Cubase 10.5 HiDPI on Windows 10

Thanks a lot for this workaround!!
I have bought KOMPLETE 12 and included instrument MASSIVE & MASSIVE X wouldn’t behave properly with 4K when using 150% scaling.
When pointing the cursor at any one control, it would actually be pointing at a point higher up on the right, until using your workaround then it lins up normally.
I have emailed N.I. to make their instruments scalable and asked my music shop to lobby also. They did reply to them saying their is no workaround but they have scalability in their list of WIP requests so let’s hope they are genuninely going to invest their time for us all.
They also said there is no workaround for the small text however Windows has a magnifier activated simply by Windows key & the + key, to cancel is Windows key & the Esc key which I find useful. Hope this helps others too looking at this thread.

Im on a 32" 4k benQ professional screen, and I was dismayed to see cubase 10.5’s high DPI (yes, I understand the difference between many pixels and high pixel density) mode implementation on windows10. And this was without anything loaded into the projects - no incompatible VSTs loaded. I guess developing things like that Backbreaker drum machine took precedent, etc etc.

Patching old complaints vs developing new business? Where is that meme with the guy ignoring his girlfriend, and whistling at the other as she passes by?

Kend - wow, thanks for the Windows + reminder, I totally forgot about the WIN+ WIN- WINesc shortcuts but I used to use it all the time! THAT WILL HELP ME A TON WITH MASSIVE/KOMPLETE KONTROL and some of the tiny plugins that cannot scale

Milkman - TOO funny about the whistling at the other girl while with his hot girlfriend analogy.

I felt the same way when Steinberg told us how long and hard it is to fix the UI bugs in a reasonable time frame, but then they announce Backbonebreaker drum and Cubasis for Android; their team clearly needs to reprioritize resources on making the core users and new core users Cubase/Nuendo 4L UI function properly over obvious niche products=.

And what about when a Cubasis user does a trial of the desktop DAW app? They won’t buy into the Steinberg ecosystem if it is not pixel perfect in 2020!

~20 months now with no fix in sight… sadly I am ordering a second 1080P monitor today, I cannot believe I have been forced to downgrade two of my monitors

Will it be the first time that a DAW loses customers because of its GUI?
Fact is, Steinberg’s customers are running away because they slept in that area!
I don’t know anything about programming, but it doesn’t have to be a vector graphic for free scaling, see U-he or Arturia.
But why did they start there (e.g. transport field)?
I would like to have Cubase back in the three-dimensional look as before, but with the ability to zoom in or out in percentage.
I have been following this problem for 5 years now! and again and again I get put off!
If it doesn’t happen in 11, they should admit that they can’t do it and not put off their customers with a cowbell in the metronome!
We don’t need more useless features that fill the program, we need a reasonable desktop!
…excuse my English…

I’m really wondering about all this anger, looking at this thread and other ones on the same subject… :open_mouth:

  • First, I would never have invested in a HiDPI monitor if I wasn’t sure that everything software related would be able to use the extra resolution in a transparent way.
  • From which, and seeing all the problems that arise here and there in all kinds of applications when HiDPI is involved, I carefully choosed a 32" 2560x1440 screen last november, when composing my present setup —> problem solved : using Cubase at 100% is a breeze with it and no compatibility mess to deal with…

It looks like the horse is riding you and not you the horse!..can it be!?

Seems so, indeed. But, as it is only 75 cm long with something like 7 kgs of weight, I manage…

FWIW (from Matthias Quellmann) : Cubase 10.5.20 Maintenance Update - #97 by Matthias_Quellmann - Cubase - Steinberg Forums.

It’s not just about the problem with HiDPI itself, it’s about Steinberg advertising HiDPI as a headline C10 feature when it just wasn’t ready. That was a very poor decision IMO, and now we’re told that it’s not going to be fixed until at least C11, for which customers will be expected to pay to upgrade to get something working that was promised 2 years previous. I’ve already sold on my licence, not just because of the HiDPI feature, but also because of these dubious bait-and-switch practices, the slow pace of development, and long-standing bugs.

I suggest you to read what’s in the link of my previous post. After this, the ‘slow pace of development’ and ‘long-standing bugs’, well… Yes, there are many things that I expect since years to be fixed/improved : just an example to illustrate my point. But it’s more or less the same thing for all DAW/host publisher, AFAICS.

