Author Topic: A GUI rant..... (Read 18381 times)

omissis · « **on:** February 15, 2005, 01:33:49 pm »

Hi

I was just wondering if any change can be made to the general GUIs...the question is : is there REALLY a need to show values pop-ups when moving sliders/knobs ? I figured this while playing my CS-80V .In my thoughts the popups prevent the sliders to be smoother and the value changing adds annoying digital stepping to controls (especially to the Performance controls which, since they are the most immediate controls for the overall sounds they HAVE to be smoother than ever!!!) even with slow moving and takes off the feeling...the best examples, talking about my synth lay in the Ring Modulator section :the speed has drastical changes when moved I mean digital stepping , and so with Brilliance Resonance and Mix controls.....it would be great if these popups can be switched of or better abolished for what is worth ....I mean did you find any encoding display on Mgs, Yamahas and Arps???

Can anyone give me any opinion?

marinedalek · « **Reply #1 on:** February 15, 2005, 04:57:08 pm »

I don't find that the slider popups noticably slow the CS80v's performance. If fact I use them real-time quite often. (1.66 Ghz Athlon XP, 256MB RAM, WinXP). I find them especially useful on frequency controls.

omissis · « **Reply #2 on:** February 15, 2005, 05:51:42 pm »

Well it's not a matter of slowing a performance, it's more about the rendering's quality. Even my performance isn't compromised but the digital stepping ( surely related to popups ) sucks! Some synths don't report a numeric value when moving knobs / sliders and their performance seems to be somehow smoother ( Synth1 is one of them IMHO ). Look at RM speed and move a lever with mouse at high values : there the popups show increases of about 100Hz per step....don't you notice that annoying stepping? Damn... I hate it :evil:

marinedalek · « **Reply #3 on:** February 15, 2005, 06:21:08 pm »

You could move the slider using right-click to get a smoother response with smaller subdivisions, is that what you mean?

omissis · « **Reply #4 on:** February 15, 2005, 06:29:56 pm »

Well
I must thank you since I didn't notice there was this option too....it goes a bit better :oops: :oops: Anyway it could have been more useful to have a smoother behaviour with one function...the drawback of moving and rightclicking is....you haven't enough space :wink:

Man-Machine · « **Reply #5 on:** March 28, 2005, 05:11:03 pm »

Arturia, have you guys decided on the new GUI for the synths? I know you're working on it for the updates and I was wondering what kind of modifications are you guys doing...

FabP · « **Reply #6 on:** March 29, 2005, 12:19:20 pm »

We work on the updates mainly on some improvements about some particular cases of synthesis, but for GUIs (in particular the CS80 V one..),
we have not decided for the moment.
I know that a bigger GUI for CS-80 V would be great, but it implies a lot of work from the graphists and from the programmers.

Didz@dron · « **Reply #7 on:** March 29, 2005, 12:42:34 pm »

What's the prob with the GUI's ? I find them quite nice

omissis · « **Reply #8 on:** March 29, 2005, 01:19:18 pm »

I know I'm late to say this , anyway I feel yet comfortable with the actual GUI appearance , the only things that could ever matter about me were few and limited to CS-80V only:

- restore the original " color code " for the panel presets

- give the virtual ribbon the ability to work the same way of the original, that's with no glided return

- make the sliders and levers as smooth as possible

Man-Machine · « **Reply #9 on:** March 30, 2005, 12:53:17 am »

I am more of a unity type of guy and it seems to me that for every release Arturia decided to go different directions in regards to GUI. I personally like GUIs that are practical and also resemble the original hardware synth. But in the end, practicality comes before looks for me. Also, sometimes the original GUI of the hardware synth doesn't translate so well to a softsynth and adjustments need to be made. Maybe it works from a hardware perspective but not software (and some even had original hardware GUI flaws to start with). Anyway, things could be rearranged and still keep the feeling of the original. The Korg Legacy came up with a good solution by having a button switch between the pretty GUI and the practical GUI. It pleases everybody that way. I think Arturia synths are beautiful looking but need some tweaking to make them more practical. Actually, not just Arturia, but many other softsynths could use some of the same tweaking too...

That "hands on" feeling is still a reason why some people like hardware over software. Of course a lot of controllers have dedicated knobs and slides that can send CCs but there's always parameters you can't map and you have go for the mouse. It's almost inevitable, even on softsynths with dedicated controllers like the MS-20 you still need the mouse for switching patches and other settings not available on the hardware controller. There's nothing practical or intuitive about being very precise with the mouse on a small spot on the screen and keeping a steady hand while changing parameters. Too busy GUIs tend to make the parameters too small on the screen and cause that. Also, you may have to squint to see the values for these parameters. Being able to see the synthesizer keys is also not a necessity. It takes real state out of the screen making everything else smaller.

I also think the keyboard should be used more frequently to avoid mouse usage. I've been a software developer for years and this has been the most requested GUI feature since DOS. It's easier and faster to press a keyboard button than a virtual small button with the mouse. Things like changing banks and selecting patches with the arrow keys or perhaps changing views or pages with the pgup and pgdown, etc. could benefit from it.