Developer Kit for Front Panel Patching Knobs

Hello, I have made a small dev kit with the front panel patching knobs that are in all of my latest blocks. It will be posted for free on the User Library too, but I would really appreciate if a few other builders took a look at it before I release it. These knobs are my drop-in replacement solution for front panel patching as well as making multi state switches with modulation. Essentially, all blocks knobs can be replaced with these. The real power is that you can route and mix any of the 8 sources to any parameter on the block. It also helps that the number of connections needed for these knobs is still the same number needed for standard blocks knobs.

My hope is that this kit will help many people make self contained modular synths faster and better than they currently can.

 

as constructive criticism, i would offer two pieces of advice/feedback

- in my opinion the knobs are too small for the amount of design complexity that they have.

- my experience is that people have a hard time with control schemes that require you click on one place to change the functionality of an object, and then click somewhere else, and then click a third time to return to normal functionality.

it's obvious that a lot of time and thought went into these, so this feedback shouldn't be taken too negatively, just my honest opinions.

(i'm about to leave town for a week, so any lack of response is due to that and nothing else).

 

Ah, that is a very good second point. I never explained that you can always left click on the knobs to change the base value without having to turn off a modulation source. I agree that extra clicking to get back to "normal" mode would be very bad, so that is why the right click is used to only change the modulation amounts. You only need to go back to the bottom row of buttons if you want to select a different source or turn off all modulation sliders. This will need a better explanation in the included tutorial.

As to the size, I am really curious to know why bigger appears better. The smallest size knob for blocks knobs is only 27px wide, and that is the size for most of the Nouveau Collection knobs. These new knobs are just 7px smaller. This could just be me, but when clicking any interface I always aim for the middle with my mouse. To me this makes every piece of space around the middle extra fluff whose only job is to look good.

With that said, if I can get more solid points as to why the size actually impacts use, I can change the graphics and be sure that it will be an improvement. Making new knob graphics is a risky proposition as I have to then manually replace every single knob one by one in Reaktor. I will be very sure to have real data to that tells me what to improve aside from just size before I accidentally make worse knobs by making them larger. I am also not an artist, so you would just get the current graphics but bigger.

 

well, i would say in regards to size, that the smallest knobs in blocks have no other functionality than to be turned - the modulation and modulation depth is handled elsewhere. so the level of design complexity is important too.

i personally have 20/20 vision, and i found myself leaning in to the computer to get a better look.

obviously you don't need to re-design the whole thing to make me happy, (i have my own front panel patching solution that i've just wrapped up a several hour course on building synths with) just giving you the negatives that i can see. i know that reaktor designs can be unfortunately uncompromising when it comes to having an arbitrary size and not trying to create extra work for you.

 

There are two main complaints about the knobs: the size is small, and they don't look like real knobs. However, I have found that once people use them, these complaints go away. It also done't help that they are vague issues overall. This feedback has been the best by far regarding the size.

 

most people want to create music

 

this works very fine - I had re-create more than 500 snapshots in MS-20