I’ll take Reaper example, as it’s the one I know best. Almost everyone on the net praises how ‘reponsive’ the devs team is and and how quickly issues are solved. Meanwhile, Reaper is still plagued with MIDI bugs (stuck notes, among others…), an unusable navigator, display issues, with an increasing number of ‘actions’ and ‘scripts’ to solve the lack of basic stuff such as splitting an MIDI item/event without cutting the notes underneath, the whole thing slowly becoming a workflow nightmare (no less than 3000 scripts done by users - with no true quality control - publicly available in different places). And yes, the Reaper HiDPI management is still at the beta stage and themes dependent, as each involved graphic file related to a given component/control needs to be redrawed, and this for each and every scale : 125%, 150%, etc.

So, you’ll probably find a counter example elsewhere, but the truth is : all this, and especially the HiDPI mess, takes a lot of time to set properly. A time which isn’t used to solve the ‘Long-standing bugs’, as you named it. So, at the end, what choice should be done ?

That would be my pragmatic approach too, if I could find a good one but at 28"; research first, then spend. I can understand the anger of those who did that in reverse order but for the moment, I’m staying with 2 x FHDs.

I actually use NUENDO, which is marketed and has the features for music production for video editors/game developers. Just look at their ads and Youtube channel, they show PCs doing video/game development and using 4K screens. This is the category me and my company fall in, all our workstations REQUIRE 4K for game development and video editing. We need accurate color calibration, HDR, etc.

I think there are many other use cases of people requiring 4K (photo editing), or simply the choices of pro-grade color calibrated1080P monitors are scarce. I absolutely cannot believe I am defending the need for 4K in 2020, as we are shifting to 5k/8k already! I do agree if you use the workstation for mainly music and playing games, 1440P could be a sweet spot, but that still doesnt mean 4K HIDPI should not function.

The UI has to be fixed, the menus act odd, the plugins and video editor are cutoff, it is a Frankenstein of a UI. It is the number one thing people see all day and they cannot work around the bugs so in my eyes it is a critical flaw bug.

-V

Sorry, but… If their ads are showing 4K screens in action, it’s that the HiDPI is more or less functional, unless all have been done under OSX : I don’t know, I haven’t check. Beside this, I don’t deny the need for certain professional applications but again, I think that what Matthias Quellmann said on the subject should be carefully read and am rather skeptical about the absolute ‘need’ for a professional 4K/HiDPI use of several whiners on the subject : we all know that jumping on everything appearing as a brand new technology, no matter the pitfalls that could appear, is not a marginal behavior…

See above : to make things as short as possible, read again Matthias Quellmann…

I don’t know if using a HiDPI setup is such a nightmare and obviously, I’m not in a position to test it. So, could you post links to screenshots showing these issues ? I would like to see by myself to which point they prevent any use of Cubase on a daily basis. Until now, I haven’t seen one clearly showing that it’s the case…

I got a reply - finaly:

“Please excuse the very late reply! I would just inform you we have read your e-mail and you post on our Forum. Unfortunately, I do not have any solution to offer to you for improving the HiDPI resolution on Windows.
However, I can tell you the developers are working hard in order to find a solution. I hope it will arrive as soon as possible
Thank you for your understanding!”

Here are a few screenshots - notice also the top menu bars don’t properly work either - not only are my VSTs all cut, video cut, the menus appear in the middle of random places sometimes and also sometimes the text does not show or shows in strange places when you click. It really is quite crazy, this is the only program I’ve seen exhibit these behaviors.



Finally ! Actual screenshots clearly showing what’s wrong. And yep, indeed, things are not acting normally : I could do with the strange menus display location, but not with the cut of the VST windows. Looks like the horizontal dimension of what should be displayed isn’t correctly reported to Nuendo when HiDPI is involved. Strange…
Glad that I don’t have to deal with such a mess. Out of curiosity, what is your display setup (resolution screen and scaling) and what do you get when using Nuendo in 100% ? Anyway, I can just hope that a solution will quickly be found… :confused:

The menus display/menu text dissapearing is very infuriating as well, at least I’ve memorized where the menus SHOULD be and I have to click blank menus to bring up the submenus. I’ve mapped most I use to keyboard shortcuts now to get around it, but it is really a nightmare and is intermittent. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Curernt Screen setup:

