Instruments • Re: Best / worst synth gui

When something is beautifully done and easy to use, it's insanely inspiring to dig into.

But it isn't "beautifully done", it feels entirely unmusical to me and, I imagine, anyone who has every worked with hardware instruments. It looks like a spreadsheet.

Coming from my share of hardware instruments (though ditching most over the last 20 years), most hardware instruments are not intuitive until you grasp the basics, and many do share the same basic workflow. But you still need to familiarize with each interface because they try to look 'unique'. Software emulations tend to keep the same original layout to not throw off the old-timers who are intimately familiar with the original, plus nostalgia and all that.

Course there's the scrolly-screen era like the K2000 and plenty others which absolutely sucked, but I suppose sorta bridged the gap at the time.

Vital is so easy to understand, drag controls, setup insane things, just a dream really.

What synths aren't easy to understand? They are pretty much all just variations on a handful of well established themes. Even the DX-7 was easy to understand, just impossible to get sounds out of.

Sure but we're talking GUI, still I know what you mean. With Vital's GUI we can drag controls around with precise plus or minus values with absolute ease all on one screen, adjust to taste and all while instantly mapping to the matrix. Most everything is done from the main interface not needing to jump around various spots, inputting values, or guess what it's doing. It's almost entirely visual, pleasing at that and perfectly clear, with no over-done bling and eye bloat.

Most synth guis look like 1970 O-scopes and are just as difficult to understand/route.:

Really? What's so hard about it? Again, they are all just variations on a few themes. If you know how one of them works, then any of them become easy to understand.

Sure, but again we're talking GUI. A good gui allows even newcomers to get going without much head-scratching on how to get something done, even more complicated routing. Vital has this in spades.

It took me a long time to get grips with o-scopes during the military, though to be fair it was more about what you were troubleshooting and looking for than how to adjust the unit. I just thought the photo would be a cute comparison, doubted many would even know what an o-scope was.

Statistics: Posted by Psuper — Fri Oct 11, 2024 2:38 am

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