rank your synths by interface/programming ease

[druzz]

organized knobs
logical menus
practicality
control /feel

[pflosi]

hmm this is not so easy, because the more options for programming one gets, the more complex the synth is.

e.g. i like the interface of the A6, but it has so many options that it takes quite some time to make a nice patch, say a pad (a bass is too easy...). so, e.g. on a juno 60, one can programm a pad in 3 minutes and it will sound nice, but it will not be as complex as the one on the andy.

so which one has the better interface?

one thing is for sure, the A6 is the only synth that will keep me fighting with its menu... no other menu synths

[Neonlights84]

hmm this is not so easy, because the more options for programming one gets, the more complex the synth is.

e.g. i like the interface of the A6, but it has so many options that it takes quite some time to make a nice patch, say a pad (a bass is too easy...). so, e.g. on a juno 60, one can programm a pad in 3 minutes and it will sound nice, but it will not be as complex as the one on the andy.

so which one has the better interface?

one thing is for sure, the A6 is the only synth that will keep me fighting with its menu... no other menu synths

This is an interesting point. My Ion would appear to be a doddle to use, as it is riddled with knobs, and my LP has but 4, with many membrane buttons along for the ride. So which is easier to program? The Ion has all the controls, but has far more under the hood that the LP does. In fact, it is downright harder to use in some respects despite its interface. In order to do something as simple has inducing PWM, one has to go into the Mod Matrix and connect an LFO to the desired oscillators' waveshape. Doing this on an LP is as simple as hitting a a button or two and jacking up the mod wheel. For the sake of things, i shall rate my way to an answer


Alesis Ion
Organized knobs: 9/10
Logical Menus: 9/10
Practicality: 7/10
Control/Feel: 10/10

Total Score: 35/40

Moog Little Phatty

Organized knobs: 10/10
Logical Menus: 8/10
Practicality: 9/10
Control/Feel: 8:10

Total Score: 35/40

And the winner is....c**p.

[Stab Frenzy]

How does practicality work in the context of a synth? if it has a bottle opener? also I think organised knobs and logical menus are kind of opposites, if you've got organised knobs you don't need any menus. control/feel has been covered in threads already.

overall i give this thread a D+, and that's mostly just for effort. people will still post in it though cause it's a list thread, and they'll just put in their little bit without bothering to read any of the other people's answers. including this one, so it's really a mystery why i bothered...

[pflosi]

[retrosounds]

Out of 5-

ESQ-1
organized knobs 1/5 (Two sliders)
logical menus 5/5
practicality 5/5
control /feel 5/5

DS-8
organized knobs 2/5 (Six sliders)
logical menus 2/5 (It's FM)
practicality 3/5
control /feel 4/5

Poly-800
organized knobs 1/5
logical menus 4/5
practicality 3/5
control /feel 2/5 (Feels like a toy)

Alpha Juno-2
organized knobs 2/5 (Would be a 4/5 with the PG-300)
logical menus 3/5
practicality 2/5
control /feel 3/5 (Nice, but the aftertouch is way to hard to trigger)

ESQ-1 is the obvious winner for me

[madtheory]

overall i give this thread a D+, and that's mostly just for effort. people will still post in it though cause it's a list thread, and they'll just put in their little bit without bothering to read any of the other people's answers. including this one, so it's really a mystery why i bothered...

Post of the month!

[cornutt]

How does practicality work in the context of a synth? if it has a bottle opener? also I think organised knobs and logical menus are kind of opposites, if you've got organised knobs you don't need any menus. control/feel has been covered in threads already.

I don't know if I buy this, because past a certain point, a synth can just have too many darn parameters. You can't cram it all onto the panel, and if you try, you wind up with a mess. Ever seen one of those Jellinghaus DX-7 programmers? (Modulars don't count here, because on a modular, effectively the panel space can expand to be as big as it needs to be. It's just a question of whether it fits in the room or not. )

With this in mind, I'll take a crack at it. I'll divide my synths into medium-complexity, where it would be reasonable to expect most of the parameters to be on the panel, and high-complexity synths, where menus are expected. In doing this, I will only consider what you can do from the panel; I won't consider computer editing. And it's natural that the rackmounts will rank lower.

Medium complexity synths

Juno-106: Still on of the cleanest and most logical panel layouts ever (actually this is true of most of the Jupiter/Juno line). Good grouping, clear labeling, well-done scales for the controls. This is of course from Roland's everything-is-a-slider period, but in a way I like that; it certainly is a better representation for envelope controls. The red bars clearly deliniate which parameters are stored with the patch settings, and which aren't. I like having sliders for the pitch bend scaling, and that it's right next to the bend lever.

