Friendly critique on ACE

[Liero]

I just wanted to let the devs quickly know about my experience with demoing ACE whilst looking to buy a new synth for fat bass sounds.

1) The sound is absolutely wonderful. Not much, if anything to improve upon. Superb, among the best sounding soft synths I've ever tried, if not the best.

2) The idea with the cables is good, WYSIWYG is always nice.

3) The GUI and complete lack of any visual signs of what is connected to what by default (no cables) is, for me, bad. The text labelings of knobs are also bad and the official tutorial videos are for me almost useless. They're the kind of educational stuff that seems to be done in a real hurry and only work for people who already know everything that's trying to be taught. On youtube there's one "Patching cables 101" video made by a 3rd party and that one video is better than all the 7 official videos put together IMO.

So all in all this is a very unintuitive synth for me. It seems to made more for people who are synth tweakers, not for people who want to keep a workflow of making music. I make music on my computer as my sole profession and I've come to realize more and more how important it is to get results quickly and without having to be distracted by programs IMO unnecessary complexity. I find that even after two days of trying, ACE remains a synth where I have to concentrate very hard on remembering what goes where. Concentrate not to make mistakes. Concentrate to keep some kind of overall picture when you have a more complex preset. Having to concentrate more on ACE takes concentration more away from the creative process of making music, it's _distracting_ which is the reason why I'll have to check out some other synths that don't maybe sound as good. Of course you have to "concentrate" on every synth, but with many other synths there are very rarely the kind of showstopper moments where you have to completely stop your creative thought process because you have forgotten how something works with this synth and the GUI is giving you no tips on what the answer might be. So you have to stop the music playing in your head and open a manual. Game over for creative process.

This is BTW my opinion which I'm not telling here to make anyone feel bad but to maybe give ideas to improve the software later on.

I think from looking at ACE you quickly realize that it's the kind of program where the developer/developers are total geniuses in their field of expertise. They know everything by heart about synths and all the features seem very basic. So when they design or plan a user interface, they don't take into account the "intuitiveness factor" that much because their mind has no need for extra help for making the synth more intuitive. They understand it very well just like it is because they are geniuses. You can find this kind of design all over the planet in many other fields, not just software. If you want a great example of a really cramped GUI for a synth that's fairly complex (not as complex as ACE) but still very intuitive, look at Propellerhead Reason's THOR multitimbral synth.

If there's ever going to be an ACE v2.0 I hope to see a slightly larger GUI with a different arrangement of knobs and clear colour codings & arrows that help a user by eliminating things that he/she has to remember in order to use the synth effectively, like default routings etc.

Thanks for reading and thanks for a very good sounding synth. I might end up buying it anyway because I haven't found anything clearly better yet...

[ViktorW]

Fair enough, but what made you think a modular synth is a beginner's synth? If you don't know what's what, pick something simple and clear like U-He's own Tyrell maybe.

Or, invest a day or two and find out what does what in ACE, and you'll be making synth sounds in no time. Trial and error, that's how I learned at least.

[DF2R]

If you look at the signal flow diagram in the manual, you'll see that it's laid out pretty logically, basically sort of left to right, and then up to the VCAs and FX. Then it's just a matter of getting familiar with re-routing stuff. It's basically how you would usually expect a signal flow to go. As ViktorW suggested, maybe spend a couple of days just exploring it initially before you try and make music with it (personally I always separate these activities and patch designs from writing anyway). The thing with learning any synth I think really is just break it down, start with the most basic flow and the familiar, and work out from there, to avoid letting the unfamiliar distract you. ACE will reward the time invested considerably, it's a beautiful synth, one of my absolute favourites.

Maybe print out the diagram and have it in front of you all the time while you get used to it, that might help you. This is not to say you're wrong or anything, just trying to help you get going.

[Shabdahbriah]

Fair enough, but what made you think a modular synth is a beginner's synth?

True... though *modular* is a good "beginning", if one wants/desires to learn the fundamentals of synthesis, IMO.

Trial and error, that's how I learned at least.

Indeed... me too. THAT was/is the "fun" part for me.

[rant]

Not to fault the OP's needs, but more and more I see, particularly with people who [finger-quotes] just [/finger-quotes] "make music" - there are a LOT if not excessive xpectations placed on the devs and "sound-designers", which translate or boil-down to "instant gratification".

The over-all ease of use if not 'dumbed-down' nature of the instrument, with a bazillion presets pre-catagorized for them, so as to minimize "browsing" because they're in a hurry/have a 'dead-line', and of course the "presets" have to be named appropriately to fit the "producer/composers" current project or immediate need, precisely. blahblahblah...

A whole bunch of "us" started with synths that didn't have an "LCD' screen, OR presets. You screwed-around with it until ~ "THAT sounds COOL!!!" and then hoped you could remember what you did!

[/rant]

If all else fails - READ the manual!

Sorry... I'm making a bazillion presets for something, and it takes more of MY "time" to have to name them "appropriately", than it does to make them.

[Liero]

A few points:

1) I wrote this critique with the sole thought that a dev would be interested in any users "first 48 hours" experience with a product they made. So I won't try to explain away the stuff that seemed like critique directed at me for posting this, this is just the way that things went with ACE and me, and I tried to put it to words as best as I could.

2) I don't see myself as a synth beginner (although I have no idea what "cross modulation" is). My workhorse synth at the moment is Omnisphere, which is a synth where I did not ever have to open the manual. There was definitely a learning period, but you could learn the synth intuitively. Another synth I use is Massive, where the only thing I had to look up was some mouse modifiers for enabling modulation on the knobs. The rest I learned just by doing. This is something that I felt ACE could not accomplish. Of course others might have felt otherwise and without a doubt many are smarter than me when it comes to synths. I'm also not saying that ACE is as simple as Omni or Massive, if someone thinks that those are very simple synths.

