Yes, MRG, I agree with you. But check out the new v1.8.1, it’s even more amazinger!!

Oh and forgot to add: while there will be a layout change, the main concept of Surge will still remain: to have everything important under your fingertips/mouse cursor, with as little tabbing as humanly possible. So it’s not going to be a complete rethink, but a reevaluation of how different sections are laid out and what they contain.

We do have a couple of very good designers and even a UX/HCI expert in our team. It’s gonna be great :)

Hello, Rek, one of Surge developers here. Thanks for your comments.

There are some valid concerns you’re mentioning (sideways rotated text – which we removed completely from the Dark skin!). However, the main concept of Surge’s layout is to have everything under your fingertips/mouse cursor, with as little tabbing through sections as possible. I think it achieves this in a pretty good way.

That said, the layout of the synth in places definitely doesn’t reflect the signal flow (highpass filter to the left of waveshaper, when highpass is at the very end of the signal chain? Keytrack controls not next to filter cutoff and resonance? etc.), and this will definitely be addressed in one of future updates.

Mixing up horizontal and vertical sliders is not unheard of, though.

“Mysterious routing method” – do you mean modulation, or signal? Either way, we do have a rather decently written manual that explains everything in a solid amount of detail.

Usually we get comments about how Surge is really fast and fun to use, but not everyone is the same, and that’s good.

In any case, there is going to be a complete layout change in the future (and it will include knobs! But some sliders will remain) that should hopefully make a lot more sense both from signal path and design (margins, spacings, grid positioning…) aspects. Stay tuned!

the skins of Surge look great, but the GUI layout is confusing so I don’t use it.

Yay haha! XD

Working on an article about this one! :)

Thanks, Stefan!

Thanks for the tip, love the BPB community! (Especially when Tomislav might be too busy to update :P)

I don’t see how sliders over knobs can make a synth worse or better than Vital. I mean it doesn’t really affect the sound. And i think Surge in terms of sound is a lot more powerful it’s just a bit harder to fully come to understand.