Analog Lab V vs 4 - Why have they destroyed the controls?

[m-ac]

I just installed analog lab 5 and what they've done to dumb down the controls blows me away. In every other version, they had well thought out knobs and sliders which changed each preset in an interesting and creative way. Now you seem to be dumped with these generic 'brightness' and 'timbre' controls, along with ridiculous vaguely named controls like 'time' - TIME WHAT? Master bass, mid, and treble sliders on every single preset? Yeah, no thanks arturia, no-one asked for those.

For example, I loaded up the Zen prophet 5 preset, and lab 4 gives me;

Screenshot 2021-02-09 at 16.45.54.png

...and lab 5 gives me;

Screenshot 2021-02-09 at 16.46.02.png

Wheres my ADSR? Where are the interesting preset specific controls like noise? Why are there 2 blank controls that don't work on lab 5?

I understand Arturia cutting back on the presets included for non V collection owners, but why have they crippled the creative controls too? I own the V collection, so let me have access to the same creative controls I used to have. I honestly can't see a reason ever to use analog lab again, especially as komplete kontrol allows me the ability to group and browse v-collection presets already.

I used to love analog lab, I've been using it to kick off new ideas since it was called analog factory.

And this is the part where someone tells me I have to click such-and-such to enable the old legacy controls and I take it all back...

[m-ac]

Another prime example. Load up the DX-Diamond DX7 preset. The controls on analog lab 4 let you take the sound almost anywhere you want in a really good sounding and musical way. I've already started a new track by moving a few controls and stumbling on a completely new sound. Brilliant.

Screenshot 2021-02-09 at 16.57.19.png

And here's lab 5s effort - absolutely crap sound manipulation possibilities. I mean absolutely, absolutely shite. Take a huge F whoever came up with this shambles at arturia.

Screenshot 2021-02-09 at 16.57.27.png

Edit: I don't know why I posted that second screenshot of lab 5, it's the exact same set of bland meaningless controls as the one I posted for the prophet preset above.

[alberto_balsalm]

Arturia's UI and the way their plugins function in general is a mess. Uncomfortably long preset loading times, weirdly large preset browser in the latest version, the whole tag/style system is convoluted and messy to use, the UI is kind of laggy and is very "form over function" in how it is designed. The plugins are also hardcoded to be installed on the C drive (on Windows at least). I think it's a classic case of marketing and design teams focusing on the superficial aspects of the product while trying to put out a shiny new version, and botching it.

There's even an obvious installer bug - on Windows, if you don't install the standalone version, it will still place a shortcut if the option is selected (and it is, by default) to the non-existent standalone exe. Not sure how something this trivial could've been missed.

[3ptguitarist]

I'm hoping they can add those controls back. In version 4, they allowed you to change some of the controls l, but in 5, you can't do that unless I missed the option to do that. I don't think AL 5 is worth the price it costs. The lack of controls should be in a lite version not the full version.

Is there anywhere that we can give feedback to Arturia about this?

[martinjuenke]

Time to get rid of it?

[m-ac]

Time to get rid of it?

Analog lab 5? Already have, uninstalled it earlier. I'm not uninstalling lab 4 until it's no longer supported though, its too useful and inspiring.

[aMUSEd]

I'm hoping they can add those controls back. In version 4, they allowed you to change some of the controls l, but in 5, you can't do that unless I missed the option to do that. I don't think AL 5 is worth the price it costs. The lack of controls should be in a lite version not the full version.

Is there anywhere that we can give feedback to Arturia about this?

They are already aware of it and have said they plan to add them back

viewtopic.php?p=7994222

in fact just noticed a massive update in ASC so it may well be part of this

[zzz00m]

If you are using a Generic MIDI Controller, that default setting with minimum controls is what you will see in AL V.

If you go to AL V settings and select a Keylab controller you will get all of the controls back. Even if you are actually using a Generic MIDI Controller.

So it is a workaround until Arturia fixes the problem. So is just sticking to AL 4 in the meantime.

[3ptguitarist]

I'm hoping they can add those controls back. In version 4, they allowed you to change some of the controls l, but in 5, you can't do that unless I missed the option to do that. I don't think AL 5 is worth the price it costs. The lack of controls should be in a lite version not the full version.

Is there anywhere that we can give feedback to Arturia about this?

They are already aware of it and have said they plan to add them back

viewtopic.php?p=7994222

in fact just noticed a massive update in ASC so it may well be part of this

Man I may have forgotten about that post. Lol thanks.

