[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.