MSF Needs More Colors ...

[dmbaer]

We've had a long-established color standard for multiparameters:

Orange - dynamics
Green - equalization, filtering
Brown/yellow - reverb, delay
Blue - modulation
Red - limiting, saturation, distortion
Cyan/yellow - stereo
Purple/pink - time, pitch, unison...
Grey - utilities

But for MSF device presets, a great many of the MPs control timbre characteristics which don't map to anything in the above list. Thus in many cases, the Easy screen, at least the "generator" tab is a sea of gray (grey for you Brits). I think we could use some additions to the standard for MSF.

[David]

Maybe before bothering to expand on this system, run a poll to gauge how many users find this sort of color coding useful in any way? (Or point to where this has been already done?)

Does anyone actually scan MPs on any device for their color before looking for their labels?
To me—and I may certainly be atypical—even the existing list of color "meanings" is so forgettable, unhelpful, and uninteresting that it's meaningless; totally ignored.

[Sampleconstruct]

All these different colors in one interface eventually lead to eye cancer. Grey is fine with me.

[jmg8]

I believe the colour system is really useful personally. I believe when users become familiar with the software that they subliminally recognize these colour associations and quickly locate certain controls on the GUI before they even start reading.
But as to the first post, I would be interested to hear a couple of examples of controls that would not fit into the above colour groups.

[David]

I believe the colour system is really useful personally. I believe when users become familiar with the software that they subliminally recognize these colour associations and quickly locate certain controls on the GUI before they even start reading.
But as to the first post, I would be interested to hear a couple of examples of controls that would not fit into the above colour groups.

Interesting! Can't imagine this myself, as I've never even considered looking or reaching for controls by color, on any of the software, of any sort, that I use, either consistently or occasionally. Of course, I do find it handy to have frequently needed controls easy to find/distinguish on busy panels, and color or value contrast can be helpful for that, but I still can't recall any other system that uses hue to organize controls by function in any way that's ever become useful to me.

So, a few questions about how this works for you:

What about device interfaces in the Meldaverse that use multiple colors (presumably just for esthetic reasons) but don't follow the system? Can you spot these quickly and thus not be confused as you learn and use them, or do the colors that don't work as you subliminally have come to expect, consistently slow you down, or in some other way, mess with your use of them? (I hope it's the former, as I like to fiddle with control and easy screen colors for esthetic reasons only, and would truly not enjoy having to confine myself to colors based on function only, disregarding esthetics and personal preference.)

Are there any devices outside of Melda, that you've noticed use some similar color/function coding, that you've also found helpful, and if so, do you find it easy to keep track of the different systems of color/function association when switching between them?

Or conversely do you find yourself wishing you could customize control colors so you could extend the utility of the Melda system to them?

[David]

…examples of controls that would not fit into the above colour groups.

I often target the Sound Design folder when I put a convolution module into a device. Which color would the system assign to controls for that, since there are both reverb oriented IRs and NOT reverb-y IRs in there? I admit that different colors for reverb- and not-reverb-focused convolution controls would be one way to distinguish these if you wanted to include two convolvers just for this reason, altho I'd be personally happiest choosing whatever different colors looked best to my eye to make the contrast.

[jmg8]

I will try to answer the questions.
If I see a device that does not conform to the colours then I am not as fast at identifying what things are.
I think all official Melda devices conform to these colours (there are around 1,000!!) even the edit screen for the most part also, so I have just become very fast at knowing things like, the filters will be green. My unproven theory is that others will not even realize that they already know this, but they have just used green filters so many times that when they open a new device they have not used before they will automatically (and unknowingly) look for green and find the filters very quickly. I find it to make the GUI more intuitive.
I have not seen this on other software, but probably would not want to, because they might make filters pink and then brain will explode!
As for non reverb like convolution, I would probably colour this green if it used for frequency/tone shaping/
Yellow is for not just reverb and delay, but other time based FX like granular and rhythmizer.
For me the colour system works as follows:

Red = Distortion/Limiting
Green = EQ/Filter/Frequency
Blue = Modulation
Cyan = Stereo/Pan
Magenta = Pitch/Spectral
Yellow = Reverb/Delay/Time
Orange = Dynamics/Level
Grey = Anything else

Now they will obviously be some crossovers where something could fall into more than one colour. But to me no big deal there, just colour it however you want. So long as in general the basics are coloured correctly then it will be helpful.

[David]

Thanks:)

[dmbaer]

But as to the first post, I would be interested to hear a couple of examples of controls that would not fit into the above colour groups.

The color scheme was set when FX where the only Melda game in town. Now that we're in sound-production territory, there are a lot of timbre related things not covered. We do have color assignments for filter-related parameters (green), pitch-related (purple/pink), amp-env (orange) and panning (cyan/yellow). But there are a lot of timbre related things not covered ... like:

Pulse-width setting and modulation
Hard-sync setting
Wave selection for standard osc
Wave index setting and modulation in wave table
Osc mix levels for multi-osc configuration
... and more others than I can begin to think of

I don't know if all those fit into one category or several, but it seems like there's a whole host of timbre parameter types we have no color standard for.

[jmg8]

Well, what colours would you even add? it seems as there are none left that would have enough of a difference from one of the other colours.
Anyway, I don't think it is much of a big deal to just fit it into one that works best.
For example I feel that transformations are a sort of distortion of the wave shape so, things like pulse width and sync, I would colour in red. Selecting of waves seems like a utility type thing, so probably grey for that. Modulation of anything would be in blue. OSC mix levels would be orange (not just dynamics but also levels)

[dmbaer]

Well, what colours would you even add? it seems as there are none left that would have enough of a difference from one of the other colours.
Anyway, I don't think it is much of a big deal to just fit it into one that works best.
For example I feel that transformations are a sort of distortion of the wave shape so, things like pulse width and sync, I would colour in red. Selecting of waves seems like a utility type thing, so probably grey for that. Modulation of anything would be in blue. OSC mix levels would be orange (not just dynamics but also levels)

I do not have a preference as to what the colors are ... other than introducing a little pizzazz into the easy screens would be nice. Also, I would like to not have an after-the-fact edict that there are new color standards to adhere to and have to go back and rework devices that are "done". If standards are to be added at some point, let's do it soon.

I do like your suggestions in the second paragraph above. Those would be just fine with me.

[MeldaProduction]

I think the colors there are ok, and generally the presets need to look "inviting", which is a bit of a problem, since everyone has a different taste . But the point is, I don't think more standardization is needed. I mean I like the colors, I'm used to them and when I look at any of the plugins now, I immediately know what is what just by looking at the color, but I also think it's quite enough. There will be lots of devices (if not most), which will contain panels for stuff that won't really have any logical category, so the designer will just do it "the way he likes it", and that's ok imho.