesn't seem like they do anything.

This I can't relate with at all. The arrow at the output meters; I might be biased here but since I picked up Reaktor recently, this was kind of obvious to me to begin with. But even when I first started using Reaktor, I was never confused about that. Kind of surprised actually that anybody was? Basically they do it because the top bar should always have room to include it no matter how small it is.

The arrows underneath the envelope graphics indicate gate on and off events. In fact, they did a really good job in that regard in particular because those graphics illustrate very nicely the parameters in random LFO (i.e. freq jitter, amplitude jitter). They could added GATE ON / GATE OFF there, but honestly, would it have made it any clearer? Basically it's unnecessary information for most of us anyway, adding more text to it would be bad idea. But nothing about it really made me think that it's something you can fiddle with, I mean to me it appears kind of greyish, clearly in the background image.

It's a subjective thing, but so far the knob acceleration is a bad UI choice imo.

Super, duper subjective. I'm loving it, I don't know why I so often have an issue with knobs in this regard. I use Corsair Harpoon. Back in the days I ran it often at 7200 DPI or so to conserve my wrist as much as possible. But even now, as I use something like 2400 DPI or less, I still think lots of things are way too sensitive. I really wish I could get back to crazy high DPI's but sadly it's impossible for two reasons: knobs are way too sensitive for that and, even if they weren't, lot of precision-clicking sadly in DAW's in general. Hitting small dots with 7200 DPI was a nightmare.

Anyhoo, it appears to me like this knob acceleration thing is basically splitting people into camp "love it" and camp "hate it" mostly.

[Functional]

Yeah, that seems to be the biggest gripe - lack of automatable parameters.

the lack of automatable parameters, no support for midi controllers like breath or expression pedal and no midi learn also means it is not immediately easy to work around that by using midi learn to assign expression to a macro. The AT is channel only, no Poly AT and not that I expected it, but MPE would have been very welcome on a brand new synth today.

Considering that there is no midi learn, I'm kind of 100% certain that MPE is going to be on a lower priority and if midi learn isn't there, neither will MPE be. I honestly expect both features. It'd be a huge, huuuge loss for a synth like Massive X to not have MPE. It's not just about "but it's a modern feature", it's also the fact that Massive X happens to be one of those synths that are really made for it and you can do more with it than just assign it to the filter like you normally do with everything else

I'd say it's very likely feature because a lot of the structure is polyphonic anyway which probably means that a lot of the necessary code is already there

[realtrance]

It’s probably because I’ve used computers since before there were GUIs, and for the longest time preferred a CLI (Command Line Interface), but I do hope over time it will be possible to use the keyboard (the PC keyboard) for lots of fine-adjust functions. It’s difficult to design a one size fits all at that level.

I note the Quantum, for instance, has Normal, Fine and Superfine selections for many of its parameters, allowing the user to choose the resolution they want to work at. Perhaps something like that can be implemented here.

But meanwhile, using CTRL or Shift or whatever to change knob resolution on a knob UI is a standard thing (though awkward), and being able to select a knob and then use keyboard commands (I think of Digital Combat Simulator as a good example of this) for various levels of control adjustment would be a useful secondary technique (as long as the mappings are documented, or customizable).

[Functional]

Has anyone ever seen Functional and realtrance in the same room together

I think we have a Giant Grump that we trade across the multiverse between us. Today it is Functional's.

No, I'm a social realist. Ever seen that one episode of Black Adder? Yeah, me and Mistress Ploppy have a lot in common: "A family atmosphere? This is meant to be a place of pain and misery"

What I'm saying is, my giant grump isn't traded away, it's always there waiting for excitement

[Reefius]

You know what's strange? First NI releases those expensive keyboards with a 'smart strip' and then they release Massive X without any support for this smart strip. Even Super 8 supports it, but not Massive X.

[realtrance]

Version 1.0. ‘Nuff said.

[Functional]

Yeah, that seems to be the biggest gripe - lack of automatable parameters.

I can understand this (and I agree about MIDI learn not being there, but one thing is kinda tied to another), but macros can be so much more powerful, and I really don't recall any instrument where I had to automate more than 16 parameters of a single patch in a project, ever. Do you know of anyone (apart from, maybe, BT)?

Currently due to lack of midi learn (which seems to include the macros) means that I can't directly put knobs and faders of my keylab controller even to the macros. Now, it's not NI's fault necessarily... but, it's a pain in the effing arse to set that up in Cubase. In Omnisphere, on the other hand, you set it to learn, touch a knob and, uhh, be happy person

It's kind of ironic, the DAW that is so renowned for its superiority in terms of midi functions also has one of the absolutely worst ways to set this stuff up. Basically, I've avoided the "Generic Editor" like the plague. And I will avoid it like the plague.

[pdxindy]

Personally I don't care all that much for values, with two exceptions: currently the spot for the filter to be in the perfect position for 100% keytracking that actually follows your keys is somewhere in the northwest and each time you have to tune it in manually. For example in Omnisphere all you have to do is just type "1" and it will give you 1khz which happens to be the spot for 100% keytrack to follow the keys. The other exception is wavetables: matching them is relevant when you want to play around with the phase.

For any other feature though, I wouldn't personally care about numeric values, but I can understand why some people want that and it probably will happen.

I also like numeric values cause then it is easy to check the value of a parameter and so I can then tweak it and get back to it. Useful for plugins that do not have undo/redo.

I also sometimes want to copy say an Osc from one preset to another. For synths that don't have module presets, having numeric values allows me to do it, even if a bit tedious. And especially a synth like MX where with the various audio rate modulations and Osc FX, even the tiniest setting can have a significant effect on the sound.

It is handy to see if a parameter that defaults to 0 is actually at 0 or is maybe 0.03 and having some impact on the sound.

I mostly use my ears when originally making a preset. But then when I come back to the preset a couple weeks later and don't remember exactly what I did, the numeric values are quite useful to sorting it out and remembering oh yeah, I did a right click fine adjust on a specific parameter that is not even visually seen but which affected the sound.

[dellboy]

No MPE support ?

Barmy.

I just tweeked the "smooth flute" patch and it sounded like a slide guitar - its crying out for MPE. And I dont even own a controller yet.

Forget about the EDM crowd, this thing can do mainstream stuff.

[Forgotten]

Version 1.0. ‘Nuff said.

I think that's something that needs to be given consideration. Sounds like there are other features planned, but not in this version.

Overall I'm going to reserve judgement and see where it goes when some updates have been implemented.

In the meantime, it's far from unusable, so I'm just going to get on and make some music with it.

[Mushy Mushy]

+1 for the hate the knob camp

[Functional]

Forget about the EDM crowd, this thing can do mainstream stuff.

To quote a confused spaniard:

¿que?