Fabfilter Twin 3 --Released Feb. 7th

[Double Tap]

Well, the real issue is whether or not Fabfilter are intentionally compromising the finely tuned UI/UX workflows of their new products, which were traditionally designed for use within desktop studio environments, in favour of perhaps, more cumbersome (or less efficient) workflows which primarily cater towards and benefit tablet users.

What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s one thing for you to dislike a design - guess what, other people don’t - but if you really think a company is sabotaging its products then you need to take a look at yourself. Your complaint has now taken up several pages and it’s time to move on. Perhaps you’ll have more joy if you actually write to Fabfilter.

I am not so sure this is ridiculous at all, they have compromised on the design. If you try to design a single unified UI/UX for both touch and mouse use there will no doubt have to be be some compromise, I also think it looks and works more like more like an iPad app than a desktop program...but other may like that look I guess, I don't personally.

I prefer the way Bitwig do it, their GUI actual changes significantly if you select the touch UI/UX option- this seems like a better way to do things to me, optimise for mouse 'or' touch workflow.

Do you really think a company would sit there and wonder “how can we make this worse?”

It’s one thing to say you don’t like the design. It’s quite another to say it’s been deliberately made worse. And that’s totally different to aiming for a single cross platform UI. You might say they’ve tried and failed, but failure is totally different to sabotage.

Anyway, three pages of whinging about a fundamental design philosophy is quite enough. Time to take it elsewhere rather than derail this one.

[Jac459]

I prefer the way Bitwig do it, their GUI actual changes significantly if you select the touch UI/UX option- this seems like a better way to do things to me, optimise for mouse 'or' touch workflow.

Bitwig developers are pure genius, it is very difficult to match their level of software quality (I am not talking about the product itself as your preference could be on another DAW but the development skills themselves).

Anyway, back on topic, Twin 3 support for CLAP and voice stacking in Bitwig would be just phenomenal.

[SLiC]

Well, the real issue is whether or not Fabfilter are intentionally compromising the finely tuned UI/UX workflows of their new products, which were traditionally designed for use within desktop studio environments, in favour of perhaps, more cumbersome (or less efficient) workflows which primarily cater towards and benefit tablet users.

What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s one thing for you to dislike a design - guess what, other people don’t - but if you really think a company is sabotaging its products then you need to take a look at yourself. Your complaint has now taken up several pages and it’s time to move on. Perhaps you’ll have more joy if you actually write to Fabfilter.

I am not so sure this is ridiculous at all, they have compromised on the design. If you try to design a single unified UI/UX for both touch and mouse use there will no doubt have to be be some compromise, I also think it looks and works more like more like an iPad app than a desktop program...but other may like that look I guess, I don't personally.

I prefer the way Bitwig do it, their GUI actual changes significantly if you select the touch UI/UX option- this seems like a better way to do things to me, optimise for mouse 'or' touch workflow.

Do you really think a company would sit there and wonder “how can we make this worse?”

It’s one thing to say you don’t like the design. It’s quite another to say it’s been deliberately made worse. And that’s totally different to aiming for a single cross platform UI. You might say they’ve tried and failed, but failure is totally different to sabotage.

Anyway, three pages of whinging about a fundamental design philosophy is quite enough. Time to take it elsewhere rather than derail this one.

Do you really think a company would sit there and wonder “how can we make this worse?”- No, I think they thought 'how can we make a GUI that is suitable for both WIMP and Touch devices', the new result of that decision was a slightly worse experience for WIMP users.

No one said it was 'deliberately made worse' other than you, some have just said they 'intentionally compromised' to have a 'unified' UI/UX that may be detrimental to a 'WIMP' UX design...that seems reasonable to me. People should be ale to express an opinion without being shut down and it is of course relevant to this thread, I don't think we need 2 threads on this!

[MrJubbly]

Well, the real issue is whether or not Fabfilter are intentionally compromising the finely tuned UI/UX workflows of their new products, which were traditionally designed for use within desktop studio environments, in favour of perhaps, more cumbersome (or less efficient) workflows which primarily cater towards and benefit tablet users.

What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s one thing for you to dislike a design - guess what, other people don’t - but if you really think a company is sabotaging its products then you need to take a look at yourself. Your complaint has now taken up several pages and it’s time to move on. Perhaps you’ll have more joy if you actually write to Fabfilter.

I am not so sure this is ridiculous at all, they have compromised on the design. If you try to design a single unified UI/UX for both touch and mouse use there will no doubt have to be be some compromise, I also think it looks and works more like more like an iPad app than a desktop program...but other may like that look I guess, I don't personally.

I prefer the way Bitwig do it, their GUI actual changes significantly if you select the touch UI/UX option- this seems like a better way to do things to me, optimise for mouse 'or' touch workflow.

Exactly! But don't sweat it, from their reply, I doubt that 'DoubleTap' really knows what the term "compromise" actually means. And no, it doesn't mean or imply "sabotage" and nobody had ever suggested that it did. That's their own misapprehension and/or conjecture upon what was has actually been stated.

But at least yourself and some other members commenting have correctly understood this issue.

