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Comment by nexuist | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoyed this comment. I wish new software was weird, I want software that looks bizarre, stuff that is almost nonsensical until you try to use it and realize it makes you feel good. Everything feels the same today because of hotel room design.

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Interestingly enough, this is one of the aspects of being a music producer I enjoy! Every plug-in feels like it’s designed to be inspire you. Let’s be honest, an EQ plugin is super basic in what it does to the sound yet we are blessed with dozens of different designs.

It’s the same with any other effect or instrument! The designer's get to have a field day!

It’s my biggest criticism of Ableton - they’re built in modules (not really plugins) are as bland as the whole DAW and don’t act like 3rd party plugins.

basically all DAWs have a stock look and some plugins even ship without an UI and defaults to how that DAW visualizes them. I'm not a Live user, but I'm actually a bit envious because I like how the rack effects look and behave.

>It’s my biggest criticism of Ableton - they’re built in modules (not really plugins) are as bland as the whole DAW and don’t act like 3rd party plugins.

This is one reason why I like Bitwig. It has fewer/inferior native devices compared to Ableton, but I like the UI/UX a lot more, and I almost exclusively use third-party plugins, anyway. Plus it has plugin isolation so a plugin crash won't crash the whole application.

As a long time ableton user that awitched to Bitwig I think you are doing them a disservice by labeling their native devices as inferior. They are different, they are somewhat reduced, but every single internal plugin is incredibly versatile, especially in combination with the insane modulation capabilities Bitwig has. Granted: I still like my Fabfilter Q3 over Bitwigs EQ+, but I also earn money using just that tool for days at a time. If I had to use just Bitwigs internal devices for the rest of my days I wouldn't feel limited at all, something that I wouldn't be able to say about any other DAW I used (except maybe Renoise, which is a totally different concept however).

I say this unironically: you may enjoy Vim?

I enjoy Vim. It is opinionated (or its defaults are), and when you first encounter it, it makes you ask why anyone would design something this way ... but then all of a sudden you grok it and you realise that you want everything to be like this.

I think the hotel room design is what's weird, as opposed to unique, specific designs. The former being the result of scaled-up data/market-driven decision making producing something no one person asked for... that's what's truly bizarre

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