This is gorgeous. I love how simple and clean the UI is; so many music and audio tools are just skeuomorphic hell (and don't support scaling so are even worse on HiDPI displays). This looks great without trying to look like a real device. It very effectively simulates a modular synth experience, without the limitations. It even simulates the quirky waveforms found on analog synths in a pretty convincing way. This is just impressive as hell on many fronts.
I don't see how to use it as a VST, though I see VST mentioned in the docs as a thing that will be implemented as a plugin, so I guess it's on the radar. It looks like it'd be possible to hook it up to an existing sequencer/DAW as a MIDI device, though I don't currently have any MIDI software or hardware on my Linux system, so can't test that theory.
All around, though, I can't believe I'd never heard of this. It's a great piece of work and sounds great ("great" in the sense of, "it's fun to tweak the knobs and the sounds that result are roughly what I would expect based on my experience with real analog synths and modular synths) in the few minutes of tinkering I've done. I love it.
Specifically the ones with fake metallic coloring, tiny hard-to-read numeric displays, etc. So, while VCV Rack does use rotary knobs (which is a little questionable), it's not an offensive attempt to look like real hardware.
I guess complaining about skeuomorphism while praising a UI that uses simulated cables is sort of weird, but I can't think of how else one might represent those connections in a clear manner. So, I guess I should just say it isn't skeuomorphic in ways that I find offensive, while many VSTs are. I find a lot of VSTs and audio software, in general, horrible to look at and to use because so much of it goes to such great lengths to pretend to be hardware, and it all looks different from every other piece of software, so every new tool has a huge new learning curve just to wrap your head around what the new weird colorful shapes mean. VCV Rack is consistent across all modules; all of its user interface elements are used the same way and there's only a few of them. I knew what I was looking at within seconds of starting it (though admittedly that required me to have used real-world modular synths in the past).
It’s funny because a lot of those synths are considered best in class..
Massive was the first widely popular wavetable synth and was considered quite usable.. until Serum came out. I personally think despite the knobs, it’s one of easiest to use and understand synths out there. It shows you visually how the filters, wave tables, and various parameters are being modulated in real time, and you can easily add new modulations and customize the LFOs to whatever shape you want.
Sylenth was and still is a go to subtractive synth, and Spire is considered a spiritual successor to it..
Diva itself is a virtual analog synth intended to accurately replicate the sound of actual hardware synths, so it of all the synths pictured there should look like them.
I suppose that maybe I’m just used to the way softsynths look and feel, but I see nothing inherently wrong with using knobs and a metallic look. The main problem I have is when synths give you no indication as to how things are being modulated in real time, which is why Serum is my favorite synth - it does a fantastic job of that, knobs or not
Yes, they're all popular and well-regarded. And, even though I've used real synths for decades, I don't generally find the UI on these synths to be a nice experience. Some are better than others, but they're nearly all much harder to read than a UI that adheres to OS UI guidelines would be. Most are not scalable, and so are literally unusable for me (my eyesight isn't what it used to be, even with corrective lenses, and it's never been great), unless I change the resolution of my display. Even at 1080p many are too small on my 15" laptop, and I usually run at and prefer to run at 4k.
The type used is often abysmal. Pretending to be a squinty little LCD panel, for example, when we have infinite pixels is just plain stupid. The only reason old synths had those little panels was because big panels were expensive and graphical displays (CRTs) were too big to put into a keyboard form factor. It makes no sense to use the beautiful displays we have today and use them to reproduce all the compromises of a former era, but it is almost universal. Nearly all of the most popular VSTs impose these kinds of ugly restrictions on their UI.
In short: A lot of VSTs are barely legible, ugly, utterly inaccessible, and just all around stubbornly wrong on usability for the sake of looking "cool".
There's nostalgia for a simpler time, which I understand, and then there's the sadistic UI abuses found in many VST plugins (and audio software in general), which I abhor.
I liked Reason's approach, where the connections could be adjusted on the "back side" of the modules (skeuomorphism strikes again). Reaktor also keeps the wiring separate from interactive elements.
Gotcha. I agree non scalable 'photorealistic' design on audio plugins and apps in particular do hinder usability. And yes, rotary knobs on screen are not always great.
> I don't see how to use it as a VST, though I see VST mentioned in the docs as a thing that will be implemented as a plugin, so I guess it's on the radar.
Correct. For the time being, it is possible to do some audio/midi routing to make it work in a DAW using 3rd-party utilities. (Easier on a Mac which already comes with the ability to create virtual MIDI devices, and composite audio devices.) From there you can set it up as an "external" instrument in most DAWs.
I don't see how to use it as a VST, though I see VST mentioned in the docs as a thing that will be implemented as a plugin, so I guess it's on the radar. It looks like it'd be possible to hook it up to an existing sequencer/DAW as a MIDI device, though I don't currently have any MIDI software or hardware on my Linux system, so can't test that theory.
All around, though, I can't believe I'd never heard of this. It's a great piece of work and sounds great ("great" in the sense of, "it's fun to tweak the knobs and the sounds that result are roughly what I would expect based on my experience with real analog synths and modular synths) in the few minutes of tinkering I've done. I love it.