Jessica the VI Artist🎚️🎹🌈
I really enjoyed this conversation with Bacon Paul of the #surgeXT team. Surge gave me a free, accessible, clear path to start playing around with a #synth about five years ago, and now I've fallen deeply in love with many of them! :) Congrats to the team on releasing Short Circuit XT, a sampler with tons of possibilities!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZlqXefJW8E
Bitwig Community Talk (BiCoTa) - Episode #6: with guest baconpaul (Surge XT, Shortcircuit XT)

YouTube
Feb 3 at 5:44pmWeb
Show threadZach BennouiFeb 3
@JessicatheVIArtist I love Surge and the whole team behind it. I have them to thank for not letting me fail one of my Synth Programing classes in college lol. They made sound design actually fun for me and not a headache, and I can't wait to start playing around with Shortcircuit which is something I've been hoping to try for a very, very long time. Also feels really good to know we have access to one of the best software synths ever, free or paid.
Show threadBrandon CrossFeb 3
@JessicatheVIArtist I really wish the lines of communication were a bit more open as to the state of screen reader accessibility on Short Circuit. I've asked several times, and have been reassured that it's coming. I could accept that, but we as a community have been burned so many times. I still hold out hope, because these guys have done good work in the past, but it's a bit concerning that it keeps getting pushed back.
Show threadZach BennouiFeb 4
@bscross32 @JessicatheVIArtist Yeah I feel like the hole SCXT project was just massively delayed for a really long time, it took them like five years to get to this point. I think part of the issue was the code base, it seems like they basically started from scratch rather than using the existing ShortCircuit code, but I don't understand why accessibility wasn't built from the very beginning if that was going to be the case. It's also confusing because they said they designed the UI with accessibility in mind, but from looking at the beta that doesn't really line up with what I'm seeing. Nothing is grouped, lots of buttons are just missing labels with placeholder text instead, it's weird. I'm sure they'll come through in the end, but I think we were a little bit of an afterthought in this case.
Show threadBrandon CrossFeb 4
@ZBennoui @JessicatheVIArtist Well, I wanna be careful because these are guys working on a free and open source project in their spare time for fun. They aren't obligated to complete it in a given timeframe, or ever. I do think communication could've been better for sure, and I do absolutely not think it was designed with accessibility in mind. Given that, they have done great work in Surge XT, and all I can do is hope that they'll pick it up.
Show threadZach BennouiFeb 4
@bscross32 @JessicatheVIArtist Oh for sure, and to be clear I don't think the lack of accessibility was done purposely or because they don't care. Honestly it seems like this project just gave them a lot of headaches. I'm happy it's finally off the ground and I'm sure things will get much better soon. I have a feeling when this is out of beta it's gonna blow up, to my knowledge SC is the first truly open source graphical sampler that can compete with something like Kontakt.