Studio One 5 Effects Plugins: Some GUI's Are Just Terrible

[THE INTRANCER]

For the first time tonight I downloaded Studio One 5 just to see what had changed, after a period of god knows how long of their not being a demo available.

So what plugins and what aspects of the plugins do I find repulsive on first using them.

Autofilter - Huge, long, thin and tiny handles in which to try and position your mouse cursor on. My mouse cursor which is naturally tiny in any case is fractionally bigger than the handle. It's in effect very clunky to use and to pinpoint your mouse cursor on the handle. The red position marking is glaringly bad that it looks like some pseudo 3D floating effect on the dark GUI, causing you to experience double vision when looking at it. The buttons which have thin text are even harder to read on the off white background. Surely they could have made the text bolder with a change in button size and choice of button style such as dark button and illuminated text. Which would have been more stylish as well.

The LFO step filter is bigger but now even more clunky to use, and not helped with no preset pattern control shapes to shape the steps.

Groove Delay - Looks really ugly compared to the original design in previous versions. Flat boring and uninspiring and looks more like a poor freeware magazine giveaway VST.

Pro EQ 2 Frequency numbers on the display so small you need a microscope to see them.

Tricomp Just dreadful, tiny text and buttons (three in particular) green yellow and black colour scheme, poorly defined lines, bad lighting of knobs.. Just horrible... the original design is far better.

Chorus Just why.... Ugly fonts... dreadfully poorly defined tiny fonts.

Multiband Dynamics Tiny clickable buttons that illumnate to totally obscure the symbol in which it is supposed to illuminate. ( Yellow button - white text ) ???

Inconsistent functionality across plugins: Can't select GUI colours in the same way you can with Impact or Presence XT.

Generally poor use of space white space, i.e elements seemingly sitting in dead open space without any bordering lines to give structure or sense of enclosure.

Plugins look pretty bad all in all.

[BONES]

Who cares when you can get all the important controls right in your mixer strip? You never need to use the main GUI if it bothers you so much.

[THE INTRANCER]

Who cares when you can get all the important controls right in your mixer strip? You never need to use the main GUI if it bothers you so much.

The less important controls are just as important as the main ones because they play an equal role in how the device sounds and functions.

[BONES]

No, they are not. Even so, it's only the more complex effects, like Ampire, where you don't get all the controls. EQ Pro even gives you an editable graph, which is awesome.

[antic604]

...very clunky
...glaringly bad
...even more clunky
...really ugly
...flat boring and uninspiring
...looks more like a poor freeware
...you need a microscope to see them
...dreadful, tiny text and buttons
...poorly defined lines
...bad lighting of knobs
...just horrible
...ugly fonts
...dreadfully poorly defined tiny fonts
...poor use of space white space

Plugins look pretty bad all in all.

God knows I had my share of critical posts, but just reading this I got a depression.

Seriously, move on to other DAW already.

Or start the "redesign" project.

[Alchemedia]

I vascilate between Bitwig, Studio One & Reaper. They each have their pros + cons and none of them is perfect, however, when I think about the improvements since the early days of Cakewalk & Cubase, which I used in the late 80's it's mind-boggling!

[BONES]

Yeah, my first thought when I read the first post was that if this is the biggest problem you can find with Studio One, it must be pretty close to perfect.

[THE INTRANCER]

I specifically went to look at the plugins with the first 10 minutes of opening the program, dragged each one out and wrote out my thoughts. I didn't investigate anything else with the program, but having used Studio One since 2014, I'm pretty aware of its other shortcomings. I judge things specifically as judging things on the whole entire DAW is meaningless and of no value to anyone.

The general idea when updating things is to improve them, not make them worse than they were previously.

[apoclypse]

For the first time tonight I downloaded Studio One 5 just to see what had changed, after a period of god knows how long of their not being a demo available.

So what plugins and what aspects of the plugins do I find repulsive on first using them.

Autofilter - Huge, long, thin and tiny handles in which to try and position your mouse cursor on. My mouse cursor which is naturally tiny in any case is fractionally bigger than the handle. It's in effect very clunky to use and to pinpoint your mouse cursor on the handle. The red position marking is glaringly bad that it looks like some pseudo 3D floating effect on the dark GUI, causing you to experience double vision when looking at it. The buttons which have thin text are even harder to read on the off white background. Surely they could have made the text bolder with a change in button size and choice of button style such as dark button and illuminated text. Which would have been more stylish as well.

