In the interest of fairness, I think Cakewalk's own stuff is not very guilty of this, these days. Something like this is the ideal mid-point between Valhalla-style clarity and like-a-rack-unit familiarity:
 

stickman393
I've posted my thoughts on this before:
I hate knobs - A modest proposal about virtual hardware UIs

Excellent article, you make a lot of sense.
 
I'm guessing that Waves UI I posted above meets all the requirements you listed. I just opened it up again and (as you mentioned) double clicking on a button allows you to type in the exact value you require.
 

 

John T
While I'm on the subject, and relevant to citizens of this parish, here is, with honestly no desire to offend, my number one least favourite UI design of all time:
 

The VC-64 was technically and sonically superb. But that UI slows me down so much I hardly ever used it. It successfully looks like a generic piece of ace high-end vintage gear. And renders itself near-unusable in the attempt.

LOL - you two must be psychic, look which GUI stickman uses as his worst example
 

John T
While I'm on the subject, and relevant to citizens of this parish, here is, with honestly no desire to offend, my number one least favourite UI design of all time:
 

The VC-64 was technically and sonically superb. But that UI slows me down so much I hardly ever used it. It successfully looks like a generic piece of ace high-end vintage gear. And renders itself near-unusable in the attempt.

 
Yep (where is Yep, anyway, I miss that guy).  Every time I go to use VC I say to myself "It sounds so good, let's give it another chance!"  Then I open it up, look at it, and can only spend time choosing a preset and pumping up the gain before I want to just start...

Waves "gets it". I've been a fan of Valhalla since I first saw it. And if all plugins used UI like that used in the Cakewalk XX-64 family, I wouldn't have written the article in the first place, although there is still room for improvement.
 
Many vendors are making progress on this issue, since I wrote and revised the article, but there's still a lot of repeat offenders out there :-)

@ microapp - You may want to check out MeldaProductions.
 
http://www.meldaproduction.com/plugins/effects.php
 
They offer a clean AND consistent UI across a wide range of useful plug-ins. User preferences include a few different skins for the UI, but nothing in the photo-realistic vintage style. Perhaps an opportunity for their marketing dept. 
 
Concur with John T on the CW VX/PX plugins. Very easy and intuitive to use.
 
The VC-64 was surprisingly good for what it does and might be worth an upgrade effort even though we're told that path is not possible. Perhaps CW will reinvent for Sonar Pt without the steampunk aesthetic. Couldn't help thinking I was in a Jules Verne novel every time I used it with Captain Nemo on deck for overdubs. All that was missing were a few random hissing and bubbly effects while twisting the knobs. 

I'm not really worried, but if everything looked like quadcurve or fabfilter I would be happy.

YolandaSupercute
(where is Yep, anyway, I miss that guy).

Yep departed these shores a few years ago for the People's Republic of Reaper. He has a fantastic long thread on their forums about non-DAW-specific production and engineering. A smart guy, for sure.

John T
Yep departed these shores a few years ago for the People's Republic of Reaper. He has a fantastic long thread on their forums about non-DAW-specific production and engineering. A smart guy, for sure.

Ah thanks John T...its been a while...guess I gotta revamp my "most trusted Forumites" list...

If you're interested - and I know I shouldn't be sending anyone over the border into enemy territory, though I'd argue this is a minor transgression - the thread is called "Why do your recordings sound like ass?" Google that and you'll find it.

It's seriously one of the best discussions I've ever read about record production (with particular, but not exclusive attention paid to the home studio). At least until it becomes a troll-fest about 20 or so pages in.