I WANT to love it...

[BONES]

My philosophy about my process just coalesced around a different point. Sounds are lovely, but I have almost everything I need from Arturia in Analog Lab, and the most important controls for me are laid out in the same way for any given sound. Clicks better with me. Sometimes it’s limiting, sure, but my value judgment is that I lose more down the rabbit hole of tweaking a skeuomorphic interface than I do not having all that control. To each their own.

I don't care whether a GUI is skeuomorphic or not, as long as it's usable. I've had Analog Lab for ages and never used it. There are just way too many presets. Still, I was stupid enough to buy the V Collection last year when it was cheap. I have not so much as loaded up a single instance of any of the instruments. I don't find any of it compelling enough to bother with.

But I had to take a big step back and evaluate what made music making meaningful to me. Had to admit that it just wasn’t ticking my boxes anymore. Definitely no shade thrown at anyone who works differently; we’ve all got what works best for us.

To me it seems no different to being in a band with a guitarist and a drummer. They do their thing, I do mine and it all pulls together in the end. I'm not a control freak, I don't need to have intimate control over every part of the process. In fact, if I could find some sucker to supply me with finished songs, I'd happily accept anything I liked.

That’s why I found the V Collection too involved, and a lot of UJAM’s solutions a little limiting. Still, that’s just me.

I think maybe you didn't look into the Ujam stuff enough. There are plenty of options in all their instruments to completely tailor the sound to what you are doing. The biggest problems I have with things like Iron is the limited note range. Beyond that I don't feel restricted at all. I can use and combine the preset patterns or I can use my own. I can drag n drop the patterns into a MIDI track and edit them to my heart's content. I can swap drum sounds between kits so I'm not using the same combos over and over.

[DCrown]

Everything by Arturia, I just never use(d) it, I would not even say their plugins are bad, but not inspring to me. I could re-sell most of Arturia plugins, though.
It's the same with Native Instruments.

[BKSchatzki]

I don't care whether a GUI is skeuomorphic or not, as long as it's usable. I've had Analog Lab for ages and never used it. There are just way too many presets. Still, I was stupid enough to buy the V Collection last year when it was cheap. I have not so much as loaded up a single instance of any of the instruments. I don't find any of it compelling enough to bother with.

That's fair. I happen to get nice mileage out of the Arturia VA stuff, and am happy to use Analog Lab as a rompler. The reason I let go of the V Collection was because the sheer breadth of instruments stopped any of them from becoming workhorses for me. One might say that I could have learned them all one-by-one, so I admit that it's a personal problem: having a smorgasbord of synths was too much for me, and while some were easier to deal with than others, the faithful skeuomorphism of the instruments was the very thing that made it unusable for me. The "advanced" panels that you can open in each instrument that reveal a more modern interface are actually the most workable parts of the synth for me.

I don't mind skeuomorphism entirely, but it seems like Arturia was more focused on evoking a kind of nostalgia for these synths that I just didn't have. I'd much rather have one workhorse hardware synth than an entire gallery of faithful software emulations. So that's why I use Analog Lab: it's my workhorse "synth." I still get a lot of choice, but I don't have to click around tiny knobs and faders that have to fit onto my laptop screen, that come from a synth three feet wide in the real world. But again, I totally get why some people LOVE that.

To me it seems no different to being in a band with a guitarist and a drummer. They do their thing, I do mine and it all pulls together in the end. I'm not a control freak, I don't need to have intimate control over every part of the process. In fact, if I could find some sucker to supply me with finished songs, I'd happily accept anything I liked.

I think that's a good analogy. I can't really say anything to that except that I would trust a good bandmate more than I would a computer when it comes to the value judgments of an artistic process. I still have to feed instructions into a computer, and I just figure that if I have to do that, I'd like to know exactly what it's doing and how it's interpreting what I ask it to do. I'll elaborate under the UJAM response.

I think maybe you didn't look into the Ujam stuff enough. There are plenty of options in all their instruments to completely tailor the sound to what you are doing. The biggest problems I have with things like Iron is the limited note range. Beyond that I don't feel restricted at all. I can use and combine the preset patterns or I can use my own. I can drag n drop the patterns into a MIDI track and edit them to my heart's content. I can swap drum sounds between kits so I'm not using the same combos over and over.

You're completely right here, but I have to qualify my acknowledgement. The whole time I had the UJAM stuff, I never shook the feeling that the plugins were designed to be these black boxes that gave you something and asked you, "Hey, what do you think about this one?" You're right in that I could have found a good strumming or drumming pattern, dropped the MIDI into the DAW and edited it to suit the project.

The specific issue I had, and I acknowledge many people wouldn't have this problem, was the way the patterns were presented to me. A big platter of "common phrases" and "style phrases" and "verse 3" and "special 2," coupled with them being different for each preset, meant that I'd have to build a mental library of things like "I like chorus 2 of the 108 BPM one."

I much prefer the way most drum machines organize their patterns, either by giving a musical description (i.e. "Four-on-the-floor 2-4 Snare Ride" or something similar to that) rather than a sectional one like UJAM does (i.e. "Chorus 2"). Much easier for me to wrap my head around and remember. Some even display the notation of the patterns as you browse. Works a lot better for me.

Even so, I think UJAM stuff is totally underrated. Most of it sounds great. It's dead simple to get A good sound. The challenge I had was when I wanted THE sound I was hearing in my head. A big exception for the Finisher plugins. That's an area in which I don't mind having a black box. The processing that goes into those is superb.

[BONES]

I think that's a good analogy. I can't really say anything to that except that I would trust a good bandmate more than I would a computer when it comes to the value judgments of an artistic process. I still have to feed instructions into a computer, and I just figure that if I have to do that, I'd like to know exactly what it's doing and how it's interpreting what I ask it to do. I'll elaborate under the UJAM response.

