[Kuraj]

The article itself is very interesting but the skeuomorphic UI looks horrible to use - especially the knobs, because there is no intuitive AND practical way to emulate twisting stuff with a mouse pointer.

Can anyone with practical experience with this tool share their opinion?

[FigBug]

I hate skeuomorphic UI and wish it would die. The number of users that have ever used a hardware compressor, eq, gate, analog synth etc is much smaller than the number of users that have grown up creating music completely on their PC. I think it makes more sense to focus on the second group.

The plugins I work on tend to look more like software than any piece of hardware. I still use knobs because they are more efficient use of screen real estate. When you click / drag them, left is decrease, right is increase. You don't need to drag around like a physical knob.

Here is one set of plugins I did: https://www.tracktion.com/products/daw-essentials-collection

[fit2rule]

Its really nice to see your work, it does indeed represent the non-skeu way of going, but .. you lost me at knob.

I mean, it is a bit of a cop-out, and you can't go "skeu is the sux" and then .. just use it.

My question to you, then, is: how would you re-do the knob? It is a uniquely viable control; but lets say you -had- to get rid of it. What, then?

[FigBug]

Sliders. Tracktion Waveform, the DAW I also work on uses almost no knobs. (I think the only one is pan on the mixer). The problem with them is that they are big. When we don't have room we make them small and then a bigger one pops up when you click on it.

[Kuraj]

Check out the UI of Adobe Photoshop.

They use numeric text boxes which also pop a slider when given focus.

You can also let the users drag the textbox left and right directly (with some visual cue), thus achieving the same functionality as the current implementation, but still without getting in the way of someone who just prefers to use the textbox normally.

[indigochill]

No experience with this exact tool, but I use Reason which is a DAW with a Skeumorphic UI (right down to connecting components with virtual wires) and I find knob-fiddling to work just fine for me. The knobs read from my mouse scroll wheel when I hover the cursor over them. And in some (most?) cases, there's also a value field I can edit directly if I want to be precise.

Or if I want to automate a gradual knob change over time as the song plays, I can either record myself "scrolling" the knob or draw the change into an automation track (and again, can set precise values for knob values at precise times if I want to).

But of course, professionals own hardware that they connect to the DAW, which renders most of that stuff irrelevant.

[tomc1985]

Music plugins have to have skeumorphic UIs, nobody wants to twist generic looking knobs. C'mon man, these are artists, they are not the average muggle.

If designers from this world got ahold of the music scene from that world plugins would get considerably worse, as UI's would be the focus of intense simplification, leaving complex features and their power users by the wayside.

[jpfed]

Is there any actual evidence that "nobody wants to twist generic looking knobs"? It seems like a widespread assumption, but I don't know to what extent it's been measured or tested.

I, for example, am a nobody (a hobbyist musician) who dislikes most custom VST UIs. Back in the day, FL Studio (nee Fruityloops) shipped with a bunch of plugins that looked like they had an autogenerated UI, with every parameter getting its own controls (a knob, numeric readout, and visual bar)... and I liked them. No cruft, and it was easy to systematically manipulate each control to determine its effect on the sound.

[tomc1985]

I know exactly of that auto-generated UI (I also do hobbyist stuff with FL) and I hated it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

There's also the unintended side effect that now I know how to operate studio recording equipment because skeumorphic UI taught me how so many of these things work.

[arximboldi]

No they don't. Best audio software does not have skewmorphic UI's. I personally prefer minimalist looks. Ableton Live is a good example in the other direction.

[tomc1985]

Again, different strokes for different folks. Ableton is popular but so is FLStudio, iZotope plugins, Cubase, or ProTools. I am thankful this trend towards functional minimalism for ease-of-use is relatively contained in the music software scene.

[fundamental]

I would disagree with regards to the usability of knobs. They represent the information that would otherwise be presented in a numeric text box or a slider in a much more compact space (since it's angular vs. linear displacement) and the mouse based interaction generally is the same as a slider (grab and then move vertically to change or move vertically with a modifier for fine grained movement).

There are applications out there which use angular drag/mouse information when grabbing knobs, but they are the tiny minority (and as you can guess there's all sorts of issues doing so).

[AstralStorm]

As a bonus you get zero precision as manifested by endless fiddling to set the control just right. If it is digital, give a nice digital input. If you want, feel free to also give a clickable interface of the knob but please let dragging die, and always provide numeric input.

[dkersten]

Yeah... audio software, especially VST plugins, have a tendency to 1) all invent their own UI styling and 2) use skeuomorphic designs. I wish this trend would stop, but it doesn't look at all likely.

[Kuraj]

It has its upsides, I guess - such as it would be instant to learn (if a bit cumbersome to use) for someone who already has experience with physical interfaces.

[zwerdlds]

It's been a while since I used these UIs, but usually what happens is you click on the knob and it turns into a vertical slider. Not so bad really.

The skeumorphic UI lets you move between the physical panel and the GUI pretty seamlessly. Not saying there isn't a better option, but this at least is pretty nice for beginners.

[dkersten]

Except for a few emulations of hardware, most of these UI's don't correlate to a physical panel and the lack of consistency between the various virtual-only ones, IMHO, negates any benefit from a consistency point of view. Having something look like a physical knob is one thing, but when each plugin you have has its own different style of "physical knob" design, I find it gets messy personally.

[p0nce]

Dragging knobs up and down is the standard way to interact with audio software.