Why you left Ableton?

[dtrq]

Ableton is by no means the ideal DAW, but one thing I can say for sure - it has the best UI design ever created.

[tooneba]

This explains why ableton's flat is bad. At least Live 9's Glue Compressor went better way but 10 lost its taste.

I mean... not really. It explains why this person thinks flat is worse. The examples he uses of old iOS designs are uniformly awful and cheesy. Shadows and skeumorphism and so on may have had a role in GUI design once upon a time but we now all have decades of experience working with flat screens.

His rule 2 is quite applicable to Ableton - not too many colors (vs. most other DAWS) unless you specify them for a track.

Rule 3, as well, Ableton has more 'room to breathe' than most DAWs.

Rule 4, not applicable.

Rule 5, Ableton does a good job with their info boxes not being overlaid on the screen.

Rule 6, I dunno, it's a basic sans serif font I believe.

Rule 7, not applicable.

But hey, like I said, different strokes. Ableton and Bitwig have the best GUIs of all the DAWs I've tried. Relatively clean and uncluttered, I prefer the lightness of Ableton to the darkness of Bitwig but they're both fine.

I'm not talking about cheesyness of the color or other aspect. Intrancer's quote talking about flatness. The link talking about the flatness is Rule 1. You can follow his context around "I love clean and simple as much as the next guy, but I don’t think this is a long-term trend here. " "We live in a golden age,"

As I previously wrote, Live 9's Glue Compressor was the best example.

[THE INTRANCER]

Despite DubPro's GUI and the over use of gradients, aesthetically it is more pleasing to the eye than Abletons GUI.. which is rather damning giving the amount of money Ableton have in their back pocket. It wouldn't surprise me that Ableton's ex developers who made Bitwig Studio found much relief with having not to endure the UI of Ableton any longer. Only those within the four walls and the fly on the wall are those who will know the story about that I'd imagine....

With many VST's, you'll typically find that those who have a centralised mind on coding are more abjectly inclined to have much lower base level in the field of art and design of UI's than those who have spent their time developing the skills and understanding in these areas. Perhaps it's because it stems from those who spent more time reading books from a young age rather than using their hands and drawing pictures that there is this disparity.

Apple has played it's role in changing or trying to change our perceptions in what is beautiful and what is not akin to Hitler and the brainwashing globalisation of that however for those over the age of around 30, the pervasiveness of such imagery is less influential in the flat trend. More probably because we lived and saw the reality of having lived through the age of flat sprites and pixels.

Besides the flatness of Ableton, it has other issues that irk me regarding the UI.

[pekbro]

Personally, I think live's UI appearance is leagues above Bitwig's.

[miloszz]

I'm not talking about cheesyness of the color or other aspect. Intrancer's quote talking about flatness. The link talking about the flatness is Rule 1. You can follow his context around "I love clean and simple as much as the next guy, but I don’t think this is a long-term trend here. " "We live in a golden age,"

As I previously wrote, Live 9's Glue Compressor was the best example.

It's not just the color, it's the entire pseudo-rounded profile on bars and things.

I'm not sure what you're arguing about - I like flat, you don't. One is not objectively better than the other. Pointing to some rando's web design blog certainly doesn't make such a case.

[digitalboytn]

I left Ableton because I was on my way to Dodge City

[pekbro]

Well, Live's UI looks like that for a reason. That reason being efficiency. With modern computers, it's not as obvious as it once was, but because it's vector based, and doesn't have to draw much in the way of gradients, it will always be more efficient than the rest. Like it or not, that's just how it works.

[tooneba]

I'm not talking about cheesyness of the color or other aspect. Intrancer's quote talking about flatness. The link talking about the flatness is Rule 1. You can follow his context around "I love clean and simple as much as the next guy, but I don’t think this is a long-term trend here. " "We live in a golden age,"

As I previously wrote, Live 9's Glue Compressor was the best example.

It's not just the color, it's the entire pseudo-rounded profile on bars and things.

I'm not sure what you're arguing about - I like flat, you don't. One is not objectively better than the other. Pointing to some rando's web design blog certainly doesn't make such a case.

That is where you missed the context. You judged in an opposite way. I don't like skeuomorphism. You're still in 2010's flat vs. 3D paradigm while current UI/UX design concept already underwent that phase.

[THE INTRANCER]

Well, Live's UI looks like that for a reason. That reason being efficiency. With modern computers, it's not as obvious as it once was, but because it's vector based, and doesn't have to draw much in the way of gradients, it will always be more efficient than the rest. Like it or not, that's just how it works.

Vectors are mathematically calculated, bitmap graphics are not and are thus far lower in computational cycles in comparison. It should also be known that Ableton is one of the least CPU efficient DAW's on the market....so really.. being vector based doesn't help it in CPU efficiency.

