SWN Review and Tutorial

OK! I stopped by and the answer was yes - the jacks can be reassigned. There are also quite a few generative tools. Jim showed me a whole page out of the manual just on different randomization options. It seemed like the answer to every question was "yes" - not in a salesy way - but rather that pretty much everything can be done. To the extent that it's possible to learn something about it from a demo there are two things that seemed limiting to me. One was the core 8 note limit (you can chain patterns somehow though) and the second was, as always with powerful things, complexity. Jim said he was happy to take questions at jim@five12.com. By the way, check out also the new sequencer from Frap Tools (not yet available but seems very complete). There's something about it that seemed just as capable and yet slightly easier to use. Again, to the extent one can get a feel for something from a demo...

Ok! I will stop by their booth. Let me know if you have any specific questions

Dave Peachey

Oh, that would be fun ... please do! It might even make some manufacturers sit up and take notice :-) If you could get Kim Bjorn (Mr PTM/P&T) involved that would be most excellent (although I appreciate he's probably busy with his latest tome).

I think this discussion just inspired a rant video!

Dave Peachey

Indeed, Ed, and that's the sort of thing which leaves those of us with 'colour contrast' issues all the more at a disadvantage. Hence why it's important that manufacturers do proper UI designing and usability testing (in addition to normal functional testing) to eliminate the potential for these sorts of problems to arise. Maybe all modular synth designers need to have a personal copy of 'Push, Turn, Move' in their technical reference libraries! Thanks for the interesting discussion; I'll shut up now ... ;-)

Ed

The phenomenon of how you’re perceiving differently LEDs of supposedly the same color can probably be explained by the fact that some lights might use the mixing of several pure colors or wavelengths to attain the wanted color while other only emit the pure color or wavelength, which can be more easily subject to color blindness. For instance in cheap lighting white is a mix of red blue and white while it can be like the sun a mix of all visible wavelengths.

For sure. The colors in this video unfortunately don't represent how they are in "real life" - at least to the extent I can tell...

Dave Peachey

Thanks for the quick response. I realise that this is a relative problem (it's close shades of the same colour that really throw me) and, indeed, our respective experiences could be different. I've made my assumptions based on what I could/couldn't see from your video and also from looking at the manual and QSG documents that 4ms have produced. I think this is one module that I will have to audition, in person, to see whether I can work with it. Thanks again.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm red/green/brown colorblind too - I know there are various degrees so we may not share the exact problem. It's really odd and particularly frustrating with certain colors and LEDs and not with others. For example, Some amber/red/green LEDs are a complete mystery to me - they all look the same (like those on Rings or Plaits for example, so I'm glad a color blind mode was added). On traffic signals for example, I can clearly see green, but the yellow and red are exactly the same to me. On the OLD MK1 Elektron gear I couldn't see red and green to save my life, but on the new ones, it's quite clear. So odd. If you can identify with my kind of RG problem, then working with SWN is possible. I can see the red, green and blue quite clearly, though it gets tricky when they start mixing. I don't think it's that important frankly. Where it is important is the LFO shapes, and there too I can make sense of the colors by combining the colors I do see with the relative location of the LFOs. Hope this helps :/

Dave Peachey

Many thanks for the video; very interesting and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on one in due course. However ... being red/green/brown colour blind, the prospect of trying (visually) to work out what LFO shape I'm using and/or the sphere I have loaded fills me with considerable dismay! Sometimes I think that manufacturers of equipment (and it's not just synth equipment) don't have a full understanding of the consequences of some of their UI choices and fail to do user acceptance testing (with an appropriate test user base) to highlight and iron out such potential problems! I'd be interested to know how you've managed and whether the multitude of similar (to me, anyway) LED colour tones is usable or not. Maybe this isn't going to be a product I can use after all ... which would be a great shame.