[Weasel-Boy]

Having worked in the music software and hardware industry for quite some time…I’m going to take an educated guess as to what happened here:

Analog Lab got themselves a shiny new Product Manager. And like all new product managers he (or she) decided to put their “stamp” on the product. I mean…they have to do something to “improve” the title in order to justify their hiring or advancement within the company. Unfortunately, AL5 appears to be the victim of the “Peter Principle”…where someone rose to their level of incompetence with no comprehension of the phrase: “If it aint broke…don’t fix it”.

Before anyone skewers me…keep in mind…this is my educated guess based on the hiring practice shenanigans I’ve observed within the industry over a 20 year period....and why some products mysterious change for the worse.

[solar28]

Having worked in the music software and hardware industry for quite some time…I’m going to take an educated guess as to what happened here:

Analog Lab got themselves a shiny new Product Manager. And like all new product managers he (or she) decided to put their “stamp” on the product. I mean…they have to do something to “improve” the title in order to justify their hiring or advancement within the company. Unfortunately, AL5 appears to be the victim of the “Peter Principle”…where someone rose to their level of incompetence with no comprehension of the phrase: “If it aint broke…don’t fix it”.

Before anyone skewers me…keep in mind…this is my educated guess based on the hiring practice shenanigans I’ve observed within the industry over a 20 year period....and why some products mysterious change for the worse.

After 22 years as a coder, yup. This is likely the scenario. No product manager wants to release a product with only improved internals. The problem is, new graphics are required, new "yitz and yaws" and management needs to see glitz and sparkles. It's poisonous. Dev teams are limited in their capacity. Whatever this update was to analog lab, the only end results for us, so far, is a slower loading, clunky, unpolished update with crucial features missing.

I say this as an owner of the Arturia instrument collection. And a lover of Arturia hardware. Why the hell should an update be slower, clunkier, more cpu intensive, while missing features? So some corporate earthworm can have self confidence.

Forgive me for projecting. Arturia needs to bring the attitude of Microfreak, Keystep, Beatstep, to their clunky vst instruments collection.

[solar28]

Arturia's UI and the way their plugins function in general is a mess. Uncomfortably long preset loading times, weirdly large preset browser in the latest version, the whole tag/style system is convoluted and messy to use, the UI is kind of laggy and is very "form over function" in how it is designed. The plugins are also hardcoded to be installed on the C drive (on Windows at least). I think it's a classic case of marketing and design teams focusing on the superficial aspects of the product while trying to put out a shiny new version, and botching it.

There's even an obvious installer bug - on Windows, if you don't install the standalone version, it will still place a shortcut if the option is selected (and it is, by default) to the non-existent standalone exe. Not sure how something this trivial could've been missed.

Edit: Irrelevant. Laggy UIs are something much smaller teams defeat with ease. Arturia are now putting the cart before the horse to meet someone's cash agenda. Installer issues are, I would imagine, a thing developers and companies who care for quality address. Take some of that marketing budget and invest in your core principles. Unless the core principle is duping people into investing in something that's not finished.

[zzz00m]

The controls are not really broken. Just misplaced. Change your controller setting in AL V to Keylab and it's back to normal. If you are using non-Arturia hardware, now it just defaults to minimal generic controls, and that's new since AL 4. Which you can override. An oversight. No conspiracy by the product managers and marketing folks.

[3ptguitarist]

If you are using a Generic MIDI Controller, that default setting with minimum controls is what you will see in AL V.

If you go to AL V settings and select a Keylab controller you will get all of the controls back. Even if you are actually using a Generic MIDI Controller.

So it is a workaround until Arturia fixes the problem. So is just sticking to AL 4 in the meantime.

I just tested it on a demo version and changing the midi controller setting does add more control knobs, but the assignments seem to all be the same assignments regardless of patch. In AL 4, some of the patches had different control assignments you could assign for some of the knobs, and some of the patches had ADSR controls. I haven't looked through every patch in AL V, but I haven't seen the same variety of control assignments for some of the knobs and I haven't seen ADSR controls yet. Is this something Arturia is working on?

[m-ac]

The controls are not really broken. Just misplaced. Change your controller setting in AL V to Keylab and it's back to normal. If you are using non-Arturia hardware, now it just defaults to minimal generic controls, and that's new since AL 4. Which you can override. An oversight. No conspiracy by the product managers and marketing folks.

I'm not talking about the lack of controllers shown on screen (which I know can be changed by changing controller type), I'm talking about the fact they changed all the interesting parameters the controllers used to be mapped to, to the generic brightness, timbre, send crap they have now.