[pekbro]

Well, Live's UI looks like that for a reason. That reason being efficiency. With modern computers, it's not as obvious as it once was, but because it's vector based, and doesn't have to draw much in the way of gradients, it will always be more efficient than the rest. Like it or not, that's just how it works.

Vectors are mathematically calculated, bitmap graphics are not and are thus far lower in computational cycles in comparison. It should also be known that Ableton is one of the least CPU efficient DAW's on the market....so really.. being vector based doesn't help it in CPU efficiency.

Sorry, but that's completely wrong. Anyway, I'm talking about display efficiency only, not about
live's general cpu efficiency. Mostly, the cpu doesn't have a tremendous amount to do with display
operations anyway. It's more the gpu...

[tooneba]

Despite DubPro's GUI and the over use of gradients, aesthetically it is more pleasing to the eye than Abletons GUI.. which is rather damning giving the amount of money Ableton have in their back pocket. It wouldn't surprise me that Ableton's ex developers who made Bitwig Studio found much relief with having not to endure the UI of Ableton any longer. Only those within the four walls and the fly on the wall are those who will know the story about that I'd imagine....

With many VST's, you'll typically find that those who have a centralised mind on coding are more abjectly inclined to have much lower base level in the field of art and design of UI's than those who have spent their time developing the skills and understanding in these areas. Perhaps it's because it stems from those who spent more time reading books from a young age rather than using their hands and drawing pictures that there is this disparity.

Apple has played it's role in changing or trying to change our perceptions in what is beautiful and what is not akin to Hitler and the brainwashing globalisation of that however for those over the age of around 30, the pervasiveness of such imagery is less influential in the flat trend. More probably because we lived and saw the reality of having lived through the age of flat sprites and pixels.

Besides the flatness of Ableton, it has other issues that irk me regarding the UI.

IIRC, actually flat trend is rather early adopted by Microsoft. And apple left skeuomorphism aspect in their UI more rather than went full flat avant‐garde like MS did in their smartphone.

[tooneba]

Well, Live's UI looks like that for a reason. That reason being efficiency. With modern computers, it's not as obvious as it once was, but because it's vector based, and doesn't have to draw much in the way of gradients, it will always be more efficient than the rest. Like it or not, that's just how it works.

Vectors are mathematically calculated, bitmap graphics are not and are thus far lower in computational cycles in comparison. It should also be known that Ableton is one of the least CPU efficient DAW's on the market....so really.. being vector based doesn't help it in CPU efficiency.

Sorry, but that's completely wrong.

I think what he said is right. Using bitmap in UI is more CPU friendly, which is commonly used in the days before personal computer aren't fast as today's.

[miloszz]

That is where you missed the context. You judged in an opposite way. I don't like skeuomorphism. You're still in 2010's flat vs. 3D paradigm while current UI/UX design concept already underwent that phase.

The link you posted to make your argument is arguing for 'a bit of 3D' but calling it something else (because it's passe), with the excuse that it tells us where to click and drag. I have yet to encounter a situation in Ableton when I didn't know something was a button.

Perhaps, if you're so sure you're being misunderstood, you should make your argument instead of links to web design blogs for Internet marketers.

And I reiterate once more, we're talking about preferences - until a DAW has dark brown text on a black background, it's going to be preferences rather than objectively unusable.

[pekbro]

Vector is generally more efficient, simply due to the amount of data involved. Bitmaps must describe each pixel directly, e.g an RGB triple for each pixel. While it's true that calculations must be done for vector images, the amount of computations involved are typically significantly less than with Bitmaps. If you think there are no calculations going on, to draw a bitmap image to the screen, you are dead wrong. It's not magic, a value has to be calculated for each and every pixel.

Think of 3D software, when you want a model to display fast, you render it in plain opengl (aka vector). When you add bitmaps for textures, things slow down significantly. It's for the same reason.

[tooneba]

That is where you missed the context. You judged in an opposite way. I don't like skeuomorphism. You're still in 2010's flat vs. 3D paradigm while current UI/UX design concept already underwent that phase.

The link you posted to make your argument is arguing for 'a bit of 3D' but calling it something else (because it's passe), with the excuse that it tells us where to click and drag. I have yet to encounter a situation in Ableton when I didn't know something was a button.

Perhaps, if you're so sure you're being misunderstood, you should make your argument instead of links to web design blogs for Internet marketers.

And I reiterate once more, we're talking about preferences - until a DAW has dark brown text on a black background, it's going to be preferences rather than objectively unusable.

This is your posts quote

Some 3D could be good, I guess, but skeumorphic design in the plugin world is especially terrible

1. Live UI is bad
2. Link explains why
3. Specific Example

All in this post
There is already good UI/UX design like he described as "golden age" = Your post quoted above "Some 3D could be good". So Live's taste is bad expecially when there was a good sign in Live 9's Glue Compressor.