UVI Falcon 3

[Dirtgrain]

In essence, Falcon is a glorified sampler mangler with loads of high quality modules and advanced synth capabilities. Despite its untested UX and its thoughtless UI, I find it much more enjoyable and playable than Kontakt.

Sir, what your are doing here is called whataboutism, and is not really helping anyone. If we start justifying poor decisions on other people's poor decisions, the only way forward is down.

I don't think we can dismiss any comparison as whataboutism.

[Jac459]

In essence, Falcon is a glorified sampler mangler with loads of high quality modules and advanced synth capabilities. Despite its untested UX and its thoughtless UI, I find it much more enjoyable and playable than Kontakt.

Sir, what your are doing here is called whataboutism, and is not really helping anyone. If we start justifying poor decisions on other people's poor decisions, the only way forward is down.

I don't think we can dismiss any comparison as whataboutism.

Yes, agreed, in particular when comparing such bad and commercially unsuccessful products like Kontakt and Falcon... Plus, it is totally irrelevant... As if they were both selling sample based soundware and all... Pfffff 100% Whataboutism...

[Jac459]

That is why I love UVI...

https://youtu.be/w5pMEB-Fu5I?si=6Mbm14-KHyTAe-NC

[Widowsky]

In essence, Falcon is a glorified sampler mangler with loads of high quality modules and advanced synth capabilities. Despite its untested UX and its thoughtless UI, I find it much more enjoyable and playable than Kontakt.

Sir, what your are doing here is called whataboutism, and is not really helping anyone. If we start justifying poor decisions on other people's poor decisions, the only way forward is down.

Also, Falcon is a bit more than kontakt, and that bit is very important to advanced users, exactly the users frustrated by the bad UX. For those who do preset browsing and tweak a knob here and there.. its workable as someone already pointed out.

I’m just as frustrated by bad UX as any self-respecting musician or producer. I’m using Falcon exclusively as a sample manipulator and couldn’t care less about presets. Despite its flaws, it's the best I know.

Simple things like browsing between parts, assigning MIDI controllers, using the mixer, resizing the interface are all significantly better in Falcon compared to its main competitor, Kontakt. Not to mention the updates and OS compatibility, part of UX, that are just great.

[IvyBirds]

I don't think we can dismiss any comparison as whataboutism.

When people are reduced to complaining about "whataboutism" it signifies they have nothing else

In a discussions like this on a web forum it's 100% perfectly legitimate to compare various virtual instruments saying Synth "X" has a crappy UX while "Synth K" doesn't and "Synth O" also has a a crappy UX is not even whataboutism. It's comparing the UX in multiple products in a discussion of the UX of multiple products

[Lerian]

Simple things like browsing between parts, assigning MIDI controllers, using the mixer, resizing the interface are all significantly better in Falcon compared to its main competitor, Kontakt. Not to mention the updates and OS compatibility, part of UX, that are just great.

Totally agree. But that doesn't mean it can't be better, right?

(Although I don't see kontakt as a competitor to Falcon. To Halion yes, but not to Falcon.)

[Lerian]

I don't think we can dismiss any comparison as whataboutism.

Sure not. I just don't really care much about Kontakt, and I really don't think some design decisions made 22 years ago should be relevant today, even as a comparison. If you were in this space, UX was the last thing to be considered in an instrument. I remember those keyboard workstations who took ages to lay down some arrangements. But that was due to technical limitations. The same for Kontakt design - in 2002, the most common screen resolution was 1024x768px, and the average PC had 32Mb ram and cpu was pentium 2 or 3, with one core, running at 500Mhz, maybe 800 the lucky ones who could afford. The number of fx/modulations you could do on a sound source was very, very limited.


Kontakt 1, 2002.

The fact that I'm criticizing Falcon's UX is because i really like the product, but I'm frustrated by those poor design decisions. BTW, I saw the UVI office presentation - not one UX designer was there.

[bmanic]

UX is workable, not that bad.

No, it's bad. Very bad.

Not true.

YES it is bad.

Take sample looping for example, a task that is about as common as it can possibly be in a sampler. Now try quickly toggling and auditioning between forward, pingpong and no loop at all. Something that is usually behind a single button, single mouse press in virtually all other programs.

Go ahead, try doing that in Falcon. About as basic a task as you can find. Surely they couldn't have f**ked that up?


Ah oh well, lets make a keygroup and start adding some samples. Surely I can just drag and drop a sample to the empty part of the mapper and it'll automatically create a keygroup. No??? Oh, guess that's a bug (seriously, that's go to be a bug). Well, lets create a keygroup manually.. surely it's just a matter of double clicking in some empty space. *click click* Huh? Oh, it says click right mouse button to create keygroup. *right click* Oh.. what the hell? Some super long menu with tons of greyed out useless non-context sensitive text in a menu pops up.. wtf? It literally says RIGHT CLICK to create keygroup. Oh.. I see, they want you to notice that you have to get the HUGE menu open and then find the "Create new keygroup" menu item and click that. I see.. I see.. very intuitive and very quick. Nice design.


