[sdiy] Synth UI [was: Modular - sound or song]

[Seb Francis]

It's interesting reading the comments about analog having a more usable 
UI ..

I do agree that having a physical knob to control every parameter of a 
sound can be great, but to control what is possible in digital with 
physical knobs very quickly gets to the point where many parameters have 
to share the same knob, and then you start getting into buttons and 
menus (often on tiny LCD screens).  I can understand why this puts 
people off (it puts me off too!)

And computer based 'copycat' synths usually just emulate analog panel 
layouts on screen with a load of tiny controls.

But actually there are so many more ways that a synth UI can be 
implemented in computer based software.

This is actually another reason why I'm enjoying using the soft-synth I 
wrote about before (Native Instruments Massive).  You can tell they've 
actually gone back to first principles in designing the interface, 
rather than starting with the analog UI model like so many digital 
emulations.  One example is how the modulation matrix functionality is 
achieved.  Here's a pic of a knob:
http://www.native-instruments.com/uploads/pics/ScreenShot00019.jpg
Under every knob you have these little boxes which can hold a colour 
coded number or letter which correspond to a modulation sound: envelope 
(blue), LFO/step sequencer/etc. (green), keyboard velocity/etc 
(orange).  There's a tabbed panel where the modulation sources are 
edited and one simply drags and drops the desired tab to one of these 
little boxes under the knob.  Then by clicking and dragging up and down 
in each little box the modulation amount is set.  The clever bit is how 
it is visually represented as a coloured line around the knob which 
shows very clearly the range of modulation (bipolar signals like LFOs 
are shown by a 2-colour line to indicate polarity).  Plus of course the 
envelope/LFO/etc. sources themselves are all presented in a very visual way.

It may take a bit of mental adjustment to fully get to grips with these 
new ways of doing things, but IMO it's worth it when these new ways do 
really work well.

Seb

P.S. Does anyone consider instant patch recall a useful component of UI? ;)