EML 101: The main problem you run into with this one is understanding the way that it busses the keyboard control voltages; the way the rotary switches are labeled for selecting the control voltages for oscs 2/3/4 doesn't make it clear. Other than that, it's straightforward. Grouping is good and the panel is easy to read.

Oberheim Matrix-6R: This is a rackmount where everything is done with a keypad and a one-line alpha display. If you edit from the panel (which I seldom do), you spend a lot of time paging back and forth. That's both good and bad; it's bad because if you don't have the little card that tells you what order the parameters are in, it can be annoying. But on the other hand, there are no nested menus; it's all on one level. There are "skip" buttons which advance a certain number of units forward and backward, but it would have been better if there had been a data entry knob. Some of the abbreviations used on the display are obscure. But the display itself is a vacuum flourescent and is very easy to read, plus it can be dimmed.

Boss DR-202 drum machine: This one has knobs for the most commonly edited parameters, and there's a handy knob for selecting which drum of the set you want to edit. However, once you do get into the menu diving, it's confusing. There are multiple levels of nesting, and it's not always obvious which branch of the tree you need to go down to find the parameter you want. And the LCD display is not backlit. I don't ever use the sequencer, so I can't comment on that.

E-mu Proteus/2: Typical late-1980s user interface: a couple of mode buttons, a data entry knob, a 2 x 16-character display. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out where is the parameter you're looking for. The only saving grace is that there are few nested parameters, and when you scroll through them, they are in a fairly logical order. And the display is easy to read, once you get the contrast set properly.

Oberheim Matrix-1000: Patches cannot be edited from the panel.

High complexity synths

Roland JD800: What can you say? More knobs per square inch than probably any synth ever made. Grouping is good; it follows the pattern set by the Jupiter/Juno series. Multiple means of changing values is available for most parameters; you can do large changes with the sliders, or small changes with the increment buttons. The way that it manages editing for the four tones is a bit confusing at first, but it works well once you understand it. The pallette sliders let you edit a parameter across tones; from the other dimension, so to speak. Some parameters are are still in menus (there just wasn't any more room for knobs), but the only ones that are edited often are the effects parameters. And for the menus, there are function buttons for accessing each category. The two displays do a good job of presenting parameter values under edit, and current status. The panel legends can be hard to read under dim light.

Roland V-Synth: Not as many knobs, but most of the parameters you access most often still do have knobs. (On this synth, it would be categorically impossible to give every parameter its own knob.) I like that they retained the sliders for the envelope settings, especially since this synth has envelopes attached to darn near everything. A lot of the editing is done on the touch screen, though. The screen presents a lot of the information graphically and does a very good job. Patch parameters are grouped logically (global parameters, not so much), and there are always tabs that let you access any screen from any other. My V-Synth came with a felt-tip stylus, which helps with the screen when you have fat fingers. It would have been nice if the panel had included a numeric keyboard so you can enter exact parameter values when you want to. The screen is bright and easy to read, and the panel legends are more legible than on the JD800. It's missing one real necessity: there is no panel control for portamento on/off.

Roland JD990: The JD800's little brother, size-wise. Many of its parameters can actually be edited from a JD800, but I'll disregard that for this review. Of course it's not as easy to edit; after all, there's only so much you can do with a rack mount. But the sceens are well laid out and the parameters are grouped well. The particular color of green that is used for the display backlight kind of hurts my eyes for some reason.

Kawai K5m: You would think that editing an additive synth, with two groups of 64 partials each, on a fairly small LCD screen, would be a nightmare. But it's actually not that bad. Kawai worked out a good system for indicating graphically the levels of all of the partials, along with the modulation parmeters that apply to each one. And there's several clever means of selecting groups of partials to be edited. It takes a bit of study to figure out what all of the symbology means, but once you get it, you can work pretty fast. Sometimes, figuring out where the cursor is actually going when you press the cursor movment buttons is non-obvious. The LCD itself is not great; contrast is mediocre and sharpness could be better. If the backlight has failed (as most Kawai backlights of that era have), you definitely need to fix it. Fortunately, that's not hard.

Ensoniq Fizmo: The controls that it has are well marked, well grouped, and easy to understand. This synth gets marked down for two reasons. First, the only display is a four-digit numeric display; there is no LCD. The synth tries to display a bunch of alphanumeric codes using this display; I have to keep a cheat sheet handy to decipher the codes. Second, there are many parameters that cannot be accessed from the panel at all.

E-mu Morpheus: If editing the Proteus/2 is difficult from the panel, editing the Morpheus from the same type of panel is darn near impossible. There are just too many parameters, and too many of them require a graphical representation of some sort to really understand what it going on. This is really a powerful synth, and the panel limits it. Don't even think about trying to use this one without a computer editor.

