John (if this is your real name) !
I agree with you 100%. For me the ability to map my controllers is a huge plus as well. I struggled with this in other DAWs and this was always in my mind. I think this was very, very god idea for Steinberg to implement this.
On the other hand there are also bad ideas implemented (or rather missed). That is GUI customization. I really stay away from products which make me tired or frustrated to soon. Not being able to read the screen is one of the major issues in the last 10+ years. Some GUI designers are pure idiots! OR they should not touch the screen design. In many cases the CODERS do the screen design. It is like have a guy who is a carpenter building frames for pictures to go and pain a picture.
If I cannot read text or see clearly an icon, not matter how many features the software has it is garbage ! Perhaps for somebody who is 20yrs O. with excellent sight it is not.
NI Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol is a perfect example of how to build garbage GUI. As an excuse one can say - well Kontakt is 20+ years old. In software dev. 1 year counts as 10 (for human).
So far some parts of C12 are so super tiny I am having problem reading the screen and that is pretty much end of the shopping story. For 3 days I was trying all kinds of tricks and could not get it right to be able to read everything clearly.
On top of that suddenly my C12 installation stopped working completely. I have sent messages to Steinberg abnout it. Guess what ? SILENCE. Another words they are not really interested even in selling their product. If they are , they would pay the most attention to potential buyers, but they are not. Most likely I need to reinstall C12 and get new download code. FORUM will not help with with this. So if for example my license stops working at some point and I get stuck with the product for several days - I would be very, very sorry I purchased their crap!
I have already seen messages about licensing problems elsewhere on the forum …
have not researched how quickly they were handled by the Tech.Support.
These two factors: customization and support are very important ones for me and seems like Steinberg completely fails in this area. I am just thinking how is this possible that company like PRESONUS which is like a little child comparing age was able to implement ten times better customization than Steinberg ? Same case with Ableton. After so many years no ability to set the fonts sizes, background colors, full screen setup, resizable panels ? While the new features are impressive, the base (read GUI) doesn’t look good. It seems that Steinberg completely ignores that people switch to 4K on a daily basis. I have done this 8+ years ago.
I use my PC for other things than music so I will not downgrade my resolution just to get readable VST plugin, no way.
Steinberg must wake up to the fact that readability is a key factor for software success and their plugin readability simply sucks. There are tons of books on DESIGNING USABLE INTERFACE. Obviously most developers do not read them, and then create great features with garbage GUI.
