What's new

New Spitfire Evolutions plugins

I want you all to know that we read almost all of the threads about our products with interest at Spitfire and use the feedback in them to inform the decisions we make. Part of the work we did with ustwo was to do user testing and let that inform the design of our user interface, so what you see at the moment was done consciously, in good faith and with our customers' best interests at heart.

We are, as I'm sure you'll all expect, looking to develop the design and functionality of our plugins considerably and your feedback will be a key part of our discussions as we move forward, so thank you for sharing it with us. Ben

Ben,

What is the plan for memory and resource mangaement?

Are you planning to port all your libraries including the orchestras?

Thanks,

Michael
 
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What is the plan for memory and resource mangaement?

We plan to continue to develop our platform and that will naturally include making improvements to memory and resource management where needed and where we can.

Are you planning to port all your libraries including the orchestras?

I can't answer that question for a couple of reasons -

1. Plans are not set in stone, especially over the long term and when there's a changing landscape (such as feedback from the community, how your internal testing goes as you develop, what other music technology companies are doing, company finances, product ideas, external influences etc etc)

2. As is the case for almost any technology company on the planet, we have to keep our plans largely to ourselves. We try to be open with our community but if nothing else - if you say you're going to do something, or not do something and that ends up not being true (for the reasons stated in 1.) it comes off very badly.

Ben
 
My question is, does the reverb sound the same? The delay? The chorus? And so on.
I think the main issue here is SF wanting to have a better control over the copy protection scheme. Because the Kontakt way is very weak, original evos are not even copy protected, these new ones are. I can.understand SF here.
 
We plan to continue to develop our platform and that will naturally include making improvements to memory and resource management where needed and where we can.



I can't answer that question for a couple of reasons -

1. Plans are not set in stone, especially over the long term and when there's a changing landscape (such as feedback from the community, how your internal testing goes as you develop, what other music technology companies are doing, company finances, product ideas, external influences etc etc)

2. As is the case for almost any technology company on the planet, we have to keep our plans largely to ourselves. We try to be open with our community but if nothing else - if you say you're going to do something, or not do something and that ends up not being true (for the reasons stated in 1.) it comes off very badly.

Ben
Some things I would like to see going forward:
  1. a stand-alone player
  2. the ability to create multis in the same instance of the player
  3. more consideration of ergonomics for use of the big knob with a mouse
  4. better thought to what should go on the big knob (reverb? really, you need to dial reverb in on the big knob? that's the best you could come up with?)
  5. A better layout of the mics (all on one page)
  6. A better layout of the key switches (all on one page)
  7. More thought on how to best navigate patches
  8. ability to extend the range of the instruments by stretching the sample range (this may be currently possible but I have not been able to figure out how to do it)
  9. ability to add pitch bend on all patches (this may be currently possible but I have not been able to figure out how to do it)
  10. ability to be able to tune to different (user defined) scales (this may be currently possible but I have not been able to figure out how to do it)
  11. Development of a simplified view and an advanced view, perhaps the latter with some degree of user customization of what options will appear on main page.
 
Some things I would like to see going forward:
  1. a stand-alone player
  2. the ability to create multis in the same instance of the player
  3. more consideration of ergonomics for use of the big knob with a mouse
  4. better thought to what should go on the big knob (reverb? really, you need to dial reverb in on the big knob? that's the best you could come up with?)
  5. A better layout of the mics (all on one page)
  6. A better layout of the key switches (all on one page)
  7. More thought on how to best navigate patches
  8. ability to extend the range of the instruments by stretching the sample range (this may be currently possible but I have not been able to figure out how to do it)
  9. ability to add pitch bend on all patches (this may be currently possible but I have not been able to figure out how to do it)
  10. ability to be able to tune to different (user defined) scales (this may be currently possible but I have not been able to figure out how to do it)
  11. Development of a simplified view and an advanced view, perhaps the latter with some degree of user customization of what options will appear on main page.

Thanks, very useful. A few points and questions:

3. Can you be more specific? Are you referring to the fact that you need to follow the knob round as opposed to an up/down motion?
4. You don't have to use the big knob for reverb, it is available in the effects section below
7. I'd love to hear your (and others') opinions on this
9. We often don't allow pitch bend in kontakt libraries either since it doesn't play well with natural reverb

Ben
 
Thanks, very useful. A few points and questions:

3. Can you be more specific? Are you referring to the fact that you need to follow the knob round as opposed to an up/down motion?
I'm not quite sure how it works, but yes, I think so. All I know is that whenever I use it with the mouse, I end up all contorted to get it to go where I want. So of course I end up mapping it to a knob or slider. But there are times when I just want to be able tweak it in the GUI.

You don't have to use the big knob for reverb, it is available in the effects section below
Yes, I know. But it's such a big knob. And if SF is choosing to assign reverb to it that suggests to me that the instrument doesn't need the big knob. So in those cases the big knob is just a very big piece of GUI junk, taking up way too much space for minimal functionality. So many other things in most instruments could better use that real estate (though I appreciate the tradeoff of standardization).

