Independence UI

[Scott473]

As an extension of an earlier thread on the Independence VST, I find myself wondering when Independence will get a, well-deserved, cosmetic overhaul?

It really is a power-house of a VST, but I think much of that is lost on people who are immediately put-off by the very dense UI with tiny controls. The existing UI really looks like it was designed with scaling in mind, but it doesn't scale or resize unless I'm missing something.

A VST with as many controls as this just begs for a scalable UI that can make for comfortable viewing on any size display. That is a tall order from a software point of view, but it's certainly possible.

Any chance of an update happening?

[tomotello]

It looks like this is a common issue with powerful samplers these days. Just an extract from this post in NI Konakt Forum:

[...]

"Small Windows and Tiny Fonts Doesn't Get The Job Done.

For those of us who are already living with less than perfect vision, using and editing in NI plug-ins is a serious and unpleasant challenge.

Even the Kontakt 5 Sampler places size restrictions on on its users; and, developers struggle to find a common ground to make their interface usable within Kontakt ! But all Native Instrument plug-ins probably make users suffer a similar fate."

[...]

I'm working with both Kontakt and Independence - to be honest, the Independence workflow is much simpler and faster to get the same. If you did ever work with the Group Editor in Kontakt you know what I mean. However, it's not the GUI which bothers me, the only thing I missed at the beginning in Independence was a context help (help texts while moving with the mouse over the GUI controls).

[Scott473]

Yeah, the "tool tips" would be a nice touch. I understand that complex tools require complex UI's and that usability is always a struggle. Nevertheless, there comes a time when a UI has grown old and I think Independence is there.

I have SampleTank 3 and even with the graphic overhaul, it's still a fairly dense UI, but MUCH better than it originally was. Independence could use a similar treatment.