I'm new to Icarus and trying to find my way around this powerful tool.
I like the general GUI-Style very much, but would like to suggest to think about further improving...
1.) It would be great to add a more intuitive modulation source to target assignment. Could be like:
a.) right-click on a target and get a context menu showing available sources
b.) do it like in steinbergs retrologue where you can drag a modulation source to a target
c.) do it like in the nice little helm synth...cannot describe it in a few words...better try it yourself (
http://tytel.org/helm/)
This should only be a add-on to be able to build the basic routings more comfortably. The matrix editor is then excellent for fine tweaking settings.
2.) Arppegio-Editor: I have a hard time to use this tool because it's so versatile but the editor comes with kinda cryptic display. It's for instance hard to see the actual pitch of a step that is not +12 or -12 transposed. Sure you can hoover over the step symbol and see the value in the "message" viewport below the patch selector. I think it would be more useable - in terms of keeping the eyes focused on the editor pane - to have a tooltip right in place if you hoover over the step.
Second is the partly cryptic bottom line modifiers with no tooltip either. I'm bad in memorizing things ;-) and thus have to consult the manual every time I wonder "what was that '<' again for?"...
What I think here - I admit it might sound a bit weird here: Could parts of the Synth-GUI be modularized in a way that users can code their own GUI for it? Think of a Javascript/Lua/ActiveScript Interface of Icarus to be able to start a custom Editor which then handing over a defined Datastructure back to the Core Synth Engine...
3.) What about adding a clear / versatile signal path routing window. I like how it's done in massive where I can see how signal is flowing. And I even like the way the filter routing is defined in massive. It's easy to control and figure out how signals flow through the two filters...
To make it clear, I love Icarus and this suggestions is NOT mean as a rant, it's meant as a chance to further improve Icarus because I see it's tremendous potential!
Greets from Munich!
Regards
Peter