7. I'd love to hear your (and others') opinions on this
me too!

9. We often don't allow pitch bend in kontakt libraries either since it doesn't play well with natural reverb
Yes, I know, but I still often implement it in the Kontakt versions of your instruments when the patch isn't locked. It would be nice to give users the option with an explicitly stated caveat that it might not work so well because of the natural reverb.
 
Thanks, very useful. A few points and questions:

3. Can you be more specific? Are you referring to the fact that you need to follow the knob round as opposed to an up/down motion?
4. You don't have to use the big knob for reverb, it is available in the effects section below
7. I'd love to hear your (and others') opinions on this
9. We often don't allow pitch bend in kontakt libraries either since it doesn't play well with natural reverb

Ben

I would also like to add my whole-hearted support for two major improvements:

1) being able to create multis within one instance. (I simply can't implement the player in my template in any meaningful way until this happens).

2) All articulations on one page, all mic positions on one page. The scrolling is death, not least because you just don't ever go for the mic positions or articulations that are 1 or 2 pages deep.

If just those two things were addressed, I think a lot of people would be a lot of happier with the player.

Then, less importantly, can you please SWAP the expression and modulation sliders? so modulation is on the left? Am I the only who orders his sliders 1) modulation, 2) expression and gets thrown off when moving the 1st physical slider and seeing the 2nd slider on the GUI move? Especially when there are only abstract symbols to denote what each slider does? Or maybe just allow the user to define what the sliders do like you do with the knob.
 
7. I'd love to hear your (and others') opinions on this

If the legacy products had been made available for even a limited time I probably would have bought a few. I feel (and read) this is an early version of "what's to come" and don't feel comfortable paying premium price for what I feel is beta testing.
Sadly, I'm more interested in hoovering up the current offerings before they go down this route.
 
Thanks, very useful. A few points and questions:

3. Can you be more specific? Are you referring to the fact that you need to follow the knob round as opposed to an up/down motion?
4. You don't have to use the big knob for reverb, it is available in the effects section below
7. I'd love to hear your (and others') opinions on this
9. We often don't allow pitch bend in kontakt libraries either since it doesn't play well with natural reverb

Ben
Oh no, Ben. What did you just do? Now we know you're listening, you're going to receive a whole bunch of "expert" opinions. ;)

FWIW, and to stroke my ego, here are a few GUI "easy win/low hanging fruit" improvements:
  1. Replace the icons with text. That small, classy Spitfire font would do nicely.
  2. I like the big knob. It gives the plugin a clear identity. But make it a standard up/down mouse drag.
  3. Have the functions assigned to the "big knob" (like reverb etc) always on display. Have the current function highlighted.
I reckon these would be (comparatively) trivial to do and help massively.

7. I'd love to hear your (and others') opinions on thisBen

For patch browsing, make the drop down fill the plugin space, like Omnisphere.
And anywhere you can enable keyboard use, please do!! Good luck!
 
Have the functions assigned to the "big knob" (like reverb etc) always on display. Have the current function highlighted.
I think a simple thing like this might solve part of the "problem" with the big knob, which is that you expect too much from it given its size, and that expectation is compounded when you don't know what the knob does because it's not labeled.

Given the space available on the GUI, I do think SF might offer the user an option of 2-6 sliders and make all the sliders and the big knob user assignable to whatever parameter the user sees fit (though of course, it could still come in the default format of two sliders and big knob, with the SF assignments). All the sliders and the big knob should also carry labels or at least have the option of carrying labels.
 
+1 for replacing the icons with text. I had to watch a 2 min video to find out what the two sliders did when the first labs plugins came out. I understand that the design agency and Spitfire wanted to make the plugins accessible to all, including removing language constraints. Whilst this is actually a very admirable stance and in theory I applaud it, in practice, a label in English would help the majority of users by removing ambiguity. The rest of the language in the plugin is in English - the plugin name and the presets - so it wouldn't be non-inclusive to include an English label.
 
We plan to continue to develop our platform and that will naturally include making improvements to memory and resource management where needed and where we can.



I can't answer that question for a couple of reasons -

1. Plans are not set in stone, especially over the long term and when there's a changing landscape (such as feedback from the community, how your internal testing goes as you develop, what other music technology companies are doing, company finances, product ideas, external influences etc etc)

2. As is the case for almost any technology company on the planet, we have to keep our plans largely to ourselves. We try to be open with our community but if nothing else - if you say you're going to do something, or not do something and that ends up not being true (for the reasons stated in 1.) it comes off very badly.

Ben
Some thoughts I've had about the standalone plugin engine.

1. Ability to Route Microphones to different outputs.
2. If 1 is accomplished: Single Mixing Page where mics can be routed to within the plugin. Sort of like it's own Bus channels. From here, allowing users to route those busses externally to their own DAW channels would give us the ability to work in a 5.1 environment. Libraries like the HZ Strings have so many mics, being able to pre-mix them within the plugin and route them to their own internal bus (ie; Close 1, 2 > Bus 1. Tree 1, 2 > Bus 2, etc. This will allow us to mix all those mics together more efficiently versus having to control 300 mics.
3. Please get rid of the mic and articulations pages. Everything should just be visible.
4. Optimize your plugin to work more effectively for mouse users. Right now, this plugin feels more like a phone app where touch screens thrive. Consider adding scroll wheel capabilities on the faders. If you do this, have it be a feature that can be turned on or off.
5. Please consult accessibility resources to help with your designs. HZ Strings is too dark with very little definition in the font size which is very troublesome for the visual impaired. I have corrected vision and I still struggle with your products. Scaling isn't the issue, it's coloring/lighting of the designs. These issues aren't exclusive to Spitfire as the entire sampling industry is struggling with right now.

