Best / worst synth gui

[Boy Wonder]

I'm glad some devs allow people to skin their products. Serum must be one of the most popular ones because I've seen so many. My favourite is the J1000. It's simple, streamlined, has nice contrast, and easy on the eyes.

By contrast, there's the ultimate eyesore - MOK Waverazor. I don't even think I'll hold out for skinning options because its angular/jaggy sounds are not to my tastes anyway.

[THE INTRANCER]

Creating GUIs, which have a lot of controls whilst simultaneously making them simple and easy to operate, and making them beautiful to look at, at the same time is often a difficult balance. It's a multi-faceted discipline from both a technical and artistic perspective to be able to, successfully design a synth that people want to use.

Being able to reskin/redesign it in a way to make a synth better can't be underestimated as a selling point.

[VitaminD]

I love GUIs such as Avenger, Rapid, Nexus, Hive2, Spire... Simple to use, nice to look at, and the sound fits my needs.

Hive2 is pretty easy to use.

But watch out for Hive2 it's difficult to use.

Yeah but I think Hive 2 is better than Hive 2

Debatable. Clearly Hive 2 has it's strengths, but so does Hive 2.

haha. no....

But, Yes.

If you can't see that Hive 2 has a better gui design than Hive 2, then I'm not sure there is any helping you!

[DCrown]

A good gui is as important as good sound of a synth. "You eat with your eyes first!"

why are you eating synths?

Before listening to music first i check the cover and decide if it will sound good or bad.

I see. Back in the day the cover of a record also was a piece of art. You might think of a song or album also in associations with the album cover - the picture, art painting, maybe some slogan or message, lyrics or some additional informations.
It shows again how important eyes are when it's about music. When you attend a live performance, you watch it with your eyes, and together with sound, music, lyrics, vibes, the visual show (stage, lights, smoke, musicians, location, outfit, maybe dancing etc) plays an important role. Why else are there music videos?!

[DCrown]

Worst is certainly Plasmonic which makes me mad because it's such an amazing sounding synth and has such a terrible interface that is very hard and un-intuitive to program and sound designers won't touch it.

I forgot about this synth after the release.
Some nice sounds, but the gui indeed is pain to the eyes, but there are some more reasons not to buy the synth for me:
30 minutes demo, I really don't comprehend such a stupid short limitation of time, overpriced I would not give more than 1 $ / minute max. demo time any more, so not more than 30 for plasmonic and not more than 20 for Arturia, I consider such a short limitation impertinence, too many presets I don't like, too many presets for meditation music, it seems complicated and not inspiring to create own presets and I don't trust the dev.

[Lbdunequest]

A good gui is as important as good sound of a synth. "You eat with your eyes first!"

why are you eating synths?

Before listening to music first i check the cover and decide if it will sound good or bad.

I see. Back in the day the cover of a record also was a peace of art. You might think of a song or album also in associations with the album cover - the picture, art painting, maybe some slogan or message, lyrics or some additional informations.
It shows again how important eyes are when it's about music. When you attend a live performance, you watch it with your eyes, and together with sound, music, lyrics, vibes, the visual show (stage, lights, smoke, musicians, location, outfit, maybe dancing etc) plays an important role. Why else are there music videos?!

I was being sarcastic.

[DCrown]

@Lbdunequest
That's what I assumed

[Shabdahbriah]

The decade+ old 'little brother' of this interface made in collaboration with Tim Conrardy, would be why this looks familiar to some.

Modularis_image_1.jpg

https://2mgt.st8.ru/Modularis.html

[fisherKing]

I love GUIs such as Avenger, Rapid, Nexus, Hive2, Spire... Simple to use, nice to look at, and the sound fits my needs.

Hive2 is pretty easy to use.

But watch out for Hive2 it's difficult to use.

Yeah but I think Hive 2 is better than Hive 2

Debatable. Clearly Hive 2 has it's strengths, but so does Hive 2.

haha. no....

But, Yes.

If you can't see that Hive 2 has a better gui design than Hive 2, then I'm not sure there is any helping you!

i just keeping hoping against hope that the 'hive 2 vs hive 2' thing will die (and i promise to ever start other ridiculous threads here again)...

[VitaminD]

Hive2 is pretty easy to use.

But watch out for Hive2 it's difficult to use.

Yeah but I think Hive 2 is better than Hive 2

Debatable. Clearly Hive 2 has it's strengths, but so does Hive 2.

haha. no....

But, Yes.

If you can't see that Hive 2 has a better gui design than Hive 2, then I'm not sure there is any helping you!

i just keeping hoping against hope that the 'hive 2 vs hive 2' thing will die (and i promise to ever start other ridiculous threads here again)...

It won't. This thread is just another recreation of it. Anything motivated by proving something subjective fits this category.

[Kongru]

Best: Massive X
Worst: Massive X

It's a love-hate relationship

[subterfuge]

Eyes have become more important especially in music production, some people like to analyze and see things in their daw, but also when you buy clothes or a car or whatever, the eyes influence your decisions.

Obviously eyes are important everywhere where their aid is needed to do some tasks. But the function of a sense and personal tastes regarding what you are sensing are different things. That's not to say you couldn't have something which not only works great for you but also looks appealing.

However, there are also lots of cases where you must decide what is more important for you. I'd say if you let visual attraction be the most important factor in choosing something, you'll be in for lots of disappointments in life...yes, with clothes, cars and people too.

Personally, I do appreciate and enjoy art in many forms, of course according to my own tastes. Yet when I'm choosing tools, visual function is important, but visual appeal is certainly nowhere near the top of the list. IOW, I don't look at the tools, trying to gather good feelings and inspiration from them. I use the tools and don't pay attention to their looks while doing that. When I'm done, I most often close all unnecessary GUIs, so there's no extra visual distraction to what I'm doing next.

All that said, I find GUIs like for example in Serum both visually attractive and clear enough to maybe work with it easily. Or Omnisphere with its clean and modestly stylish main GUI. But I don't know how they would actually work in real use, haven't tried either one. And that would be the crucial point for me, hands on experience in use.

For another view point, I'll mention Tyrell N6. I was fine using it with the original GUI, even while style wise it certainly wasn't any of my favorites. But once I found nBeats 80’s skin, I was certainly not going back to the original. Beauty in there was that it's still the same engine and even the same control layout, so I didn't lose any features or behavior. But for me it now looks so much cleaner (pun) and I feel it's easier to use because of that.

[ramseysounds]

Best : Hive 2
Worst : Hive 2

@Fisherking

[fisherKing]

Best : Hive 2
Worst : Hive 2

@Fisherking

no no give me a break...

[CrystalWizard]

A good gui is as important as good sound of a synth. "You eat with your eyes first!"

why are you eating synths?

Before listening to music first i check the cover and decide if it will sound good or bad.

I see. Back in the day the cover of a record also was a peace of art. You might think of a song or album also in associations with the album cover - the picture, art painting, maybe some slogan or message, lyrics or some additional informations.
It shows again how important eyes are when it's about music. When you attend a live performance, you watch it with your eyes, and together with sound, music, lyrics, vibes, the visual show (stage, lights, smoke, musicians, location, outfit, maybe dancing etc) plays an important role. Why else are there music videos?!

No, not me, i used to keep my eyes closed during long parts of concerts. Cover art is awesome but i listen to lots of music without art. As for food, aroma is the first thing i notice and it's way more important to me than how my food looks. I'm probably in the minority but i think sound and aroma are way underrated.
Other than being able to read the text i'm not too picky (discerning?) about aesthetics of GUIs, usability is a different matter though.
best: pigments, massive v1. I like being able to see as much modulation info as possible.