Everything has to be flat, to begin, as humanity marches towards a new web.
GUIs have been going backwards for a good few years by most developers, not just Steinberg. This was predictable. Iām not interested in āmodernā, Iām interested in common sense and practical usage.
Whether the old versions looked better or worse, they had clear separation between elements, you could find things quickly, and selected parts / enabled buttons, stood out clearly - these things should always remain a priority and never be replaced by something because it looks modern and pretty.
Unfortunately all that matters these days is what something looks like, while static, on a screen. The āUā in GUI has become meaningless.
I havenāt tried it yet but Iāll doubt I will, purely for this graphical mess.
7 Likes
I have been using Cubase since 1993 and this is the worst change I have seen since I first started using it. Steinberg please allow users to preference back to the old look or I think I would like my upgrade money back!!! The flatness looks cheap and will send me to sleep.
PS: I wish your programmers would do something really useful like creating a touch screen mixer for people who use a touch screen.
14 Likes
A lot of the stuff above could be fixed by Steinberg by not allowing the users to change the brightness of selections.
A lot of complaints are just users getting used to the new design. Time will fix this.
Of course there are several bugs in this .0 release and I hope Steinberg will quickly fix them.
2 Likes
The title resonates with me. Without getting dramatic, Iāll put it this way. Itās as if the door opened, I heard the voice of my wife āHoney, Iām homeā, I turn around the corner and sheās completely shaved her head.
It does not diminish my love for her one bit, but itās a shock nevertheless.
I tried to squeeze in some time yesterday to check out 13. While all additions are GREAT, functionally I mean, itās great! Smarter, easier, snappier, faster loading, faster closing, everything I really care for is improved. Butā¦ Iām fumbling around.
Iāve never had to look twice at what I was doing in earlier version updates. But now I need to look twice and thrice. I canāt get what Iām looking at with just a cursory glance.
The biggest problems for me are the empty/inactive slots of the mixconsole (inserts, sends) that are colored āBlackhole Blackā, which wonāt allow me to use a lighter user color for my theme because it looks so awful. I settled to some dark blue as the user theme, as I found it offered me the best compromise. If those could be changed, I suspect it would offer more customization options. I tried hard to re-create my 104, 104, 104 background theme, but it was impossible (it was possible, but it looked like an absolute patchwork of black and grey, and it wasnāt even cute. Unacceptable for constant use.)
Another thing is that I find the Inspector has done away with many symbols and uses plain text instead, but since there is not a big difference in text style or size, I canāt make out sections or details right away, itās just a body of text to me.
I donāt know if itās the Yin and Yang of things. The immense ease of use and appreciation of the new features/additions (substance) had to be balanced out by a more taxing experience in the UI (looks)?
I hope I can adapt with time. It was such a joy to use the multiple parts and Range tool in the MIDI editor to work with a complete Iconica Sketch orchestra and work so fast. But at the same time trying to not be distracted by the UI.
6 Likes
For some like me it so bright itās making me sick. I canāt use it.
7 Likes
I took to 13 instantly.
Thereās a whole bunch of us who are thrilled with the USING of the program and sod the look.
The look is on the move.
Sure, stuff will get tweaked by the DEVs, and they Do listen.
I started with VOYETRA SEQUENCER PLUS (as my first real pro DAW) in the early 80ās. Version One DID NOT HAVE MIDI THRU.
Before that it was Passport 4 track midi sequencer on an Apple II.
It dropped a quarter note on bar 69 so i couldnāt use it to do my first pro studio recording. I found the developer and got him on the phone. No fix ever came.
I ADDED the above to show appreciation for the vocal majority (?) here, that expect more than we are blessed with this month.
READ: itās not your fault you feel like itās just fine to rudely knock, āthe lookā.
CUBASE 13 is supremely better. Thereās a couple of minor irritants, āas perceived as by MEā, that werenāt addressed - though pretty much everything else was.
STEINBERG creates VST - whatever year that was. 200x ?
Iāve seen programs go up and then down. STEINBERG = ASTONISHING
[ON āTHE LOOKā]
FACT: non system fonts - gradients, rounded icons all have a cumulative effect on performance, different resolutions issues, and perhaps much more, depending on YOUR computer.
REMOVING VARIABLES ME LIKE.
Thereās been hints for BIG things in CUBASE 14 and i bet itās out WITHIN a year.
Iām hoping people just get on with it - and that we donāt create some micro-tribal wave of perceived discontent about CUBASE 13ā¦
MOST OF US (who use the program) LOVE CUBASE 13.
Maybe itās just 'cause Iāve seen so much with programs over the decades.
Buy a license and then the DEVs quit and program needs to be replaced.
That some other program comes along which creates a real question as to whether to change to it.
Lots of other thoughts ā though Iāve covered my vibe on attempting deeper points in earlier writes above.
Of course we know that over the decades CUBASE has changed The-LOOK.
Yeah, it looks different.
For most of us ~> So what.
I wonāt be whimpering about anything.
It works freaking brilliantly. AND IT WILL IMPROVE.
Maybe itās late in the evening. No specific depreciations intended at anyoneās perceptions/feelings*-)
3 Likes
I do have to agree that too much white is now in use on icons. I like the 12 greyed style. Thereās just a lot of white text and icons going on down the left side now.
I wish they had something around the inspector buttons. The old grey curved thing was dated, but it needs something like that. Itās just too much nothing. And the big blob of red if record armed and solo is gross.