Cheers,

Chris
 
The one enhancement that would be great from my perspective, is Multi's across different instruments that use the Spitfire player. Not having to load individual VST's per Spitfire instrument, but rather one VST player that hosts all Spitfire instruments, would be great. Thanks for listening, Ben.
 
Sorry if this was covered already, but is there a way to move the sample start point forward?
If not there would be absolutely no use for these upgrades for me personally,
it’s easy to do in kontakt atm
I’m worried that its more like HZS which is a bit limiting for me
 
+1 for replacing the icons with text. I had to watch a 2 min video to find out what the two sliders did when the first labs plugins came out. I understand that the design agency and Spitfire wanted to make the plugins accessible to all, including removing language constraints. Whilst this is actually a very admirable stance and in theory I applaud it, in practice, a label in English would help the majority of users by removing ambiguity. The rest of the language in the plugin is in English - the plugin name and the presets - so it wouldn't be non-inclusive to include an English label.
This seems to be the current design trend for most software and web sites. Icons, icons, icons, everywhere. I've heard the term 'shadow design' now more than a few times. It's the absolute worst. I get it when it comes to web design where the basic goal is to get people clicking around on your site and keep them there as long as possible. But for software it's a total nightmare. If all the text in the GUI is in english, just stick with that. We should never have to guess what a button/slider does.

All in all, I'm excited that SF is going the route of their own player. It really does open doors to lots of possibilities. However, my personal rule with software (and pretty much anything) is to never buy something based on what it 'might' become, but to make purchases based on how the product stands in it's current state. IMO, the SF player is still missing too many features, and the workflow is too cumbersome to move forward with it at the moment. It really does feel like the aesthetic design of the plugin is so far tilted towards 'fashion over function'. Which was a very odd choice IMO given the nature of the products/libraries, and how different people have their own workflows.

I don't think anyone would claim that Kontakt is perfect, or that there aren't things we would love to change, but the SF player removes too much functionality at the moment for me personally.

I'm bummed I didn't get EVO 2 when I still could in Kontakt form.

P.S., please, please, PLEASE stop trying to keep us away from using a 'tune' knob. This is a perfect example of the fact that regardless of how Spitfire thinks we should use their products, we can use them however we want with Kontakt.
 
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This seems to be the current design trend for most software and web sites. Icons, icons, icons, everywhere. I've heard the term 'shadow design' now more than a few times. It's the absolute worst. I get it when it comes to web design where the basic goal is to get people clicking around on your site and keep them there as long as possible. But for software it's a total nightmare. If all the text in the GUI is in english, just stick with that. We should never have to guess what a button/slider does.

I'm a User Experience Designer (and only a hobbyist composer) so I do a lot of user testing. One of the things I find is that for an icon to be understood unambiguously it has to be universally used and recognised. Floppy disk icons for save etc. Outside of a fairly small standard set of icons most can be interpreted in different ways and the current context, combined with the context you're used to seeing the icon in, or the context you first encountered it in opens most icons up to misinterpretation. I see this so many times. A short label next to the icon just works in pretty much every scenario.
 
does the spitfire player actually work with the sample set being installed on a single external ssd that is used both on mac and windows? only got the labs to work with mac.
 
Some thoughts I've had about the standalone plugin engine.

1. Ability to Route Microphones to different outputs.
2. If 1 is accomplished: Single Mixing Page where mics can be routed to within the plugin. Sort of like it's own Bus channels. From here, allowing users to route those busses externally to their own DAW channels would give us the ability to work in a 5.1 environment. Libraries like the HZ Strings have so many mics, being able to pre-mix them within the plugin and route them to their own internal bus (ie; Close 1, 2 > Bus 1. Tree 1, 2 > Bus 2, etc. This will allow us to mix all those mics together more efficiently versus having to control 300 mics.
3. Please get rid of the mic and articulations pages. Everything should just be visible.
4. Optimize your plugin to work more effectively for mouse users. Right now, this plugin feels more like a phone app where touch screens thrive. Consider adding scroll wheel capabilities on the faders. If you do this, have it be a feature that can be turned on or off.
5. Please consult accessibility resources to help with your designs. HZ Strings is too dark with very little definition in the font size which is very troublesome for the visual impaired. I have corrected vision and I still struggle with your products. Scaling isn't the issue, it's coloring/lighting of the designs. These issues aren't exclusive to Spitfire as the entire sampling industry is struggling with right now.

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks for this Chris. One note - if you hover over controls with your mouse and scroll, it should move those controls. Contact support if this isn't working for you.
 
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