There is a reason the "You can't please all of the people all of the time" is often cited in life. Trying to fit what works best for a mobile touchscreen tablet device and a traditional mouse + keyboard setup into a single UI/UX is perhaps an attempt to do the impossible. All I have questioned is the logic, fairness and the focus/prioritisation that Fabfilter have used while trying to achieve this. Hence, the "compromise", wherein it appears one side has benefited more than the other in the shake-up. In my judgement, that lent too far in one direction, considering other factors, such as the core customers and financiers.

But, I can understand people getting tired of this, so I can draw a line under this for now, and leave this issue here.

However, I really don't understand the whole 'fanaticism' around certain brands, whether they be of a software or hardware (or OS) variety. Whereupon, a percentage of that customerbase, simply cannot take any legitimate criticism of those brands and get all defensive or outraged.

Look, no-one has probably bought more stuff from Fabfilter than I have over the years. They're a great company, who make great products and have received plenty of plaudits, most of which were well-deserved. However, that doesn't make them or anyone else, beyond reproach or immune to criticism for any missteps or questionable judgements from time to time.

In fact, questioning their current business strategy, as relating to their current/future product line, is an entirely legitimate matter, in light of their new product release. If some users don't like that, and only ever want to hear the positive things spoken, of which Fabfilter's cupeth already overfloweth, well, that just tough! Fabfilter are big boys in this industry, I'm quite sure they can take it.

[Double Tap]

Well, the real issue is whether or not Fabfilter are intentionally compromising the finely tuned UI/UX workflows of their new products, which were traditionally designed for use within desktop studio environments, in favour of perhaps, more cumbersome (or less efficient) workflows which primarily cater towards and benefit tablet users.

What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s one thing for you to dislike a design - guess what, other people don’t - but if you really think a company is sabotaging its products then you need to take a look at yourself. Your complaint has now taken up several pages and it’s time to move on. Perhaps you’ll have more joy if you actually write to Fabfilter.

I am not so sure this is ridiculous at all, they have compromised on the design. If you try to design a single unified UI/UX for both touch and mouse use there will no doubt have to be be some compromise, I also think it looks and works more like more like an iPad app than a desktop program...but other may like that look I guess, I don't personally.

I prefer the way Bitwig do it, their GUI actual changes significantly if you select the touch UI/UX option- this seems like a better way to do things to me, optimise for mouse 'or' touch workflow.

Do you really think a company would sit there and wonder “how can we make this worse?”

It’s one thing to say you don’t like the design. It’s quite another to say it’s been deliberately made worse. And that’s totally different to aiming for a single cross platform UI. You might say they’ve tried and failed, but failure is totally different to sabotage.

Anyway, three pages of whinging about a fundamental design philosophy is quite enough. Time to take it elsewhere rather than derail this one.

Do you really think a company would sit there and wonder “how can we make this worse?”- No, I think they thought 'how can we make a GUI that is suitable for both WIMP and Touch devices', the new result of that decision was a slightly worse experience for WIMP users.

No one said it was 'deliberately made worse' other than you, some have just said they 'intentionally compromised' to have a 'unified' UI/UX that may be detrimental to a 'WIMP' UX design...that seems reasonable to me. People should be ale to express an opinion without being shut down and it is of course relevant to this thread, I don't think we need 2 threads on this!

What else does "intentionally compromising the finely tuned UI/UX workflows ... in favour of perhaps, more cumbersome (or less efficient) workflows" mean other than deliberately making something worse? I accept that it's a cumbersome sentence structure that may have obscured the more conciliatory interpretation you've applied, but after three pages of posts whining that they are not the main character and anyone other than desktop Windows users is second class, I lost patience.

I've seen no evidence it's true that there's been any compromise on UIs. In fact there's been a lot more complaining about other platforms than the UI itself. Apparently you can't scroll through the modulators as easily. I've just pulled up Twin 2 and Twin 3 and instead of having to scroll through modulators, I can just ... increase the size of the plugin window by dragging it right to show all of them at once. If I want to scroll through them, I can just ... use my mousewheel. Hardly "less efficient". Then apparently it's a big problem that modulation panels collapse if another is opened... which is exactly what Twin 2 oscillators and filters did. The new XLFOs are far more compact than in Twin2, so you don't need to scroll as much.

The lack of modulation boxes is no different from pretty much every other synth out there which doesn't add all the modulations to the screen to take up space. I can see that people liked them but I would prefer a separate matrix screen where I can actually see all modulations, not just two or three like on Twin 2. There are now more symbols than words - a good thing for anyone who doesn't speak English or other supported languages - and perhaps that's why those boxes are gone. None of this seems to have much to do with tablets or touchscreen UIs to me.

Our whinging friend also seems to know FF's internal sales figures since he seems to think that they make more sales on desktop than tablet and that desktop sales are subsidising iOS. No evidence for this either. In fact it's far more likely that Pro-Q3 sales are subsidising the Twins, and equally likely that MacOS and iOS users are subsidising Windows, particularly the 32-bit versions.

