Cubase on a 2600 would be something to see. Cubase was introduced for the Atari ST in the late 80s. The UI has changed quite a bit, but the basic UI principles of early MIDI sequencers have carried over into modern DAWs.
Edit: A screenshot: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OlspnqVcJho/maxresdefault.jpg
I found Deluxe Music cartoonish and not capable of doing what I wanted. I dismissed it almost immediately. It felt like wearing gloves to compose after coming from trackers, where you had tick-precision (this was sort of a weird combination of interrupts and the BPM of your song, I don't remember the details now) control over everything like volume, pitch, arpeggiation, the Paula filter, etc.
I think it's worth noting that Deluxe Music is distinctly not what modern DAWs look like, while Cubase kinda sorta is. Deluxe Music brought traditional music notation into the computer, which was great for folks who were comfortable with it, but you lose a lot of control and information visibility when you do that. And, of course, it requires your user to have some sort of formal music education.
There are still tools that'll work with traditional music notation, but very few people use them for composition. There's millions of copies of DAWs using a Cubase-ish sequencer-style interface in use every day.
I originally picked it because its demo version doesn't have any of the more extreme limitations that make it very hard to actually create something. Only WAV export is disabled, which is fairly easy to work around if you must. Buying the license is totally worth it though, because it's cheap and you get the ability to easily records part of a track to another sample/instrument, which is a great workflow. Being somewhat familiar with trackers was also a nice bonus, of course.
> Any time I see new-school UI designers' take on audio apps I cannot help but cringe. They are completely misunderstanding and underestimating their audience -- audio is complicated and we need complex tools to do what we do.
Absolutely. Also worth mentioning is that many of these tools borrow elements from physical recording studios. If you haven’t worked in a professionally wired studio, some of the abstractions seem dated and unnecessary. Replacing / reimagining them is not practical, as DAWs still need to run in these environments. But try explaining that to someone who is just starting out chopping loops in their bedroom.
Can you elaborate on that? That UI still bothers me although I love Logic’s plugins.
How did you learn the UI? Just through trial and error? By reading the manual? Something else?
Do you have some examples of that?
The thing people don't like here, which is absolutely true, is that if you want to use FLStudio, or Ableton, or even Cubase, and think you're going to succeed just by opening up the app and clicking around, you're wrong. You actually do need to use the tutorials and read the manual. (It's exactly the same if you buy any kind of complex pro audio hardware as well, from synths to guitar modelling tools like the Kemper Profiler.)
In my experience the documentation for FLStudio and Live is great. Full on, stellar fantastic. And there are a million quick tutorials from all kinds of people on YouTube to help. You just have to be willing to learn and invest the time to get the results you want. These things are not intended to be the audio equivalent of Instagram: for that you should look elsewhere (I'm not sure where actually).
GarageBand is certainly powerful, especially given it's deliberate limitation, and both myself and friends have used it to great effect, but Ableton Live it is not. If you look at Logic - which GarageBand is really a cut down version of - you see a similar degree of complexity to that in other professional level DAWs.
Not everyone needs a professional level DAW, and even those who do wouldn't necessarily use one all the time: as I've said, I still use Audacity, and GarageBand on the iPad or iPhone is a super-handy tool.
The parent was commenting on people who ridiculously bleat on about the the UX of complex professional level audio tools, not suggesting there isn't a place for tools that are simpler.
What? Modern "good interface design" (at least by HN standards) has almost nothing to say about complicated 1000+ feature apps. (In fact every time I rant that modern design sucks and that apps need more features the first response I usually get back is, "but that's so much more testing! Do you know how many execution paths we'd have to manage???" Well, that is kind of the point)
Have you ever produced music with any of these tools? For one, their goals are different -- FLStudio, for example, tries to be "the fastest path from your brain to your speakers", and the interface seems as such and is loved for it. Ableton intentionally crams everything into one screen because it is used as a performance tool -- if you've seen any recent photos of Daft Punk et al performing, you'll see it running right there on a laptop, usually above the mixer or the CDJs. Cubase has kept an interface very similar to its original Atari 2600 (I think?) version, because people have been using that app for 30+ years now.
Any time I see new-school UI designers' take on audio apps I cannot help but cringe. They are completely misunderstanding and underestimating their audience -- audio is complicated and we need complex tools to do what we do.