Bottom displays:
1 Acer X27 27" 4k Monitor, 144hz, HDR, G-sync local dimming (pro) @ 4K, 175% scaling usually (sometimes was 150%)
1 Dell P2418HT 1080P Touch Screen Monitor (I got this because of the 4K issues, but when I drag and drop plugins also there is strange scaling behaviors)

Top display:
1 LG 55" C9 OLED at 4k 200% scaling

Graphics Cards:
2 X Nvidia 2080 TI Founders Editions

Not sure if anybody has seen Steinberg’s FAQ, but they DEFINITELY know about all these issues! I just cannot believe how many YEARS they have taken to solve this UI mess :question: It actually says “If you rely working with video, disable HiDPI in Cubase.”… pretty crazy IMO :

Additional notes
Some Cubase 10 components still do not fully support high resolution graphics, for example, the VST instruments Prologue, Mystic, Spector, LoopMash as well as MIDI plug-ins and some parts of the FX plug-in set.
3rd party plug-ins need to support HiDPI on their own, else they may appear small and/or with a truncated user interface

Known issues & solutions
HiDPI enabled: Video window is black and shows no video after dragging it to another display. This may happen with a mixed display configuration (e.g. with UHD and non-UHD display), with the non-UHD display configured to be the main display. If you rely working with video, disable HiDPI in Cubase.

The left side of the Hub window is shown in white after moving the window to another display. This may happen with a mixed UHD and non-UHD display configuration with the non-UHD display configured to be the main display. Use the UHD display as the main display.

Menus are blank (no entries) on older systems with Intel HD3000/2000 graphics processors. Reason: Intel does not support HD 3000/2000 on Windows 10. Workaround: If your system has an alternative graphics processor, disable HD3000/2000in Device Manager.

HiDPI disabled: On systems with different types of monitors (e.g. one HiDPI screen and one without HiDPI) various general (not Cubase-specific) graphical issues may occur.

HiDPI disabled: Panels (Transport Panel, Audio Alignment, Steinberg Hub,…) might be displayed in the wrong size and jumping to a wrong position when moving them to a different monitor.

HiDPI disabled: Menus can be very small or not usable at all. Workaround: Move menu to other screen.

HiDPI disabled: Menu entries can be just white (no font) until moving the mouse over the entries. Workaround: Move menu to other screen.

Don’t want all this to end as an useless argument, but well… Such a complex graphical setup when everyone knows (even if some won’t admit it) that HiDPI is NOT a fully mature technology is more or less like looking for issues, don’t you think ? Even without knowing the basics about how HiDPI actually works, I would never even try to use two monitors with different scaling settings. And about the different ‘HiDPI disabled’ issues, are they occuring when disabled at the OS level, at Nuendo one, both ?

Beside this, and you have clearly stated it : Intel has also a problem with HiDPI support, as well as many third party plug-ins publishers. This clearly shows that HiDPI technology isn’t ready yet, in a reliable way, for serious tasks when intensive audio/video work is involved. What more to say ?

As an example, I’ve been waiting several years before being sure that the SSD technology was reliable enough to be used in an intensive way, as HDD can be (remember the ‘trim’ days and the suspicious amount of reliable read/write cycles in the first generations of them ?). I finally took the jump just few months ago, when composing my present system. Call me an old conservative fart, but the background of my reasoning is actually this one : as much as I can, I try to avoid any compromise between hype and reliability, no matter the technology involved…

How about ditching Windows 10 and buying a complete new Apple rig – then buy another complete new Apple rig when they move to ARM :stuck_out_tongue:

:astonished: :mrgreen:
Through the years, I have also seen a lot of posts on different forums reporting Retina related issues in all kind of situations, so…
As I’m writing this, I still think that the whole Hi-Res stuff is clearly not mature enough to be used with a true reliability (the one which allows you to no longer worry about it when using a system on a daily basis). But, as often, to each his own… :nerd:

LMFAO, yes my crystal ball says that the ARM macs are going to have some issues for musicians. now that ipad / iphone apps can run on a mac i wonder if the music apps/synths AUv3 will work with DAWs as they are much cheaper than their desktop VST AU counterparts. interesting times.

cubic - i see you are conservative but running AMD, any instability issues there vs intel so far? I am also thinking about switching to AMD but I also love Thunderbolt despite concerns over security