[MrJubbly]

What else does "intentionally compromising the finely tuned UI/UX workflows ... in favour of perhaps, more cumbersome (or less efficient) workflows" mean

It meant nothing more than exactly that ... "compromising with intent" (i.e. non-accidentally) to accommodate touchscreen/tablet users (whose interfaces I find, as a desktop user, to be less efficient) ... The rest was your own misapprehension, since "sabotage" was never mentioned and does not imply the same thing at all. So why you fixated upon that is all of your own doing.

[rod_zero]

[snip]
...we are doing so, at the expense of having updates finely tuned and focused for professional desktop environments and workflows.
[snip]

You may have identified the underlying reason for my critical feelings about the Twin 3 UX/UI. It makes sense. But we still don't know if it's true. It would definitely save money and increase profits to use the same UI for all platforms...

As much as I am criticizing some design choices in Twin 3 jumping to the argument that FF is making design choices just to cater to iPad users is a stretch. I am not convinced there is evidence for that claim to be true.

The fact remains some elements are not optimal lately, and for me it has to do more with looking pretty and streamlined at a glance that designing for iOS.

[MrJubbly]

[snip]
...we are doing so, at the expense of having updates finely tuned and focused for professional desktop environments and workflows.
[snip]

You may have identified the underlying reason for my critical feelings about the Twin 3 UX/UI. It makes sense. But we still don't know if it's true. It would definitely save money and increase profits to use the same UI for all platforms...

As much as I am criticizing some design choices in Twin 3 jumping to the argument that FF is making design choices just to cater to iPad users is a stretch. I am not convinced there is evidence for that claim to be true.

The fact remains some elements are not optimal lately, and for me it has to do more with looking pretty and streamlined at a glance that designing for iOS.

Don't you think that the new modulation panel displays in recent FF plugins and the new preset menu system in Twin 3, for example, seem very optimised for tablet touchscreens?

Because, these do seem very much like they've been designed specifically with such devices in mind to me. As in, if you 'were' to specifically design such elements for a touchscreen, then imho, the end result would most likely look very much like what FF now have.

And the fact that this new Twin update is also being sold for iOS cannot surely be coincidence?

Fabfilter also confirmed on their user forum that they will be integrating the new preset menu system on all their future updates going forwards. And most probably the other (what I believe to be) touchscreen optimised elements also.

[Lbdunequest]

If FabFilter first and foremost thought about tablet users when making this synth's GUI then please every developer take that as a note and do your GUIs for tablets, because FF Twin 3 GUI is just the best, its like tailored to the mouse use.

[SLiC]

If FabFilter first and foremost thought about tablet users when making this synth's GUI then please every developer take that as a note and do your GUIs for tablets, because FF Twin 3 GUI is just the best, its like tailored to the mouse use.

Subjective, I didn't like it and deleted the demo.

[a9k1tp]

If FabFilter first and foremost thought about tablet users when making this synth's GUI then please every developer take that as a note and do your GUIs for tablets, because FF Twin 3 GUI is just the best, its like tailored to the mouse use.

GUI is cool but user experience is pretty bad. I am specifically talking about their modulation section. ADSR envelope is annoying to use and we have to scroll and find the modulators.

[Jac459]

GUI is cool but user experience is pretty bad. I am specifically talking about their modulation section. ADSR envelope is annoying to use and we have to scroll and find the modulators.

Differente people different tastes, I actually love the user experience. Mainly for oscillator and filter but modulations are ok. You see clearly see what modulates what and how to change it.
For me modulations and fx could be more powerful, with more features but the ergonomic is good to me.

[plexuss]

GUI is cool but user experience is pretty bad. I am specifically talking about their modulation section. ADSR envelope is annoying to use and we have to scroll and find the modulators.

Differente people different tastes, I actually love the user experience. Mainly for oscillator and filter but modulations are ok. You see clearly see what modulates what and how to change it.
For me modulations and fx could be more powerful, with more features but the ergonomic is good to me.

I am critical of the experience and design of Twin 3 as well but I don't think it's a disaster. I think there are many opportunities to have made it better, specifically in the mod and filter section. nothing major but missing that final polish. I feel the same way about the sound: its ok but doesn't have that special sprinkle of fairy dust.

[Jac459]

I am critical of the experience and design of Twin 3 as well but I don't think it's a disaster. I think there are many opportunities to have made it better, specifically in the mod and filter section. nothing major but missing that final polish. I feel the same way about the sound: its ok but doesn't have that special sprinkle of fairy dust.

Yeah you are right, this twin 3 could have been an home run, it is awesome on meant aspects for me, but also with some weakness like the ones you mentioned.

I hope there will be a 3.1, .3.2 like pigments does.
It really has great potential.

[Daru925]

Dabbling with the demo i really like the sound it produces, simple yet not simplistic, a robust synth.
The main interface is clean and easy to navigate imho.
I've never been too fond of their modulation system myself, but that's just me!
It's not complicated, but I'm too biased with spline based mseg/performers.

And again, the sound is great! As i said before, it kinda ties the whole ff ecosystem together.
The kind of synth i'd recommend to someone starting music in 2023.

Can we have this for one synth challenge? :p 30 days trial is perfect ahah