KVR Audio

Nanakai · Post by **Nanakai** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:26 am

In no particular order:

Omnisphere
Synplant
Bazille (forthcoming)
Iris
Unicorn Spew

A.M. Gold · Post by **A.M. Gold** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:58 am

emef · Post by **emef** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:19 am

aalto has a lovely interface, i wish all synths that have patch cables handled them the way aalto does

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:21 am

cryophonik wrote:

I miss the black and red skin - the beige one is boring imho.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:23 am

What no Sculpture?

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:28 am

Also:

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:58 am

aMUSEd wrote:Also:

That one is super ugly

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:01 am

Not when it's moving.

fese · Post by **fese** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:17 am

Charlatan. A synth I only recently discovered but took to instantly because of the clear, uncluttered layout, the big knobs, readable labels and switches that precisely display what state they're in. I like that. I will gladly swap any spectacular designed Vst with hyper real 3D graphics for an average looking one with big knobs and big type. I cannot help it, I'm heading forty and have bad eyesight...

After checking out many plugins (synths and effects, free and commercial) in the past weeks just for fun, this is something I noticed: a lot of them lack usability in my opinion, mostly they don't follow my favorite design principle " form follows function". In a way I can understand that, because in a competitive market you try to stand out, and visuals are a very important part of that (those people who say that thy don't care for looks, they care only for inner values are lying :*)

Nevertheless, I just hate tiny knobs and switches where you have to guess whether they are clicked or not.

BTW: not an instrument, but I totally like the also-recently-discovered Valhalla products and bought the vintageverb mainly because of the looks (it being a great reverb and excellent bargain for 50 bucks helped, sure...)

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:27 am

aMUSEd wrote:Not when it's moving.

Maybe, but the logo doesn't fit the GUI, remove that and it would look much better.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:31 am

I like nanoloop, very minimalistic, clean layout

fluffy_little_something · Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:16 pm

fese wrote:Charlatan. A synth I only recently discovered but took to instantly because of the clear, uncluttered layout, the big knobs, readable labels and switches that precisely display what state they're in. I like that. I will gladly swap any spectacular designed Vst with hyper real 3D graphics for an average looking one with big knobs and big type. I cannot help it, I'm heading forty and have bad eyesight...

After checking out many plugins (synths and effects, free and commercial) in the past weeks just for fun, this is something I noticed: a lot of them lack usability in my opinion, mostly they don't follow my favorite design principle " form follows function". In a way I can understand that, because in a competitive market you try to stand out, and visuals are a very important part of that (those people who say that thy don't care for looks, they care only for inner values are lying :*)

Nevertheless, I just hate tiny knobs and switches where you have to guess whether they are clicked or not.

BTW: not an instrument, but I totally like the also-recently-discovered Valhalla products and bought the vintageverb mainly because of the looks (it being a great reverb and excellent bargain for 50 bucks helped, sure...)

Yep. When a user interface impresses me at first glance, it usually sucks in terms of usability. I am a bit older than you and also don't feel like staring at a control label for 5 seconds and guessing what it might say. Many developers seem to have no clue of fonts, size, contrast, etc. (I never used Rapture, but judging from the screenshot below it is way too dark, Diva also seems to use some tiny labels...)
I guess one of the culprits is the fact that most windows cannot be resized, forcing developers to find a compromise, which of course won't work when some people use 14" notebooks while others use 24" monitors.

mellotronaut · Post by **mellotronaut** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:37 pm

and

fese · Post by **fese** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 4:06 pm

fluffy_little_something wrote:
Yep. When a user interface impresses me at first glance, it usually sucks in terms of usability. I am a bit older than you and also don't feel like staring at a control label for 5 seconds and guessing what it might say. Many developers seem to have no clue of fonts, size, contrast, etc. (I never used Rapture, but judging from the screenshot below it is way too dark, Diva also seems to use some tiny labels...)
I guess one of the culprits is the fact that most windows cannot be resized, forcing developers to find a compromise, which of course won't work when some people use 14" notebooks while others use 24" monitors.

Maybe, but even 14" notebooks nowadays have quite high resolution and even with 1024x768 you can use readable font sizes (or is it "legible"? I don't know the difference...) . I think one problem is also that the Plugin SDKs offer no help at all regarding UI programming.
And yes, Diva's text labels are also quite small and fuzzy, which still annoys me, but hey, sometimes you have to cave in to the sound...

realmarco · Post by **realmarco** » Wed Apr 17, 2013 1:31 am

i really dig Absynth's Gui

Top 5 Most Beautiful Virtual Synth Interfaces