Then think of it more as hiring a session musician to do what he/she/it does best. They bring their own kit, you tell them what to do and they do it the way you want. That's more accurately what happens with Ujam - they curate the sample content but leave you free to use it whichever way you want to.

The specific issue I had, and I acknowledge many people wouldn't have this problem, was the way the patterns were presented to me. A big platter of "common phrases" and "style phrases" and "verse 3" and "special 2," coupled with them being different for each preset, meant that I'd have to build a mental library of things like "I like chorus 2 of the 108 BPM one."

We never use any of the preset phrases with the Ujam's drums, we still program all our own patterns. I'll use the preset patterns to set up a beat while I'm working but I'll always come back and reprogram the drums when I'm ready. With the guitars, we do both, mostly because we are not guitarists and our efforts to program our own sequences can be very hit and miss, where Iron 2 nails it every time. And if you haven't tried Iron 2, it is a massive upgrade over the original.

[BKSchatzki]

Then think of it more as hiring a session musician to do what he/she/it does best. They bring their own kit, you tell them what to do and they do it the way you want. That's more accurately what happens with Ujam - they curate the sample content but leave you free to use it whichever way you want to.

We never use any of the preset phrases with the Ujam's drums, we still program all our own patterns. I'll use the preset patterns to set up a beat while I'm working but I'll always come back and reprogram the drums when I'm ready. With the guitars, we do both, mostly because we are not guitarists and our efforts to program our own sequences can be very hit and miss, where Iron 2 nails it every time. And if you haven't tried Iron 2, it is a massive upgrade over the original.

I hear you. I also ended up just programming everything from scratch, and the sounds are excellent. That's what I liked about Iron 2 and Sparkle 2, more control of what is played. Really, I'm trying to quantify an intangible rift that started to form between me and the UJAM stuff in the last year or so. A very "it's not you, it's me" situation. I will say, since I've moved on, the ones I miss the most are: Solid, Royal, the Symphonic Drums, and Fluxx.

One thing about the session musician comparison, I suppose it's "like" having a session musician, but I'd still rather have a session musician, haha. For me, there's a weird no-man's land between collaborative work with other human musicians, and a certain amount of manual work I do. I originally thought having something between the two would help me, but I guess it turns out I'm quite a black-and-white thinker.

It's a trend for me: I was all-in on the AI assisted production and mixing thing when it started really picking up steam, but as it turns out, all those generative devices and smart spectral mixing tools did was remind me of how I still wasn't exactly where I wanted to be. It's not how everyone thinks, but it's how I think. And that personal discovery cost me a couple thousand bucks. I feel a little silly, but certainly not regretful; the experience of learning how my creative mind works is priceless.

[Boy Wonder]

Klebgrand's synths. They're cute to look it. Very warm and tender to the eyes, but they're so lacking in features, they may as well be free. Their synths, kind of bland-sounding and unoriginal, sound almost identical and could've easily been morphed into one big synth with additional features like an arp, sequencer, mod matrix, maybe even sampler and/or granular engine.

Their percussive stuff could be useful, but they also get an I for incomplete. All four could easily be morphed into one percussive instrument with additional features like independent panning of each pad or randomization of those pans like in Playbeat. The nice thing about the percussives, though, is the sound. They'll all very nice. A lot of care went into recording them. If I had those individual wave files, I'd just import them into something like Playbeat and be on my merry way.

[Introspective]

The SQ-80.

I really WANT to love this synth: it's crunchy, it's digital, it's flexible, it's got a serious "cool" factor.

...yet every time I sit down and use it, I get nothing out of it that I actually want to use.

[Ah_Dziz]

Reaktor. It's a cool platform and there's great stuff to be done with it, but it has various issues when trying to patch up a cool device that make it irritating. I still use it for many granular and strange effects purposes as well as fiddling with things from the library and the fancy player ensembles. I want to like it more and want to build in it more than I do though.

Probably the only other thing that I really thought I would enjoy more than I do is Omnisphere. Again, I use it quite a bit, but it's one of the few synth that I hardly ever program while I'm writing due to it's less than endearing "workstation" layout.

[Nug Wrangler]

Vital. I don't know why but i just don't love it. I guess i have to use it more i dunno

[vitocorleone123]

A few synths I tried to love and never could
* Diva
* Omnisphere
* Pigments of any version
* Every other synth by Arturia
* Dune
* The Legend
* Obsession
* Oddity 3 (but Axxess is amazing!)
* Vital

Needless to say I'll not bother trying the new Hans Zimmer + Synapse Audio synth, especially since it's modular-ish. Same with the new Pigments.

[jamcat]

Sylenth.
Ith’s way too quieth. I can’th even hear ith.

[seafire]

Needless to say I'll not bother trying the new Hans Zimmer + Synapse Audio synth, especially since it's modular-ish.

Is it? I haven't seen any evidence of that. The screenshot certainly doesn't indicate that.

[Gam456]

Thorn, Phase Plant and MSound Factory

Spire smash Thorn
Falcon and Omnisphe are way more inspiring for my music

[jancivil]

the UX of original Massive. It's a seriously powerful synthesizer, and the one time I really exploited it was like a dream, but it's hard to stare at for long. I watched a lengthy video after I re-bought it ($41.50!) 'where everything is in Massive' (a newish video ie., it's 'trending' now) so it might be mo' tol'able now.

other than that... I have far too many ways to skin most cats so there's no excuse.

[gentleclockdivider]

I gell with all the pugins I have bought , that'w why I value demo's .
The ony expections have been 2 impulse buys where I gave the developer the benefit of the doubt .
( F.u. uberverb developer )