3) I don't really see ACE as a synth that, simply because of its inherent complexity, could NOT be made to be more intuitive. Does everyone else here think that it's GUI is as good as it can get? I think it would totally benefit from some colour coding and arrows just for starters.

[DF2R]

True... though *modular* is a good "beginning", if one wants/desires to learn the fundamentals of synthesis, IMO.

And ACE is a good synth to get started with modular IMO.

[stimresp]

You say you've only had it for 2 days. I suggest you take your time to learn it's features, experiment, and everything will fall into place. It is a musical instrument after all.

[Liero]

You say you've only had it for 2 days. I suggest you take your time to learn it's features, experiment, and everything will fall into place. It is a musical instrument after all.

I think a comparison that would implicate a direct comparison of ACE with, say, a guitar is an unfair one. ACE is a virtual tool inside a computer. A guitar is a physical, mechanical instrument.

I understand your point though. And my point, which I did not word well enough, was simply that in my opinion there was still room for improvement in ACE to make the learning and remembering of technical details you mentioned unnecessary. It might not be important to some, but when one's brain is already filled with stuff like melody, harmony, rhythm, frequency balance, instrument arrangements etc. etc. etc., it's actually a bonus if you DON'T have to remember by heart exactly how the virtual insides of a tool you use are set up, if you can just look, see and understand.

[Shabdahbriah]

True... though *modular* is a good "beginning", if one wants/desires to learn the fundamentals of synthesis, IMO.

And ACE is a good synth to get started with modular IMO.

+1

@OP... You note:

1) The sound is absolutely wonderful. Not much, if anything to improve upon. Superb, among the best sounding soft synths I've ever tried, if not the best.

I agree.

Notwithstanding the 'space' between them, isn't "music" about "the sound"? Even with it's learning-curve, you will be discovering and using - new sounds, every step of the way...

[Liero]

True... though *modular* is a good "beginning", if one wants/desires to learn the fundamentals of synthesis, IMO.

And ACE is a good synth to get started with modular IMO.

+1

@OP... You note:

1) The sound is absolutely wonderful. Not much, if anything to improve upon. Superb, among the best sounding soft synths I've ever tried, if not the best.

I agree.

Notwithstanding the 'space' between them, isn't "music" about "the sound"? Even with it's learning-curve, you will be discovering and using - new sounds, every step of the way...

So to exaggarate your point: You'd use the most complicated P.O.S. GUI synth that needed years of practice and was a total bitch to use if it sounded really good? I understand that, but it's not possible in a situation where a) you are in a hurry and b) you are not really interested in technicalities but in music and you feel like time sacrificed for those technicalities is time away from the music.

But I feel like this particular argument is beside the point. The point being that IMO ACE has aspects that could be improved. Everyone's reply seems to boil down to lines like "Just learn it!" or "Deal with it!" which is not very constructive.

[ouroboros]

You say you've only had it for 2 days. I suggest you take your time to learn it's features, experiment, and everything will fall into place. It is a musical instrument after all.

I think a comparison that would implicate a direct comparison of ACE with, say, a guitar is an unfair one. ACE is a virtual tool inside a computer. A guitar is a physical, mechanical instrument.

I understand your point though. And my point, which I did not word well enough, was simply that in my opinion there was still room for improvement in ACE to make the learning and remembering of technical details you mentioned unnecessary. It might not be important to some, but when one's brain is already filled with stuff like melody, harmony, rhythm, frequency balance, instrument arrangements etc. etc. etc., it's actually a bonus if you DON'T have to remember by heart exactly how the virtual insides of a tool you use are set up, if you can just look, see and understand.

You made your point appropriately and well, Liero. I understood you as offering feedback about a way to improve the gui a bit which seems quite reasonable. I believe custom GUIs can be made so perhaps something is on the horizon, too.

[Sendy]

If you haven't already, I'd recommend spending a good amount of time making patches on a new synth (or tweaking old patches into new ones) without the pressure of worrying about composing/mixing/arranging, etc. By focussing on the synth in that way, I've found even the most complex instruments become more or less instinctive in the production process, and the byproduct is a huge library of my own sounds ready to use and modify.

[DF2R]

If you haven't already, I'd recommend spending a good amount of time making patches on a new synth (or tweaking old patches into new ones) without the pressure of worrying about composing/mixing/arranging, etc. By focussing on the synth in that way, I've found even the most complex instruments become more or less instinctive in the production process, and the byproduct is a huge library of my own sounds ready to use and modify.

Yup

[justin3am]

Does everyone else here think that it's GUI is as good as it can get?

That's an interesting question. I think that you understand that everyone approaches synths differently. I for one would prefer that ACE were more like Bazille and I said so during the development of ACE. I find the pre-patched connections and labeling of those connections slightly distracting. Not distracting enough for me to bitch about it (well, I guess that's what I'm doing here ) but enough that I prefer to use Bazille in most cases.

Anyway, I can understand where you are coming from but I don't feel the same way. One thing that I know about Urs, is that he does love to make us users happy but he also has a vision about how these things should work (particularly on the UI/Ux side of things). I'm not gonna tell you to read the manual, that always comes across as condescending. I will say that ACE and indeed all U-He products reward those that learn how it works, as opposed to assuming that it works the way you think it should. I'm not saying that you approach this synth that way, I'm just saying in general.

[zerocrossing]

If you want to see an example of this done right, check out Aalto.