It's been interesting reading through this discussion. I have to say that as part of my job I'm presented with new plugins on a regular basis, usually without documentation at the stage I'm given them so judging a plugin's usability, appearance and how intuitive it is is something I give a lot of thought to.
Generally I feel that, with complex tools, the ideal obviously is that I don't need to refer to the manual. Our tools are often complex enough these days that I honestly don't believe this is achievable or at least is incredibly hard to achieve. If I can open a tool and navigate my way through a decent amount of the core tasks one would want to achieve with this tool, without the manual, then they have done a good job. If I then need to refer to the manual to work a few things out or to discover things I may not have stumbled upon - I'm ok with that.
I tried Falcon a few times when UVI initially gave me it and I found I was closing it again quite quickly and going to use something else. After a while I basically spent a few weeks using only Falcon with the manual open on my 2nd screen and after that I was fine with it.
I like that it's quite regimented and I find it suits my way of working in how structured the patches are. I find most tasks to be achieved in acceptable ways but there are definitely still things that I find illogical and frustrating even after using it extensively over the last few years. On balance, I find the positives of the sound and what can be achieved with the instrument outweigh the negatives. ymmv.
I totally agree that there are improvements that could be made and some workflow oddities that could be significantly streamlined.
OMG I want so much to be able to grab the tab at the top of an effect module and drag it to somewhere else in the structure from the Tree view and the main central patch structure pane!!
I also lost count of the number of times I'm scrolling the central patch structure pane and because it's stopped in just the right spot that the mouse pointer is now over a knob, the next scroll adjusts the knob setting instead of scrolling the view!! (on a mac with Magic mouse btw) If anyone knows a way to prevent this, I'm all ears.
I really feel like UVI potentially have a massive hit on their hands with this instrument (I say this without any bias, I dont work with UVI, I just know some of the team). Falcon will continue to evolve and I genuinely don't think it's far from being the sound design nirvana it promises to be. I would continue to use other synths of course, Pigments & Phase Plant offer similar if different possibilities presented in more intuitive, fluid and fun ways and UA Lion although less broadly capable is a great sonic playground IMO, I'm concentrating mainly on commenting on Falcon because it's the subject of the thread. If I don't mention some of the other big-hitter uber synths it's only because I haven't used them, there's only so much time in the day and outside of work my preference for hobby time is to be outdoors, kayaking, rock climbing and hiking.
I'd encourage you to spend more time with it
@Pier but I can totally relate to your desire to mark it down as a miss and look elsewhere. We're fortunate these days to have so many options to choose from for relatively small amounts of money it seems silly to persist with something you're finding frustrating. Will be interested if you do persist and feel like coming back to this thread in the future.