Once you have your amazing new part you decide you want to duplicate it quickly 6 times to make identical copies and slightly offset them in tuning and some other parameters. Simple right? Surely you just open the tree view, highlight the part and copy/paste, modify the pitch offset and bobs your uncle.. right? RIGHT? Yeah, you go do that.


Oh but now you want to do some quick mapping of parameter ranges. Surely you can just select a bunch of parts, enter the mapper (and surely it is the industry standard spline based thing with snap? right?? RIGHT?) and quickly and easily map it all in one go. Right?


You made that awesome delay + reverb for a part. Now you want to quickly and easily copy those to another part. Surely you simply drag+drop the FX modules with a modifier key? Right? No??? Oh, well surely CMD/CTRL+C works when the module is highlighted. Right? What? There's no highlighting of separate modules.. no copy/paste? Well ah, there's a copy to clipboard right there in the menu.. surely that copies the effect and all it's content so I can paste it somewhere else. What??? NO???? It only copies and pastes the actual parameters themselves and can only be pasted into an identical module? Say it ain't so! Oh noes... So how DO you copy and paste modules within Falcon? ****reads the manual, watches tutorials****

.... 2 hours later:

f**k ME!!!!!!!!


Goes to KVR marketplace to sell Falcon license.

Yes, the USER INTERFACE AND GENERAL USABILITY OF FALCON is 100% GARBAGE.

/end of rant. Carry on.

[Hanz Meyzer]

I agree the Falcon lacks of a complete UX overhaul, still based on the now ancient Motu software... But your tone isn't very constructive and doesn't motivate anybody. Falcon is not bad completely. On the other hand there seems to be no feedback anymore from UVI since the fusion with Imageline. My impression is, the bigger the companies, the smaller the innovation, all about sales now, and this in a bad way. Hope this is not true for UVI, really liked their attitude and opened communication style.

But I really would love to know any hint about plans in Falcon, but especially what about UVI Shade? Is it abandonware now? I think shade has really an awesome UX, but also needs some little improvements.

[chagzuki]

I complained substantially about the UI in the past. It doesn't bother me much at all now, but that's because I stopped using Falcon except for the specialised cases where there workflow is fine/very good. In many respects I like the UI, but in totality it does have major shortcomings. I suppose if it were better Falcon could for me become a more generalised tool, not quite do-everything, but do-a-lot.

[Octave_Jumper]

Surely I can just drag and drop a sample to the empty part of the mapper and it'll automatically create a keygroup.

This works fine for me (reaper win10).

[IvyBirds]

But I really would love to know any hint about plans in Falcon, but especially what about UVI Shade? Is it abandonware now? I think shade has really an awesome UX, but also needs some little improvements.

That's obvious UVI moving forward is all about it's Subscription Service and making a ton of presets available for Falcon as part of that

They will never really improve the UX as long as the subscriptions keep on rolling in month after months

They will sell you Falcon at a cheap price but then once you own it you start to explore other sonic options and that takes you down the rabbit hole

[CrystalWizard]

Ah UVI Falcon, the one piece of software that i bought on introductory sale and within three months (of use) i sold on. The only piece of VI that i've ever sold.
For me, personally, making noise/music/sounds has been a fun journey, the most fun of all ( that includes sax and droogs). As a tool maker myself i recognize UI/UX as a huge part of creating a useful tool. I've made tools strictly for my own use that i cut corners on, i've made tools for general use, where i have solicited as much info from users as possible (this all being non commercial).

Falcon is a total fail for me. The only reason that i keep piping up about it is that (in agreement with Bmanic and Lerian*, and others) i want to like, and use Falcon. Technically, it's a powerhouse. I've used Reaktor (a long time now), it has it's drawbacks and weird idiosyncrasies, but, i don't remember being so completely annoyed with it (quite the opposite). I used MAX, while not as fun or good sounding (imo) as Reaktor i did not nearly hit as high a frustration level such as i did with Falcon. i use many other VIs, none of which i find as unintuitive as Falcon, but, they aren't as complex, either.

*both of whom have eloquently detailed the drawbacks of Falcon in this thread. btw i find your "tone", Bmanic, to be constructive, and esp Lerian you have described in good detail the shortcomings of Falcon UI.

Lastly, i agree with IvyBirds. i doubt much will change. UVI is on the first few steps of the yellow brick road, like the sad state of ni (way long ago)... Sell those soundsets for the real money.

[kraster]

I just don't understand why it's so convoluted.

It's like two people said "Let's make a synth", started it and then didn't talk to each other for months and then just mashed the ideas together.

Why is there a tree AND a list view?

Why are there so many layers of hierarchy?

Why can't I copy anything?

Why are basic and functional things hidden in arcane menus?

[Sampleconstruct]

I just don't understand why it's so convoluted.

It's like two people said "Let's make a synth", started it and then didn't talk to each other for months and then just mashed the ideas together.

Why is there a tree AND a list view?

Why are there so many layers of hierarchy?

Why can't I copy anything?

Why are basic and functional things hidden in arcane menus?

In List View you can copy, paste, duplicate, delete, change keygroup ranges and so on.