Should a Synth Have a Volume Control Always Visible and Accessible?

[dmbaer]

Your opinions please.

[jmg8]

The results of the poll do not seem to be visible here?
EDIT. Forget that sorry, they are showing now.

[jmalge]

"Never" is such a strong word. I rarely use the master volume on a synth.

Once in a while I'll turn it down to add a bunch of oscillators in, or maybe adjust it when I'm done with sound design.

Given a choice, I'd rather not have it always visible.

[mevla]

1) If there's no volume control and the synth has no limiter built-in, how can you assure that the user browsing your sound set will not be startled by some sounds that are much louder ? Maybe to the point of not giving you any money.

2) When a synth has no limiter I often lock the volume control for browsing presets.

3) When I modify sounds, the volume can play a role. For instance there might be a brutally garbled sound. If it's at 100% volume, or the current track 0 dB volume, it may make someone quickly switch to something else. But if it's at say 30% it might be considered has a dense background drop, with some delay and reverb. That possibility could have never been considered if the firt impact was way too loud.

4) If you remove it, what will you do with the UI/screen estate ?

For everything else, the DAW's track, bus and master volume (and plugin gains) are used.

[chk071]

Yes. Essential. But, please, as a parameter which gets saved with the patch, not a global parameter like in the Novation V-Station e.g. That's beyond horrible. (I speak of experience after saving a track with several V-Station's, which were all over the place after i loaded the project again, and the Volume parameter in all instances defaulted back to full level )

[jmalge]

The question wasn’t whether a synth should have a volume control, but whether the volume control has to always be visible and accessible.

MSoundFactory currently puts the global volume control in the global tab.

I think the results of the poll will be badly skewed because people are answering a completely different question.

I also wonder if everyone who answered has seen MSF and knows that all of the modules that create or modify the signal have their own gain controls and that you can easily keep overall volume and gain staging under control while building presets without resorting to adjusting the global volume.

[mevla]

That was MSF related ?

[jmalge]

That was MSF related ?

Looks like it was supposed to be: viewtopic.php?p=7248344#p7248344

[Chandlerhimself]

My opinion is no it shouldn’t be a requirement. I’ve alreay said where I think the global stuff like volune should go, but if you’re not going to put it there don’t put it on the generator by default. Most people will put volume controls on the generator out of necessity, so if they don’t feel like there needs to be another then, leave it to the control in the global tab.

On a device I’m working on I have volume controls for osc1-3, noise, filter. IMO 5 controls are enough and another one will just clutter things without adding anything useful. If someone thinks it’s useful they should add one and if not then they shouldn’t.

Something you could do is remove the global tab and put the same controls under the 2 tabs in a colapsed group. That might work better because you’d be able to see them no matter which tab you used. This might be a better solution as it would free people from having to use tabs for simple presets and it would allow things like layers. For example instead of generator, fx and global, you could have layer 1, layer 2, layer 3, FX, etc and still have the global stuff at the bottom that could be adjusted when needed or collapsed to save space.

Overall I think the question here needs to be rephrased, because it sounds like there will be no volume control on MSF or you won’t be able to find it. I don’t think there should be an type of requirement regarding volune controls and if people are worried about a work flow problem the easy screen design should be changed instead of make a rule.

[sirmonkey]

I don't understand synths very well. However, every expert synth user started off as a beginner.
Having said that, gain staging is something that many don't understand. But even for those who do, it can be done in many ways. Obviously, the volume curve of individual modules can be a big factor in how a synth behaves. Right?
So at the very least, a master volume control makes sense. Can't hurt!
How about an option for AGC (automatic gain compnsation) per module?
O.K. - I bet that would be tricky and over-complicated to implement. Too many scenarios to even contemplate.

The option to have a main volume knob seems perfect to me.

[Whywhy]

In Msf Le : yes, it should be on the main page.
For msf, it's good like it is !

[dmbaer]

On a device I’m working on I have volume controls for osc1-3, noise, filter. IMO 5 controls are enough and another one will just clutter things without adding anything useful. If someone thinks it’s useful they should add one and if not then they shouldn’t.

A comment I made in another thread was that it is very rare to find a commercial softsynth today that does not have an always-present dedicated master volume control (there's only one I've found so far - other than MPowerSynth, of course). One exception is Absynth - it has three, one for each sound-source column. This sounds a bit like your situation, so it greatly reduces the need for a single volume control.

Overall I think the question here needs to be rephrased, because it sounds like there will be no volume control on MSF or you won’t be able to find it.

I will do just that - create a new poll, that is.

[MeldaProduction]

I'm afraid I have to agree that the poll is very misleading and the 2nd one you made is similar. So if you don't mind, I'll remove the other one and make one myself.

[MeldaProduction]

viewforum.php?f=138