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Comment by nphase | Hacker News Reader

I agree, chromeless is nice. But I love Reason. I really enjoy being able to immediately introspect into the signal path, something which can be much more vague in other music apps. Ordering, layering, and combining effects are common practices in sound engineering/recording/performing to achieve different sounds. Being able to explicitly define the path in the chrome is actually quite handy.

Chrome can be a good thing. Really.

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While we're talking about DAWs I'd like mention that Ableton's Live features a much better approach with its UI - In my opinion it's one of the most intuitive interfaces in a complex and professional application. Everything is where you'd expect it to be, no nonsense, all flat.

Windows Phone 7 is, as mentioned, the other great example. When it comes to the user interface I'd replace my iPhone UI with WP7 without hesitation. I'd even go further and say that Metro is the UI that needs to be introduced to the next version of windows. Zune was a nice example of how this could work on the desktop. That said I hope Apple goes a similar way and finally drops that excessively shiny, glossy Aqua look. While the Mac is my favourite platform i don't think Apple deserves its reputation as inventor of cutting edge interfaces.

There are better ways to show signal path than a bunch of droopy patch cables.

How would you propose to do it then?

Standard 2-D representations ala Kyma, Reaktor, Bidule, and the various audio tables (Reactable et al).

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