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Question for music folks (I've played with modular synths but only in a superficial, toying-around way): is this skeuomorphic paradigm really the best way to do

Question for music folks (I've played with modular synths but only in a superficial, toying-around way): is this skeuomorphic paradigm really the best way to do this? With a physical system, running wires everywhere might be the only way to do it, but it seems like in software you have more options on how you manage to connect all your components together, and how those components are laid out on the screen. But since this tangle-of-wires design is popular, perhaps it really is the way to go?

dmicah 5y ago
No, but there were already other software synthesis options available for people who don't want a skeuomorphic interface, as various levels of complexity - Max/MSP, PureData, Reaktor, CSound, SuperCollider, Audulus, KarmaFX, etc.
Applejinx 5y ago
I don't think so. The project that got my love was Bespoke, which is node-based but not skeuomorphic :) Right now I'm polishing a hybrid system, with hardware Eurorack coming into Bespoke through multichannel audio.
papandada 5y ago
Only a partial answer because I never get around to digging into it myself, but there is at least one other paradigm out there, "live coding", such as supercollider, csound, uh, more I'm sure.
- martyvis 5y ago
  Sonic Pi and Chuck are two others
tomcam 5y ago
Absolutely not, in my opinion. And I was using those rack systems 50 years ago when it was all they had. For a good UI try Korg Gadget 2 on iOS.
- tomcam 5y ago
  I don’t mean to denigrate the VCV team, who do amazing work. I love everything but the UI, but I also understand it’s the UI they wanted. But even as a kid I couldn’t wait for patch cords to be replaced.
fredoliveira 5y ago
I guess the design ethos of Rack is really to be a software-based Eurorack "simulation", and in that case, being fully skeuomorphic makes sense — you can't have eurorack without the rack system or the wires for CV/audio. That said, in general, what you see in software is a lot different. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread is Ableton Live (that has been around for many years) and is a DAW with a very clear design language that is all about the workflow and quite far from any real world device. But that's not to say that either approach is right/wrong - they both work.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  There are essentially no dataflows within Live that model what happens in Rack. That's not true in some other DAWs, and is certainly not true in various other audio software. Consequently, Live's approach to "what you see" is just not an appropriate comparison here. It's different, but that's because it's really a completely different kind of workflow, not just "a different way of doing similar things".
siver_john 5y ago
With respect to why the developer of this particular developer went the way he did, he specifically wanted to give people the feeling of working with a modular synth. So while strictly speaking it may be "better" that was not the goal. The developer in particular has always been fascinated with the tactile experience.
gfour 5y ago
This isn't just skeuomorphism as found in e.g. a VST plugin with a sci-fi UI or a patching language with a UI resembling studio-like effect chains. This is a simulator of a real implementation of modular patching (Eurorack), for example signals mimic real Volt scaling and the dark mode is like actually dimming your room lights. So, questions of how to "develop" in this mindset can also be directed to users of the actual hardware, who do not go through a computer UI.
udbhavs 5y ago
It's certainly messy because it tries to mimic the hardware 1:1, but there are more ergonomic alternatives. Some examples: Bitwig's Grid (https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/ https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/) and Patcher in FL Studio (https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-learning/fl-studio-online-manual/html/plugins/Patcher.htm https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-learning/fl-studio-onli...). Afaik there is no equivalent in Ableton which I really miss sometimes (unless you consider Max4Live which is on a different level of usability).
- JodieBenitez 5y ago
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  What do you think that Rack "tries to mimic [ from hardware ]" that Bitwig's grid does not? Are you just refering to the knobs etc.? If so, that's not in Rack's domain at all: module developers control their module's appearance, and there some which are extremely skeuomorphic, and some which are not. Bitwig's Grid is uniform and consistently non-skeuomorphic, but is also (IIUC) not open to 3rd party device/module development.
squeaky-clean 5y ago
I prefer it for synths that are very modular like these. There are other synths with just as deep a modulation capabilities and capabilities to route inputs and outputs and create feedback loops, etc. But the jumbled mess of cables is easier to follow than a big table of dropdowns, or a massive N x N matrix, or dynamic labels that appear over controls being modulated. But also part of the whole thing with modular synthesizers is you use whatever modules you want. As few as you want, or as many as your CPU can handle (or more if you're willing to ditch realtime). So you would need a UI paradigm that can work for 2 modules with a couple inputs and outputs each, but also with a massive rack of hundreds of modules with up to dozen of inputs and outputs each. Do I want my fifth VCO to plug into input 3 of my fourth VCA? I'd rather just follow a cable visually. Some synths do have a great UI that works for them. Razor and the original Massive are still among my favorite UI's for usability. But they're also more limited in their scope. (Yeah Massive is a really complex synth and could be your only synth for life, but true modular emulation style synths have an infinitely higher ceiling of possibilities).
