Vurtbox.
And here it is in action:

 

Wow. It almost sounds worse than it looks! That's one hell of a feat.

 

My prize-winning Worst-GUI is starting to look like a third-place contender at this point.
Vurtbox looking like a crime scene worth of bodily fluids in digital form. Shit better be shipped with a free pregnancy test...

 

Squirtbox

 

Not the worst, but you can instantly put a date on this GUI. Mixing engineer by day, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater by night.

 

From the company that brought you Vurtbox, here's an applause-worthy new low in VSTurd unusability. This one appears to have a jaw dropping amount of disdain for the end user!

 

There is a well-known sci-fi novel called Vurt, with 'vurt' being a hallucinogenic drug that people take. I wonder if this plugin is a reference to that!

 

my taste in vsts might just be the design equivalent to outsider art, but i honestly think quite a few of the plugins posted here are really cool (if difficult to use). ive been going on a deep dive looking for uis that have a specific quality i can only describe as 90s faux 3d pre-rendered gloss. logic's es2 is one of my favorites

 

totally agree

 

Am I the only one who thinks Acustica Amber belongs on this list? Hahaha

 

looks like a TOK game board, I think that is where they got the idea, looks cool in a retro gamer aspect

 

https://youtube.com/@rexbasterfield5332?si=oD__akbXv9A5dIiS

Rex Basterfield has a... style.

 

While most Logic instruments look good, I'm still surprised they haven't updated old stuff at all. It's embarassing.

 

Yes, he certainly does!

 

The worst I can say about his GUIs is that they're a bit bland. I like his plugins, Rex is a treasure!

 

To the contrary. Valhalla GUIs are the best.

All in all: I don't give f about the GUI. If I can read it = good enough. Get over it and make music.

 

I agree completely. Flat vs overly skeumorphic designs wins the day for me every time.

I've used plugins since day one of their arrival on Digidesign products (like DiNR etc), and stuff got so visibly noisy with bad overlays and "look at me!" saved by the bell graphics, and people could be so stupid that they thought that if it "looked" like an LA2A as it had a .png of it on it, it must be as good as one etc etc... Sure, sometimes it's nice to have a visual 'cue' to realize what something is (a slight 'tweed' thing in the corner or whatnot to let you know you are using a Fender Bassman emulator etc.. but I don't need it to look 1:1 like one..

Valhalla can hint at what it's origins and intent are without beating you over the head with photorealistic knobs and whatnot, and are elegant in their simplicity, and are a good balance between ones that are completely devoid of info (say, an Apple AU hook or something with just sliders, or what one can see when failing to properly install something etc) and ones that are over the top.

Ableton was refreshing on release of V1 in a time where VST's where becoming far more prevalent in use cpu's had caught up to being able to run them natively etc, in that it was 'flat', and usable, and didn't need to fool you into thinking you were using a Neve 1073 EQ and just gave you (I think at that time of release it was just EQ3) what it was....

I guess a good analogy for me would be the transition of the world from the noisy ass MySpace pages to (and I hate the living f out of them) the original Facebook presentation.

 

I'm sure they respond well now, but that graphic style makes me feel the knob latency in my hands just looking at it