linuxaudio.org

On 09/07/2010 10:51 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:

quoted text
> On Tue, 2010-09-07 at 22:35 +0200, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:

>

>> That said, I reckon that adding a few knobs here and there looks cool :) It can

>> bring some graphical balance and eye-candy, which may be very important. When

>> you make music, the UI look & feel has some emotional influence on you.

>

> I've said this all along - "photorealistic" GUIs for softsynths *aren't*

> pointless eyecandy.  How the app looks materially affects the way we

> respond to it and how we perceive its behaviour.  In an informal and

> not-terribly-controlled experiment, I set up three versions of nekobee.

> All had identical voice engines, the only difference between them being

> the knob and background pixmaps.  One was the "normal" silver with

> light-grey knobs, one was black with dark grey knobs, and one was a

> plasticky-looking red with black shiny plastic-looking knobs.  Of the

> four people who tried them, they *all* thought that the silver one

> sounded smoother, the black one had a warmer bassier sound and the red

> one had a more cutting, middle-y and distorted sound.

Interesting experiment :)
> Now, if you want to use a "generic" host-supplied UI, that's fine.  If

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> you want a GUI that uses standard toolkit elements (GtkVScale, for

> instance) that's fine too.  But - I think a softsynth has to *look* like

> something you want to fiddle with.  Even if it's just a screenshot, it's

> got to make you want to find one and have a shot of it.  Remember your

> first gearlust?  It's got to do that.

>

> As for little boxes with numbers, if I wanted to sit and fiddle with

> those I'd go and work out my tax rebate on a spreadsheet...

"something you want to fiddle with", I agree. Something that inspires you, I

would maybe say.
But, there's nothing absolute about this. If it's about inspiration then it's

highly subjective. For example, I just spent about a full week composing a song

on Renoise. It has plenty of those little boxes with numbers, it's not

photorealistic at all, but the UI is just beautiful to me, and it feels good.
It's very subjective.
When one chooses a guitar, not only the sound is important, but also the way it

feels and looks. Actually, a good guitar is a work of art in itself.
So, forget development, it's time for software lutherie ;)
--

  Olivier

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