popctrl 5y ago
I have experience with physical eurorack modular synths, visual sound programming tools (VCV rack, Max, audioweaver), and DSP programming (Supercollider, Matlab). I think the simulated wires paradigm IS the best one...for someone who doesn't want to learn at least programming and probably also matrix algebra. In my experience, sound code is generally a LOT of ugly boilerplate code surrounding a few really brilliant lines of code that require years of education to understand. But in a code-based version of VCV rack, the brilliant code would all be inside some object. You're essentially dealing with connected one-directional graphs of arbitrary complexity. Feedback loops are required for the eurorack experience. That's pretty easy to lay out visually, but I haven't seen good ways of laying it out in code. There's room for innovation here; Someone in the programming world has a more intuitive, more informative way of visualizing data in a graph that could be adapted into DAW paradigms.
- sporklpony 5y ago
  You might be curious to check out Faust[0] which is a functional programming language specifically designed for audio dsp, sort of based on a simulated-wire structure. [0]: https://faust.grame.fr/ https://faust.grame.fr/
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Faust really operates at a much lower level than Rack. You could write a Rack module with Faust, but you wouldn't (probably) do the sorts of things you do in Rack in Faust.
kall 5y ago
I find working with "modules and wires" interfaces that embrace digital more productive/fun but I can see the appeal. Two patching UIs that I really like are Audulus and Reaktor. I like the panel/patching split in reaktor, but it‘s an extra abstraction. They added "front panel patching" after all, so it must be more appealing to some people.. Audulus with it‘s parameters+patching on one level but no skeumorphism is at the other side of the spectrum.
- icambron 5y ago
  Right, I found Audulus 3 much more intuitive when playing around (I have the iPad app). It was skeuomorphic in the sense that the components were little doodads you connect together, but, yeah, the patching and "space" was much more...softwareish?
njharman 5y ago
> do this? What is "this" for you? For me it is a cheap intro/evaluation tool for the very expensive Eurorack hobby. To meet that goal it must be skeuomorphic. I can mess around with VCV + maybe a cheap (relatively) midi control to get some physicality. To discover my interest is superficial and lasts only a few months. Saving me from thousands of dollars of more "toys" that just sit on shelf.
- icambron 5y ago
  Fair; I get that if we're simulating a physical system and just trying to be as faithful as possible, the virtual one will look just like the physical one, and inherit its limitations. But I guess by "this" I mean "making the sounds I want to make". If I'm interested in composing modular software components into a synth without regard to its physical analog, a wider range of designs is available for how "composition" or even "component" are reified. But the patch-cables-between-2d-boxes paradigm still seems dominant in that domain too, from my casual browsing of it.
mortenjorck 5y ago
In general, the wire tangle is an integral part of any signal-routing system, whether physical wires in hardware, a replication of those wires in software, or a less skeuomorphic box-and-pin model like Reaktor (which itself has a hardware-style layer with "cables" called Reaktor Blocks). The one drawback I find to replicating hardware, as VCV Rack does, versus something originating in the digital realm, is that more complex modules bring over their hardware-based UI compromises. An example of this is the Plaits module from Mutable Instruments, called "Macro Oscillator 2" in VCV Rack. The hardware Plaits module is very compact, and uses a series of LEDs with little icons next to them to denote which DSP algorithm it's running. The only way to know what anything does is to look up that icon in the manual and read what each of the knobs do in that mode. In a software-first paradigm, the UI would use a software UI pattern rather than a hardware one, most likely a drop-down menu instead of a row of icons, and the labels on the knobs would change based on the mode (this is actually how a port I'm working on of Plaits to the Reason environment is designed). All that said, many modules in VCV Rack are quite simple and would be no different if they originated in software. Things like basic oscillators, envelope generators, and filters need no manual diving if you understand the fundamentals.
syntheweave 5y ago
To convey freeform "modularity" sends you in one of two directions: visual diagram notation of this sort, and source code "audio programming languages", eg Supercollider, which let you define things more symbolically/declaratively. To simplify this interface you have to relax the assumption that you will create a graph with arbitrary feedback loops: then your signal path can be acyclic or linear. Most things you will want to do in sound design use feedback in a very limited sense(e.g. a delay line effect) and can be turned into black boxes for a linear chain. Linear by itself is slightly too little power since you do want to mix and split signals at various points, and most commercial synthesizers use a "semi-modular" design that assumes a linear default and then adds particular methods of choosing modulation input at various points. Regardless, modular's power to do anything is tempting to dive into. It's just a case of "not worth the effort" most of the time since having any input anywhere creates multitudes of obscure ways to get no output.

dmicah 5y ago

No, but there were already other software synthesis options available for people who don't want a skeuomorphic interface, as various levels of complexity - Max/MSP, PureData, Reaktor, CSound, SuperCollider, Audulus, KarmaFX, etc.

