Well, just compare it visually to a channel strip like this:
Half the screen real-estate, except the knobs, functions and sections are much more clearly defined.
Well, no. The control area is about the same size on both plugins, and the graphs on ChannelStrip are hide-able if you don't want to see them:
The E-Channel is a 4 band parametric EQ and CS-3 is a 6-band parametric EQ, so you would expect it to take a bit more space (even though it really doesn't). The Comp and Gate also have side-chain filters on CS-3 which the E-Channel doesn't. I guess I don't see the lack of definition in the CS-3 layout -- there is a Gate section, a Compressor Section and and EQ section, which is pretty similar to the E-Channel, except in the E-Channel, the knobs for the various sections blend together.
There are less block colours, and above all - they are not fluorescent.
There are less functions to be colorized. But I do see your point about the fluorescent. So the brightness of the colors is disturbing to you? That is useful feedback -- thanks!
The gradients, the shading etc. all help the user compartmentalize the different functions in their mind. On the MH UI the knobs are all lined up like an Excel spreadsheet, which makes it very hard to visually differentiate their functions, without going through and reading everything.
Really? I guess we may just have to disagree here. The point is that, for example, in the EQ, all the knobs in a particular column do the exact same thing (gain, frequency, bandwidth) and all the knobs in a particular row correspond to a different band. The colors are all matched per-band. Easy.
As far as the Gate and Compressor sections go, the top line of knobs is for the dynamics controls and the second line of knobs is for the Side Chain Filters. Again the layout is the same for both sections (and the same as in the EQ) so you learn it once and you are done.
It's just like a large format console -- lots of knobs, but they are just functional copies of the same thing --- one per channel. In this case, it is copies per band.
With the E-Channel, the knobs are kind of randomly scattered about. The layout undoubtably was set by the underlying circuitry on the original SSL console, but obviously has no particular bearing on the layout of a virtual UI except for a desire to provide fidelity in the emulation.
Just doesn't look very intuitive at first. I'm sure it becomes so once someone gets familiar with it, but there's got to be room for some improvement there.
Well, since you folks seem to have a strong visceral reaction to it, I took the opportunity to solicit feedback. Now is your chance to make suggestions for improvement.
Best regards,
B.J. Buchalter
Metric Halo
I mean, my most used plug-in of all time looks like this:
