Another Cubase version, still no real HiDPI

[Sebastian_Alvarez]

I’m always happy to spend the $99 + tax as soon as I see a new Cubase Pro version is available, even if it’s just for a few new features. But I wish the guys at Steinberg some day realize that as you get old, your eyesight declines, and the cost of getting new prescription lenses every year has been going steadily up, at least in the US, but well, everybody knows how much healthcare sucks in this country. So I don’t know if that is the same in the rest of the world. But I assume a lot of Steinberg customers are US based.

But the fact is, any decent software for the past ten years or so has adopted UI scalability. Not just resizing the window to have more space, but also making text and graphical elements bigger or smaller. The best allow this freely, as in it will scale up as you click and drag the bottom right corner usually, and some do it in steps.

When I was watching the first of Dom Sigalas’ videos this morning when I got the glad surprise that Cubase 14 was released (to those in the US, at least one good thing happened this week, eh?) and not long into the video, he shows how the Shimmer plugin window can be resized. I said "Cool, maybe they finally brought HiDPI resizing to Cubase and all the Steinberg plugins.

So after downloading everything new and rebooting, I open Cubase Pro 14. I don’t see much that is new, but obviously it was reading the preferences from 13, so everything looks the same, no surprise there. But I think, I bet there’s a GUI zoom setting somewhere in the preferences, or in the menus. But no. So I start creating tracks with HALion Sonic, Retrologue, Padshop, Groove Agent, all of these VSTis that I barely use because they look tiny, or at least the text does.

But still no zoom for the tiny GUI in those, as we can see in this screenshot:

Retrologue is especially sad, because it’s full of cool sounds that I wish I could use, but take a look at the screenshot. This is 2560x1440 on a 32" monitor, and I’m like 3 feet away from it. And still all those knobs and text look tiny.

Now, somebody at Steinberg, please explain to me your order of priorities, because to me it seems upside down. Shimmer and Studio Delay, both great additions, have GUI zoom:

So I can make those as big as I want, which is great, but they just have a few faders and knobs, and some text. Honestly, I have no trouble reading it at the regular size. But you make this scalable, and HALion Sonic, Retrologue and the rest that could really use even a 125% scale to be able to read the large amount of text, no scaling.

I know Cubase is a lot more than just those, but the Cubase GUI itself has lots of areas with microscopic text that can barely be read. I need to use a lower resolution just to be able to use Cubase, when I could be using 2560x1440 all the time for everything else.

Does that make any sense to you? Am I alone in this? Does everybody have Superman vision?

[GlennO]

Realistically, I’m not sure it’s practical for an app as complex as Cubase to have a fully scalable UI. (I think that’s what you meant to say, not HiDPI, which is a somewhat different issue).

Individual plugins can, and often do, have scalable UI’s. That’s a relatively recent development though. So, while newer plugins like Shimmer and Studio Delay can be expected to have scalable UI’s, it’s less common to find that feature in older plugins like Retrologue. It’s possible Steinberg will retro-fit old plugins with a scalable UI, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Your best strategy might be to get a monitor with a PPI that suits you better. That way you wouldn’t need to rely on scalable UI’s in your apps.

[skijumptoes]

My opinion is that something like retrologue is annoying, particularly as Steinberg should set the standard for VST.

Luckily being on Mac I can do the Ctrl+Mouse scroll to zoom in to the screen and it looks pretty good doing that.

You’d think there would be some way they could just put a magnify function on the outer edges of the plugin window to simulate some kind of zoom function that could be used as a last resort for any plugin really.

I don’t know how viable that is however.

[dream]

Since upgrading to C14, I’ve noticed a few visual elements have become blurred on my system. I’m using three 4K monitors scaled to full HD, and certain graphics are no longer sharp. For example, the “e” icon in the mix console, which opens plugins when hovered over the insert section, appears blurred. Another instance is the “Steinberg” text and logo on some of the new plugins; while it looks crisp in certain plugins, the same exact thing appears blurred in others.

On a positive note, the Control Room graphics have improved in C14. In C13, there was one minor detail that wasn’t fully high-resolution, but it’s now perfect.

I haven’t yet explored everything in depth, but I wanted to highlight these initial findings.

.

[Sebastian_Alvarez]

@Googly_Smythe

That’s called “democracy”. He won the popular vote AND the electoral college. Like it or lump it.

Well, “democracy” is exactly what I’m very worried about, when he already attempted a deadly domestic terrorist/coup d’état to subvert said democracy, and more recently said if he was elected there would be no more elections, and so many, many more indications that in four years, there really won’t be any elections, at least not in this country.

But you are correct in that he won, which speaks so poorly of the little over half of this country who voted for him, because by now, nobody can say they don’t know what kind of human being they elected. It would be bad enough for them to elect someone who obviously has the mind a ten year old child bully, but it’s one devout of any humanity, or compassion.

@Googly_Smythe

And please, no more politics.

Well, I only made a rather distant reference to it, but if you think this is politics, you’re dead wrong. Politics was until the 2012 election. After that it’s a social issue, either you are in favor of democracy or in favor of a dictator wannabe that for some reason that is impossible to fathom, has the power to turn masses to his favor. Reminds me of another dictator that could also do that about 90 or so years ago. But at least, that society didn’t vote for that dictator, it was imposed on them. And the few survivors of that dictatorship that seems so far in the past, these days are saying that what’s happening in this country these days, is a lot like what happened in that other society. So no, this is not politics.

And besides, I wasn’t planning on even hinting at it distantly after that reference that didn’t even mention his name or his party. So you could’ve simply said nothing at all.

[Aleque]

I completely agree with this. I also don’t have the best eyesight, which is why I am running 150% dpi on my Windows 10 PC, using a 1080p resolution. This is what my Cubase + Retrologue looks like. I am still on Cubase 13, by the way.

I really hope Steinberg fixes this in the future. I saw that even Diva VST from u-he has a resize GUI option, where you can define different percentages, so you can scale it exactly to the size that you wish. Would be awesome if Steinberg made this possible, as well.

I suggest making a separate topic and dedicating it as a feature request to solve this exact problem. Otherwise, this current topic will just die out with time and no one will care.

Or maybe post it as a feature request / wish in the “Cubase 15 Wishlist”, although I am against enabling Steinberg in this kind of behavior. What I mean is, there are a lot of basic but important things that need to be fixed inside Cubase. Things like: making menu colors, text font and text size more pleasant to look at and be able to resize GUI elements, etc. I don’t think it should be “features” that we have to pay for with each update they roll out. They can add as many fancy new features, VSTs and workflow improvements as they like and call them “features” for their new version of Cubase, that they charge money for. But basic necessary fixes that help us to SEE without getting headaches, should be free patches that fix current Cubase versions, in my humble opinion.

[Norbury_Brook]

there’s still a lot of plugins that don’t have scalable GUI’s out there…Acusica Audio, BFD drums for example.

Simple workaround is to get a second monitor, one that uses 1080p resolution, they’re cheap as chips and if you have a plugin like retrologue that’s too small on 4k then just drag it to the second monitor.

That’s how I work

M

[skijumptoes]

@Norbury_Brook

there’s still a lot of plugins that don’t have scalable GUI’s out there…Acusica Audio, BFD drums for example.

I appreciate that it comes down to resources, but as platform leaders they should be the gold standard of how a VST should function and look.

[Sebastian_Alvarez]

@Norbury_Brook

Simple workaround is to get a second monitor, one that uses 1080p resolution, they’re cheap as chips and if you have a plugin like retrologue that’s too small on 4k then just drag it to the second monitor.

I shouldn’t have to spend a dime, no matter how cheap, to have a fourth monitor, which would also force me to buy a second support column like I have for my front monitor and the one above it. In addition to that, there’s the added eye strain after hours of use, and the added cost of electricity to power another monitor. So adding a 1080p monitor is not as cheap as you might think.

Steinberg should realize this is 2024 and most GUIs are HiDPI and scalable.