Applejinx 5y ago

I don't think so. The project that got my love was Bespoke, which is node-based but not skeuomorphic :) Right now I'm polishing a hybrid system, with hardware Eurorack coming into Bespoke through multichannel audio.

papandada 5y ago

Only a partial answer because I never get around to digging into it myself, but there is at least one other paradigm out there, "live coding", such as supercollider, csound, uh, more I'm sure.

martyvis 5y ago
Sonic Pi and Chuck are two others

tomcam 5y ago

Absolutely not, in my opinion. And I was using those rack systems 50 years ago when it was all they had. For a good UI try Korg Gadget 2 on iOS.

tomcam 5y ago
I don’t mean to denigrate the VCV team, who do amazing work. I love everything but the UI, but I also understand it’s the UI they wanted. But even as a kid I couldn’t wait for patch cords to be replaced.

fredoliveira 5y ago

I guess the design ethos of Rack is really to be a software-based Eurorack "simulation", and in that case, being fully skeuomorphic makes sense — you can't have eurorack without the rack system or the wires for CV/audio. That said, in general, what you see in software is a lot different. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread is Ableton Live (that has been around for many years) and is a DAW with a very clear design language that is all about the workflow and quite far from any real world device. But that's not to say that either approach is right/wrong - they both work.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
There are essentially no dataflows within Live that model what happens in Rack. That's not true in some other DAWs, and is certainly not true in various other audio software. Consequently, Live's approach to "what you see" is just not an appropriate comparison here. It's different, but that's because it's really a completely different kind of workflow, not just "a different way of doing similar things".

siver_john 5y ago

With respect to why the developer of this particular developer went the way he did, he specifically wanted to give people the feeling of working with a modular synth. So while strictly speaking it may be "better" that was not the goal. The developer in particular has always been fascinated with the tactile experience.

gfour 5y ago

This isn't just skeuomorphism as found in e.g. a VST plugin with a sci-fi UI or a patching language with a UI resembling studio-like effect chains. This is a simulator of a real implementation of modular patching (Eurorack), for example signals mimic real Volt scaling and the dark mode is like actually dimming your room lights. So, questions of how to "develop" in this mindset can also be directed to users of the actual hardware, who do not go through a computer UI.

udbhavs 5y ago

It's certainly messy because it tries to mimic the hardware 1:1, but there are more ergonomic alternatives. Some examples: Bitwig's Grid (https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/ https://www.bitwig.com/the-grid/) and Patcher in FL Studio (https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-learning/fl-studio-online-manual/html/plugins/Patcher.htm https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio-learning/fl-studio-onli...). Afaik there is no equivalent in Ableton which I really miss sometimes (unless you consider Max4Live which is on a different level of usability).

JodieBenitez 5y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
What do you think that Rack "tries to mimic [ from hardware ]" that Bitwig's grid does not? Are you just refering to the knobs etc.? If so, that's not in Rack's domain at all: module developers control their module's appearance, and there some which are extremely skeuomorphic, and some which are not. Bitwig's Grid is uniform and consistently non-skeuomorphic, but is also (IIUC) not open to 3rd party device/module development.

squeaky-clean 5y ago

I prefer it for synths that are very modular like these. There are other synths with just as deep a modulation capabilities and capabilities to route inputs and outputs and create feedback loops, etc. But the jumbled mess of cables is easier to follow than a big table of dropdowns, or a massive N x N matrix, or dynamic labels that appear over controls being modulated. But also part of the whole thing with modular synthesizers is you use whatever modules you want. As few as you want, or as many as your CPU can handle (or more if you're willing to ditch realtime). So you would need a UI paradigm that can work for 2 modules with a couple inputs and outputs each, but also with a massive rack of hundreds of modules with up to dozen of inputs and outputs each. Do I want my fifth VCO to plug into input 3 of my fourth VCA? I'd rather just follow a cable visually. Some synths do have a great UI that works for them. Razor and the original Massive are still among my favorite UI's for usability. But they're also more limited in their scope. (Yeah Massive is a really complex synth and could be your only synth for life, but true modular emulation style synths have an infinitely higher ceiling of possibilities).

