That old transport bar was EVERYTHING! I agree with the original poster in parts. I remember when I first got Cubase 3…switching from Cakewalk….and I was STUNNED at the level of detail and how it looked like “hardware”. The Mixer and the transport were NICE!
The graphics today….especially the mixer….aren’t my personal taste. Part of it seems to be rendered very simple with a sorta amateur vibe to it.
Buuuuuut….take a look at Logic’s horrible Azzzz interfaces on some of those old VST’s and you kinda have to give Steinberg credit for at LEAST having a consistent-yet confusing to me-interface graphic wise.
We can debate all day long about different taste in UI design, whether flat or skeuomorphic is better, one thing is for sure:the old C5 design is not coming back.
That image shows why it’s so much better. Everything is clear and separate, easy to spot, easy to grab etc. Pretty, and nice to look at, has no practical value. I use the software to do a job and I want to do that job as quickly and easily as possible. There is no need for “modern” to mean stupid, but that is always the end result when software designers are in charge. This isn’t just a dig at Steinberg.
Here’s just one of many examples of stupid - the title bars in the windows (not the main title bar in version 9 onwards, that just takes stupid to a whole new level). In that image of Cubase 5 the title bars are very clear and obvious. In later versions these title bars are almost invisible blending the same colour into the background. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to grab a window to move it. Some windows might not be moveable, e.g, pop-ups - you open them and then look around trying to find how to close them - eventually you find a faded grey X somewhere to the right but you didn’t notice it because there is no defining border and no colour separation.
Also, clear colour separation between buttons ,labels, indicators etc. In the modern versions a lot of these things are just shades of two colours, black and white, or worse - grey, dark grey. Whole rows of things all the same colour. It’s just madness.
Of course, after regular use, we get used to some of these things but that is not an excuse to replace common sense with stupidity. There are many problems like this. Might not seem like a big deal but all of these small aggravations build up and tire you out to a point you’re just continually frustrated.
I’m not against change as long as it does not drastically alter my workflow from what I have become used to over the many years of different versions. You get used to something and then a new version makes it unintuitively difficult. It’s unnecessary and arrogant.
I do like this (the image you put up, Cubase 5?, better! “Edge definition” is so much better there than the current version that by comparison it’s almost nonexistent in the latter.
I wonder why the change? Is there a functional advantage to the dark theme? Or is it simply “Because everyone else is doing it”?
This ‘clarity’ you speak of is one side of a couple on a coin so to speak. Your clarity is my clutter. Having to look at that god awful ‘noise’ all day isn’t something I’m missing one bit. Also;
You’re exactly right that we get used to it. And that’s really not something to just brush over. No need to attribute the change to ‘stupidity’ just because it conflicts with your “common sense”.
If by “to do a job” you mean that you use Cubendo professionally and it really keeps you continually frustrated then you should probably look elsewhere. I think Reaper allows for customization of the GUI so you can make it as ‘pretty’ as you want, or ‘cluttered’, or ‘clear’.
If you don’t mean that then I’ll just say that as a professional making a living off of the software what you’re talking about isn’t much of a problem.
What is problematic are things that as someone pointed out are ‘actionable’. In other words if I need to grab the edge of an event to change its start or end then that area needs to be large enough to be able to grab it with relative ease. It has nothing to do with understanding what it is by looking at it and everything to do with just lowering the required amount of precision to execute the function. Stuff like opening and closing windows can be done extremely effectively using key commands just like a million other things - all in muscle memory after a while.
I absolutely hate that old look. It reminds me of user interfaces of apps that came with built-in soundcards etc.
No, I don’t think Cubendo’s GUI is perfect. Cubase 5 isn’t just a step backwards though, it’s like a half-marathon backwards.
my most fav. Cubase GUI is also the 6 / 6.5 Version, after that, i was never a fan
that was also the reason why it took me so long to upgrade, i went to 10, took me quite a while to accommodate and from then to 11 and now of course 12
i love all the new functionality of course, but if i had the option, i would not hesitate to switch to Cubase 6 GUI
I agree. I also know that there is probably more people that prefer modern design than those of us that don’t, but that’s no excuse for the designers to treat the rest of us with contempt.
Yes and no. Not everything is stupid but still many things are and they should be called out as such. I didn’t list them, I’m just venting my frustration in general.
I’ve looked elsewhere and tried to get used to them. Unfortunately Cubase is the best of a bad bunch.
That’s opinion. It is a problem to me, I stare at this screen all day long, it drives me insane. Like I said, small aggravations build up.
Not sure what you’re saying there? Do you mean we should just put up with it and go slower or are you saying the design should improve?
Some, maybe even most, but not all. Why change things unnecessarily that nobody has complained about. I dread new versions of anything because I expect yet another learning curve and more slow down. Obviously we have to learn new functions and features, but forcing us to re-learn what we’ve been doing for years is just pointless.
I respect your opinion, there’s nothing wrong with that but as I said, the rest of us shouldn’t have to lose out - make it all optional. I’m not asking for Cubase 12 to look like 5. I would just like more separation and clarity between windows and labels etc.
Again, opinion. I see it as the exact opposite and so do many of us, all I want is for us to all be respected. There is nothing wrong with your opinion, there is also nothing wrong with mine - it just didn’t win the popular vote so we lost out completely.
There is no direct functional advantage of a “dark theme” per se. I think there was once a study that seemed to suggest that dark themes put less strain on the eyes, and that probably led to the current hype of dark themes in UI design, but afair that study didn’t show the whole picture and whether a dark or light UI is better for the eyes very much depends on the light situation. What is pretty much evident and has been since print days is that dark font on light background is generally easier to read than the other way round (especially for longer texts, which is why you rarely see negative text pages in magazines, except those catering to a goth audience ) .
In mobile computing there is an advantage, though: dark UIs consume less energy and thus make your battery last longer.
The main reason why Steinberg redid the UI of Cubase since C7 is imho not the color, but the move from a bitmap based interface to a vector graphics based interface that is easily scalable and adaptable to all the different screen resolutions we have nowadays. The old pre-C6 interface was not really fit for screen resolutions up to 4k and more.
Without that, we wouldn’t have such nice features like the fully scalable mix console.
I do agree though that in terms of contrast the current design is not optimal and definetely could use some improvement…
Just to be more precise: this is only the case for Oled displays AFAIK.
Normal LED displays will consume the same energy, no matter if the image is black or white.
So you not getting what you want = being treated with contempt?
That the design should improve.
Well, first of all I’m pretty certain people did complain over the years about different aspects of the GUI. If we had the time and energy we could probably go back and find that.
Secondly, re-learning isn’t that much of a thing from one version to the next. Major changes that requires some time to me seem to be things like making Control Room into a pane after it used to be a mixer. Functionally it’s still a mixer, but no longer looks like one. Guess what - I was incredibly annoyed and complained loudly about that for months. Nothing changed. So I just got used to it. And I have to say - the designers were I think “correct” here. Functionally it does the same thing but it’s taking up far less space. I can actually access all that I need the way it is now. If they had listened to my annoying whining back then we’d be worse off. So sometimes we think we’re 100% right but it’s really just the change we react to negatively… Same with the new forum. But anyway, that was a big GUI change. Mostly it’s the same from one version to the next…
