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as originally posted on kvr-vst.com forums...
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewt...er=asc&start=15
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Yoozer
KvRer
Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 3:14 pm
Hey. I'm the guy who did this mock-up. Thanks for spotting it in time; it was yanked to avoid further spreading.
The reason I built this was because the forum I visit from time to time (Synthforum.nl) had a certain user who kept asking everyone in the forum's chat whether they had a Triton, and if it -did- contain those true hit flavoured sounds, and how it sounded, how it played - generally everything you can find out when you go visit a music store and try one yourself.
After much ado, he finally got to score a Triton rack for 800 euros.
So, as a kind of very, very nerdish and far-far-FAR-fetched "payback", I decided to make a Triton VST to see if he'd regret his purchase and wanted to sell it before it might drop in value, especially with a 'free' warez version floating around.
After the screenshots were posted - well.. that's exactly how he reacted. We could barely keep him from selling his newly acquired Triton rack.
Also, 12 people sent me private messages to ask me if I'd please please please share that Triton VST with them, regardless of burning them a DVD and sending it to them or opening the gates of my pathetic broadband connection and uploading it to them.
Go figure .
So, the joke worked. But not for long, and the day after it was created the hoax was published. Everyone got a good laugh from it.
Now, to answer the critics:
I made it VSTi from an aesthetic point of view. I'm a bit of a font man, and Adobe Garamond Bold looks better with a lowercase letter behind it. Since the "VSTi" name is used too, I decided that it wouldn't hurt.
The interface looks botched. Actually, the most visible 'fault' in there should be that the encoders have a 12-part scale around them with 2 parts missing. In my mockup, those 2 parts were still there. But there's more.
The original Triton relies heavily on the touch screen and the Value slider. Something like a mouse is already a lot more versatile than anything a value slider could do, and I thought that Triton users already used to the interface would demand some kind of software equivalent for the touchscreen. That's why I didn't make a Triton rack software mockup; there's enough pixels for everyone, so why not?
The extra rotary knobs on the side are for show. A software controller with rotaries and a few buttons would be able to replace it without requiring a boatload of rotaries and still keeping track of what's going on. The original Triton only has 4 knobs - plus 3 extra who serve to set the tempo, gate and velocity. Tempo is useless in a sequencer, gate and velocity are solved more elegantly in the Arpeggiator menu (which is why I included the button).
I admit that its layout doesn't look like the happiest of softsynths. I was in a hurry, and if you've seen other ROMpler VST's such as SampleTank the interface is tailored and the rest is handled with pretty graphics. Here, it simply had to resemble a Triton, and include the touch screen for familiarity. Also notice how the red lights on the knobs kind of suck; again, copy/pasting . A Triton wastes a lot of synth real estate just because it has to fill up the space between the keys and still 'spread'. Here the keys are only an extra for show.
The modwheels and the joystick on the Polysix and Wavestation are copied from existing designs. Giving a Triton wheels instead of a stick would be blasphemy. I should've thought of making the joystick's slot rounded, though. As for a joystick as a bender; sure, the idea is lamentable (thanks to Roland with their impossibly stiff benders going up - they're finally realizing it) but Korg implemented it well. Even then - benders, just like keys, on a VST - are for show. Nobody actually looks at them for reference, it's more bells & whistles than anything else and a neat check if your controller works.
The NAMM date was simply because Korg already hinted at something new and big, and April 1st would still take 4 months to arrive.
Korg have worked really hard to get their current sample library - even if that still includes that old M1 piano. Same goes for Roland, Yamaha - and especially E-mu. E-mu had to leave hardware territory and re-released all their stuff in software form.
Korg might do the same in the future if that New Big Monster (Oh wait - that word is copyrighted - aww, screw that. No doubt that you've learned the lesson of the Bahn Sage - very few people buy such gargantuan do-it-all synths) tanks like a Titanic. Computer memory is cheap, digital filters don't have to be as high-spec as their analog emulation counterparts, so enough room for samples and enough convenience to make a comprehensive library from them. The main thing holding them back is warez - because it doesn't cost them anything to duplicate it, it also means that it doesn't cost release groups to duplicate it, or Joe Schmoe with any P2P app running in the background.
Also, thanks for detecting the little errors of stuff being off-center. There I thought I could trust Photoshop's guides .
As for the VST/AU stuff - hey, it was 3 AM. It was already hard enough to come up with marketing slogans, even worse to invent a new, believable Tri-something name.
As for the warez - well, that got me the reactions. Everyone can mock up a GUI, but people get this tingling feeling in their pants when it looks like someone's -already- running it.
In terms of uglyness: granted, I'll give you that. I used the Triton Studio's silver-ish gradient on the bender twice; once for the bender, once for the frontpanel. Static grey would've been too easy. I thought I'd added Noise and did Motion blurs enough, but apparently not .
Used were :
Korg logo - www.brandsoftheworld.com
Triton - font is Gill Sans
Cutoff/Reso - font is Futura Book
VSTi - font is Adobe Garamond Bold Italic
Blue triangle stuff - my own, based on the Trinity/Triton thingies.
Homebuilt keys based on the Arturia CS80v's ones - reworked to get rid of the JPG artifacts - I know the Legacy ones are more 3d
Screenshot from the Triton Extreme manual in PDF
and of course Photoshop, Illustrator, 3 cans of Red Bull, and Doritos Nacho cheese.
Thanks for your criticism. I can certainly learn from it next time I fix something like this .
It also shows how well you look at it if nobody noticed yet that the mockup only had 60 keys - instead of 61.
*collective groaning ensues*
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