popctrl 5y ago

I have experience with physical eurorack modular synths, visual sound programming tools (VCV rack, Max, audioweaver), and DSP programming (Supercollider, Matlab). I think the simulated wires paradigm IS the best one...for someone who doesn't want to learn at least programming and probably also matrix algebra. In my experience, sound code is generally a LOT of ugly boilerplate code surrounding a few really brilliant lines of code that require years of education to understand. But in a code-based version of VCV rack, the brilliant code would all be inside some object. You're essentially dealing with connected one-directional graphs of arbitrary complexity. Feedback loops are required for the eurorack experience. That's pretty easy to lay out visually, but I haven't seen good ways of laying it out in code. There's room for innovation here; Someone in the programming world has a more intuitive, more informative way of visualizing data in a graph that could be adapted into DAW paradigms.

sporklpony 5y ago
You might be curious to check out Faust[0] which is a functional programming language specifically designed for audio dsp, sort of based on a simulated-wire structure. [0]: https://faust.grame.fr/ https://faust.grame.fr/
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Faust really operates at a much lower level than Rack. You could write a Rack module with Faust, but you wouldn't (probably) do the sorts of things you do in Rack in Faust.

kall 5y ago

I find working with "modules and wires" interfaces that embrace digital more productive/fun but I can see the appeal. Two patching UIs that I really like are Audulus and Reaktor. I like the panel/patching split in reaktor, but it‘s an extra abstraction. They added "front panel patching" after all, so it must be more appealing to some people.. Audulus with it‘s parameters+patching on one level but no skeumorphism is at the other side of the spectrum.

icambron 5y ago
Right, I found Audulus 3 much more intuitive when playing around (I have the iPad app). It was skeuomorphic in the sense that the components were little doodads you connect together, but, yeah, the patching and "space" was much more...softwareish?

njharman 5y ago

> do this? What is "this" for you? For me it is a cheap intro/evaluation tool for the very expensive Eurorack hobby. To meet that goal it must be skeuomorphic. I can mess around with VCV + maybe a cheap (relatively) midi control to get some physicality. To discover my interest is superficial and lasts only a few months. Saving me from thousands of dollars of more "toys" that just sit on shelf.

icambron 5y ago
Fair; I get that if we're simulating a physical system and just trying to be as faithful as possible, the virtual one will look just like the physical one, and inherit its limitations. But I guess by "this" I mean "making the sounds I want to make". If I'm interested in composing modular software components into a synth without regard to its physical analog, a wider range of designs is available for how "composition" or even "component" are reified. But the patch-cables-between-2d-boxes paradigm still seems dominant in that domain too, from my casual browsing of it.

mortenjorck 5y ago

In general, the wire tangle is an integral part of any signal-routing system, whether physical wires in hardware, a replication of those wires in software, or a less skeuomorphic box-and-pin model like Reaktor (which itself has a hardware-style layer with "cables" called Reaktor Blocks). The one drawback I find to replicating hardware, as VCV Rack does, versus something originating in the digital realm, is that more complex modules bring over their hardware-based UI compromises. An example of this is the Plaits module from Mutable Instruments, called "Macro Oscillator 2" in VCV Rack. The hardware Plaits module is very compact, and uses a series of LEDs with little icons next to them to denote which DSP algorithm it's running. The only way to know what anything does is to look up that icon in the manual and read what each of the knobs do in that mode. In a software-first paradigm, the UI would use a software UI pattern rather than a hardware one, most likely a drop-down menu instead of a row of icons, and the labels on the knobs would change based on the mode (this is actually how a port I'm working on of Plaits to the Reason environment is designed). All that said, many modules in VCV Rack are quite simple and would be no different if they originated in software. Things like basic oscillators, envelope generators, and filters need no manual diving if you understand the fundamentals.

syntheweave 5y ago

To convey freeform "modularity" sends you in one of two directions: visual diagram notation of this sort, and source code "audio programming languages", eg Supercollider, which let you define things more symbolically/declaratively. To simplify this interface you have to relax the assumption that you will create a graph with arbitrary feedback loops: then your signal path can be acyclic or linear. Most things you will want to do in sound design use feedback in a very limited sense(e.g. a delay line effect) and can be turned into black boxes for a linear chain. Linear by itself is slightly too little power since you do want to mix and split signals at various points, and most commercial synthesizers use a "semi-modular" design that assumes a linear default and then adds particular methods of choosing modulation input at various points. Regardless, modular's power to do anything is tempting to dive into. It's just a case of "not worth the effort" most of the time since having any input anywhere creates multitudes of obscure ways to get no output.