A rant about synth & effect interfaces...

[Poliphilus]

I'm wondering if anyone shares my distaste for the norms in audio software interface design. Specifically, I'm thinking about software synths and effects, and their tendency to look like either 1) hardware synths and effects, or 2) spaceship consoles from low-budget science fiction movies.

 

Sure, they "look cool". And they look great in marketing material, in the QuickTime demos on Apple's site, and so on. But when you get down to it, that's really really really bad interface design. "Superficially nifty looking but ultimately clumsy and inelegant" is the type of interface design I expect from today's Microsoft, not Apple. Take something basic like ES1 for example. What are all these KNOBS doing on this GREEN PLASTIC SLAB on my screen?! It's like they didn't realize that the computer screen as an interface medium provides actual advantages over hardware. We're not constrained by mechanics or inflexible surface layout. Attaching LEDs and simple machines to a surface is not a good metaphor for windowed interface design!

 

Looking at the new version of Soundtrack Pro, it looks like Apple is making some positive changes in this area, at least in terms of making these interfaces a little bit more elegant on the surface. But for the most part, they're still a bunch of nonstandard widgets crammed into flat, unresizeable windows. I know you can get used to such interfaces -- I have no trouble navigating most of Logic Pro's included synths and effects, at least -- but why give people the extra trouble?

[editbrain]

if you do not like all the spaceship looking VI's you can select to view controls and get a bunch of sliders with a plain blue box.

[Jope]

If you don't like the GUIs of Logic's plugins, you don't have to use them, since you can switch to the controller view.

I do like the GUIs although I am aware they are just gadgets and waste of resources, but they don't really burden the CPU too much and are fun to play with. Why do people like tube amps? They sound better than semiconductor stuff, warmer and livlier? That may well be... But let's face it: It's the "magic" glow of the tubes that is inspiring us. The GUIs of Logic's plugins are eye-catchers, I find them neatly arranged and intuitive, and they do their job.

Just my point of view - you don't have to share it.

[Tarekith]

My biggest pet peeve on GUI's is that these days where many of us are using larger resolution monitors, they're just too damn small. I really wish it was possible to dynamically resize plug in interfaces to make them bigger. Especially bad in Logic from what I've seen in the week I've been using it.

 

It's 2007, I wish pro-audio app developers would realize that most of us are not using 1024x768 in this day and age.

[el-bo]

re-sizeable windows is way up on my wishlist

 

i used to lust after the 30' cinema screen, but when i saw it running lp7 at the apple store, was very dissapointed....great that you can have all your windows open at once, but no point if you can't see them....tiiineee plugins

 

my 17 macbook pro at native res is just too small...and at anything non-native it gets blurry...luckily, i have the best of both worlds....i use my monitor from my pc days (samsung 19' tft).....this means that i keep my arrange (resized and zoomed to preference) on the mbp and open plugins on the samsung ( native at 1280 x 1084)...

 

 

this way, the more cluttered gui's, especially exs24 (in dire need of a facelift) ,sculpture and ultrabeat start to actually become useable

also sliding pdf's/helpfiles etc onto the bigger screen makes for a much more joyful experience.......oh the joy

 

anyone with an extra monitor should try this....