[mute]

overall i give this thread a D+, and that's mostly just for effort. people will still post in it though cause it's a list thread, and they'll just put in their little bit without bothering to read any of the other people's answers. including this one, so it's really a mystery why i bothered...

Post of the month!

fail. i understand some of you are h**l bent against lists, just for the sakes of them being lists...but really?

i always take into account people's experiences with the interfaces of synths before i buy them. if i were to think about buying any of synths mentioned in this thread i would find the summaries useful. I and no doubt many other people have bought then almost promptly gotten rid of a synth or station because of it's interface.

the only thing left in my setup at the moment that annoys the h**l out of me is the mp7, but despite all it's faults programming wise it's been worth keeping. for the time being, specially with the new editor that was recently posted.

E-mu MP7
Organized knobs: 5/10
Logical Menus: 4/10
Practicality: 1/10 (seriously...so much of the command stations are needlessly complex. fx routing for example. in as much, the manual is 10x larger than a bible)
Control/Feel: 8/10

[madtheory]

Not h**l bent, that's a weird thing to say. Just a different opinion, that's all!

[plikestechno]

For me it's about ease of use, and tweaking possibilities and getting what I want as quickly as possible. And I guess as others have mentioned I'll think about feel and possible cheapness of materials, knobs etc. as well.

The obvious ones in order (no menus, knob and switch for everything)

Prophet T8
Crazy Chilean Modular
Octave Cat SRM
Pearl Syncussion
The Techstars
The Solina
Board Weevil
Soundmaster ST-305
Pearl DRX-1 (I have two of them LOL)

The less obvious ones (menus, matrix, assignments)

Roland JX10 w/PG800
Casio CZ-5000
Roland JD990
SC Drumtraks
Pearl Syncussion X (SC40)
Yamaha DX7IIFD (just got it a coupla weeks ago)

[V301H]

Control per function synths:

Jupiter 6- Elegant panel layout composed of good, but not top quality sliders, fully lighted buttons, and a few knobs. Great visual reference. Flexible, easy to use yet has complex capabilities. Lacks no major functions and has special features rarely found on other synths. The closest to no compromise of any synth I own.

CS70M- Layout composed mostly of sliders, a lot of large square LED-lit buttons, and a few knobs. Excellent professional quality feel. Lacks some standard functions, but adds other unusual parameters.

OB8- Two pages of parameters. Main sound producing functions are all on Page 1 so is a true control per function synth for the most part. High quality pots and buttons have a solid professional feel. Panel is dark with small LED lights on buttons. Limited visual feedback. Compromised implementation of some functions. Page 2 adds special LFO, Portamento, and Lever settings.

Pro-One- Good knob and slide-switch panel layout. Cheap switches with decent quality pots. One LED on the whole panel indicating when a note is triggered. Not even a pilot light to let you know it's switched on. Has most common synth functions with flexible implementation. S/H is most glaring omission.

MS20- Knob and patch panel interface with a couple of rotary switches for waveform selection. Lower quality pots and minimal LED indicators. Not a single routing switch. The most common routings require patch cords. Even then some common functions are not there or poorly implemented.

Menu Interface:

Matrix 12- Possibly the best menu interface yet devised. Six knobs, three fluorescent displays, numerical keypad, and a multitude of push-buttons allow you to simultaneously access several parameters of a given synth section. Even so, for such a well-implemented interface I still haven't found a straight-forward way to quickly set and adjust a common function like Portamento.

[shaft9000]

for whatever reason; it's subjective:

thingamagoop
Revolution
Juno6
LP
EMX
MS-2000
Sherman
V-Synth
A6
Neuron
Matrix1000

[0000]

the Machine Drum and Mono Machine

for me easily have the best overall interface

ease of use vs complexity battle

they just allow you to play/work/compose/design with so little impediment

i get bored so easily with annoying, hard to get around, look in the manual again gear

(i think this is one of the best "list" threads and one of the few I've bothered to post in)

[bleurgh]

overall i give this thread a D+, and that's mostly just for effort. people will still post in it though cause it's a list thread, and they'll just put in their little bit without bothering to read any of the other people's answers. including this one, so it's really a mystery why i bothered...

But isn't this true of most of the threads in all the various synthesiser forums on the internet? Most of us are just gear junkies salivating over the various items we wish we could get our hands on, as well as justifying our extravagant purchases when we see something written about something we already own.

For the record, although I own more complex and interesting synthesisers, I would have to say that my favourite synth in my set-up is the Roland SH-2, because it really is a doddle to use, yet you can still get great sounds from it. Very difficult to get a bad sound out of the SH.