[mmjaa]

The synthesizer world is a strange one. I've been working in and around it for a few decades and noticed a few things.

First of all, the Germans are winning. The synth market would have fallen to pieces if there weren't so many German manufacturers making cool synthesizers. Americans play guitar, Germans prefer keys. This wouldn't be a problem except that most of the German synthesizers are physically designed by a single individual - and his horrid design choices have propagated throughout the industry. Such things as having knobs placed too close to each other, such that you can't grab one with thumb and forefinger without also disturbing another. Or having LED's that wash out the panel so you can't see anything under low light (stage) conditions. Or, endless menu's to scroll through. Or, you know, different brands looking altogether too similar, since their designs were copy/pasted from the same designer.

Another weird thing about this industry is that everyone thinks standards suck until they themselves invent one, and expect everyone else to comply with it. Synthesizers with, functionally, the same basic engine are nevertheless entirely incompatible with each other.

There are two kinds of synth user: players and tweakers.

Players want better factory presets and don't care about making great new sounds as long as they have their rhodes and DX mono bass and so on - tweakers throw away the factory presets and want a better editing interface. This would be fine, except there is a secondary market of 'consultants' who write all the factory presets for most synth manufacturers, and they don't want their territory encroached on by tweakers. So, they have a lot to say about how complicated the UI should be, in order to protect their business model, and this propagates throughout the whole design phase, such that most synth UI's are a dogs breakfast of 'conveniently left out editing features that are not necessary because everyone just uses presets anyway'.

Its a very interesting market to observe from a tech perspective. Musicians are a fickle lot - 2 million new musicians are made every year (school music programs) which means that even if your product is mediocre, the new market bodies don't know better - you can get away with producing mundane things in those conditions. Musicians spend on average $500/month on new music gear (until GAS wears out/they get married), which means there is always a new toy to play with, even if its all been done before, so many times over.

[te_chris]

I mean the German thing isn't that surprising: Europe is the home of electronic music these days and Germany really kicked things off and still to this day has the thriving performance and retail scene that keeps it all going, a lot of it centered around Germany (specifcally Berlin and Hamburg). Not that it doesn't happen elsewhere in the world, but it's like a religion in a place like Berlin.

Interesting what you say about players and tweakers. Personally I think that's a bit too binary, but it is interseting to see softsynths with more intuitive UI's finally coming out, like Pigments from Arturia.

[mmjaa]

>a bit too binary

Every synth manufacturer has to make this conclusion at some point. A surprisingly large number of synth customers never get past the presets - its a dirty little secret of the business.

Not that there's anything wrong with this, of course - but it does make designing a "one UI for all" kind of difficult. It also explains why so many of the 'big manufacturers' focus mostly on player- interfaces, eschewing the work required to make more detailed editing surfaces.

However this is all changing - look at companies like Modal, who led the way with providing as sophisticated interfaces as necessary for both end-user types ..