The LFO step filter is bigger but now even more clunky to use, and not helped with no preset pattern control shapes to shape the steps.

Groove Delay - Looks really ugly compared to the original design in previous versions. Flat boring and uninspiring and looks more like a poor freeware magazine giveaway VST.

Pro EQ 2 Frequency numbers on the display so small you need a microscope to see them.

Tricomp Just dreadful, tiny text and buttons (three in particular) green yellow and black colour scheme, poorly defined lines, bad lighting of knobs.. Just horrible... the original design is far better.

Chorus Just why.... Ugly fonts... dreadfully poorly defined tiny fonts.

Multiband Dynamics Tiny clickable buttons that illumnate to totally obscure the symbol in which it is supposed to illuminate. ( Yellow button - white text ) ???

Inconsistent functionality across plugins: Can't select GUI colours in the same way you can with Impact or Presence XT.

Generally poor use of space white space, i.e elements seemingly sitting in dead open space without any bordering lines to give structure or sense of enclosure.

Plugins look pretty bad all in all.

The only issue I have with S1 effects is that that they are not resizable. Other than that they work pretty well IMO.

I'm going to be that guy but we've seen what you consider "good" ui design and...well...pot calling kettle black and all that.

[antic604]

The general idea when updating things is to improve them, not make them worse than they were previously.

But they are looking better than they did in v4! I only don't understand why they didn't keep the same "design language" for analog delay, rotor, chorus, etc.? They look totally out of place with the rest of the DAW.

[nIGhT-SoN]

I think they wanted for them to look more analog, people would think they sound better.

I do agree with you, tho. Would've been nice to have the same color scheme and style on all plugins, but it doesn't bother me that much.

For me the interface for plugins is pretty good, have no complains. The only thing I'm really missing is Input and Output knob on fat channel analog modules. Some do have a makeup gain, but would be nice to have input and output on all of them.

[chk071]

...very clunky
...glaringly bad
...even more clunky
...really ugly
...flat boring and uninspiring
...looks more like a poor freeware
...you need a microscope to see them
...dreadful, tiny text and buttons
...poorly defined lines
...bad lighting of knobs
...just horrible
...ugly fonts
...dreadfully poorly defined tiny fonts
...poor use of space white space

Plugins look pretty bad all in all.

God knows I had my share of critical posts, but just reading this I got a depression.

Seriously, move on to other DAW already.

Or start the "redesign" project.

Considering most of his stuff rather makes things worse than better, it might be better to... well... dunno. Most of the time, it simply seems like the OP is bored and unsatisfied. So, I'd rather recommend to overthink the own attitude, before doing anything else.

"Depressing", yeah... I think that pretty much hits the nail on its head in regards of the OP's threads here. I think the issue here is that the OP tries to find reasons externally, while he really needs to search for them internally.

[gentleclockdivider]

Eagerly waiting for intrancer's upcoming ' studio one effects redesigned ' mediocre cgi movie .
You try to come over as king of cgi authority yet have you ever made any actual money from it ?( no need to answer that)
I am sure the studio one crew gui crew does.

[DPhil]

Working with it day by day, there are no issues with handling these plugins or them being super ugly and clunky. Then again I've seen examples of your taste and know you're the exception with this opinion. Why not. As long as *you* care.

[THE INTRANCER]

Considering most of his stuff rather makes things worse than better, it might be better to... well... dunno. Most of the time, it simply seems like the OP is bored and unsatisfied. So, I'd rather recommend to overthink the own attitude, before doing anything else.

"Depressing", yeah... I think that pretty much hits the nail on its head in regards of the OP's threads here. I think the issue here is that the OP tries to find reasons externally, while he really needs to search for them internally.

Making assumptions about people and abilities rather than focusing on the discussion topic at hand is easy... Try again.

In any case, I've barely posted any threads during the past 6 months, I've barely posted as well. I've been drawing concept art since my primary school days in the 80's so I know what looks good.
As for my own re-designs, I've done many including for Studio One... Never afraid to show the beginning stages of a GUI design either. It's what's makes my designs better in helping one's direction in which to focus on in something new. I do get PM's from people offering to buy my GUI skin designs, so I'm obviously doing something right, but generally I design and give them away for people to use right on this forum because it's fun.

Anyway here's just one example I mentioned in how the design pre-version 5 is just better imop.