Monitors play a big impact on how things look. My laptop screen is horrible compared to my LG Ultrawide in terms of the contrast, colour, flatness, etc.
Remember when events had a gradient! that was only a few versions ago. good riddance
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And when I say my laptop screen is bad… I mean it’s really bad. I can’t get it to look right no matter how I tweak it. Everything either looks completely washed out and faded, or, it has a eye burning contrast, there’s no in-between
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You can hide and show the left, right and bottom zones on demand (key commands and/or macros and/or midi remote control) to reduce the distraction and increase available arrangement window space.
You can hide and show the left, right and bottom zones on demand
Thanks, I know this and do this already. Can’t do anything about the toolbars tho, but I’ve reduced those down to a minimum so they are less distracting.
Still feel that little “ugh…” in my eyeballs whenever I have to open the inspector.
I agree, the problem with the UI is the busyness and overall inconsistency. Maybe it has gotten a bit better in 11, I am still on 1.0, and that still has UI elements from the SX days… Different fonts, different iconography, even different scroll bars.
And as someone who really cannot stand those modern black/dark UIs, it is really hard to make a light color set, as that means really bad contrast in some areas.
In general I have neither a problem with flat design UIs nor with skeuomorphic ones as long as they’re executed well.
I quite like the UI as it is. What bugs me is that some icons/buttons are low resolution, some are high resolution, there are alignment issues here and there. Overall there is lack of consistency.
Yep, with some of the major updates, Steinberg is like “let’s overhaul this area and that dialog”, but also introduces new plugins and features for better marketing. But that leads to exactly this inconsistency. And to a whole bunch of half-baked features with each release.
There are definitely inconsistencies across the UI. They’re not huge but they do make you think it’s not as slick as could be. Some of the plugins are ugly and small. Some are skewmorphic. Some are flat. Inconsistent. However on the whole the UI in general for me is very pleasing on the eye. I’d go so far so say it looks gorgeous. In cubase 11 anyway. Really modern, easy on the eye colours. I like it a lot. Logic ableton etc all look uninspiring in comparison.
The UI looks like it is a skin. I tried to open it with the old srf editor from Steinberg (myMP3 anybody?) but that version is outdated. It was worth the try
This must be one of those cases where I see a new car and think ‘Hmmm… that is one ugly car’ then 6 months later I get it. This new UI is fugly, but maybe I’ll get it in six months. If I actually upgrade to 11 that is.
I think it looks a bit more pleasing, especially on a HiDPI screen like on my iMac, BUT these new areas have much less contrast now, which I think is a step back in ergonomics. The old version of this was much easier to navigate with the eyes, as areas were separated more clearly. I hope Steinberg puts a little more contrast into the UI again.
I’m no coder but I get the impression the changing UI elements is quite an easy task. Like it doesn’t really affect the main program code. So Steinberg probably move stuff around every release so we the users get that ‘New, I didn’t just blow $100 feeling’.
such a relief those gradients are gone! Such an eyestrain when editing, and sort of disorienting because the colours one uses to reference the track colour, is not vertically consistent and is only pure at the top of the event. Now the events through and through match the track colour and it’s much easier to see…
Some people also have to 200 track colours of slight varying shades, and the slight differentiation from one shade to the next was really non-apparent because of the gradients. Now you can clearly see the slightest colour differentiation. I could not go back.
I prefer high contrast buttons. And the relative contrast and colors of most of the displays are customizable. A gui style is never going to 100% agreeable to 100% of users. The only option in reality would be to have it totally customizable like Reaper, but for a long-lived DAW like Cubase it would definitely mean building the entire core software from scratch. Clearly not an option. I think the Cubase GUI is better than it’s ever been and I also far prefer new features to be in other areas.