Itās actually my favourite colour of any DAW. My only wish is actually for muted tracks to and regions to be greyed out like logic does. And for B the control room knob to be refreshed so it doesnāt look like something from duke nukem.
3 Likes
There are a number of things I donāt love, but I imagine I will adjust to with time. I mostly am having trouble with the high contrast color options currently available. Cubase 12 was already a lot, but I had massaged it to a place that I could mostly live with it, but Iād still end up with double-vision after long sessions. Currently, Cubase 13 seems like itās even more eye-burny. Not sure if itās the white text or what, but itās pretty difficult to look at without my eyes going all crazy. For example: I canāt last long with most dark mode sites on the internet. Something about busy white text on a dark background just instantly strains my eyes. I imagine with Cubase, it will be even worse with how much I need to focus on stuff.
Iāve been dying for an option to make everything softer on the eyes somehow for YEARS, but was never sure how to voice that concern. Pro Tools and Ableton both seem to have color themes that are much easier on my eyes from what Iāve seen but Studio One and Cubase seem to be doubling down on the higher contrast look that hurts. Iāve been using Cubase since SX so Iām not in a huge rush to change DAWs, but the eye strain is very frustrating.
Also agreed with the black holes of empty insert slots in mixconsole looking bad. 
7 Likes
Works for me: enable vertical scrolling at the prefs. See here:
Sadly this thread has become rather useless with endless bickering on point and counter-point.
Itās tempting to think that everything is subjective, to contrast one opinion with its opposite and shrug. But - sorry to return to this - there are more objective yardsticks by which design choices can be measured.
Consult with the visually impaired. They are at the sharp end of design choices. While most of us grumble or bicker, they may lose the ability to work with the product completely. And thereās every chance that if the design is changed to work better for them, it will work better for the majority of us.
As it is, C13ās design changes smack very clearly of change for changeās sake. There seems to be no focus on making things clearer, easier or simpler in use, just arbitrary choices based on the whims of whoever was on the team, giving it a ārefreshā and forum users things to argue about for eternity.
9 Likes
MarcoE THAT IS SUPERBLY HELPFUL.
Somehow in prefs. the following WAS checked.
EDITING/Project & MixConsole/ Vertical Scrolling: Disable Mouse Wheel for Parameter Change.
I unchecked it and VOILA! as it was a few days ago in 12.
We just started using PRE-GAIN a while back, and it was already working (apparently by default maybe) with just a mouse-wheeling in the pre-gain box in the mixer.
Wouldnāt have easily wondered if it might be a pref. setting tweak needed in CUBASE 13 ā I guess I liked my inaccurate (detailed earlier) āGUESSā, for the time being ā new version and all.
Humans!
NICE ONE.
*** HUGE THANKS ***
Ohh the Fader caps OOOHHHHH THE FADERS CAPS ( am i repeating my self ?
The dark outlining for visually impaired people makes them look blurred AF , horrid , itās bad enough looking at them for two minutes in a mix but a whole day ? Itās not happening , i value the sight of my only eye !
4 Likes
Hey ! How do you get rid of your menu bars on top of your cubase windows?
Two options:
Click on the cubase Icon top left on each window - there is an option to show/hide the menu bar. To get it to re-appear you can just click the option again
OR
Hit your ALT key once you have clicked anywhere on the top bar with your mouse. Hit ALT again to make it re-appear
1 Like
Talking about GUI degradation!!!
I mean HOW can you say you upgraded the GUI?
You basically remove the uniform color of each channel that help us distinguish each channel and you replace it with gray boxes EVERYWHERE! You make the āpreā fonts WAY smaller without any reason, there is enough space to maintain the same fonts, and of course(!) you maintain the big fonts of the plugins so again we cannot see the full namesā¦. Its like you hire a spy from another company trying to make you lost sales, I mean come onā¦
Ok Guys, you really got to understand we are not everybody 20-30 , there is an illness in the eye EVERYBODY get after 40-45 called presbyopia. And guess what, I start using Cubase from SX3, twenty years back, yes my sight is been degraded as yours will too. FIX colors. FIX fonts.
And for Gods shake at last, add easy horizontal scrolling in the mixer.
11 Likes
Yes, but if they are 25 now, when Cubase 18 comes out, they will be 35~ish. Still no presbyopia! 
1 Like
I find that many people are saying about things like āit is a more modern designā and we have to adjust ourselves to the new ālook styleā.
But the problem here is neither on whether it is round or sharp nor about flat or not buttons, or to say more briefly, modern or not.
It is about visibility, accessibility and usability, which are objective aspects that could affect your workflow efficiency.
We are not those who are nostalgic for the good-old-days and refuse to take step towards. Instead, we follow all the ālook style changeā in the past releases. Letās break GUI problems in Cubase 13 into parts.
- The New Inspector
Generally, Steinberg has updated their design for Inspector and rearranged the tabs to achieve a more compact view. For smaller screens, they could now display more tabs at once.
The drawback coming at the same time, however, is that the new design sets the text font size too small, making it harder to recognize at a glance compared to Cubase 12. Another noticeable change is that these texts are bold, making the case even worse.
These two changes contribute to a GUI that is not only harder for screens to display (especially for lower resolution ones with lower scaling factor) but also harder for eyes to recognize.
It is also counterintuitive that while Cubase 12 upgrade expanded spaces for texts in many views, Cubase 13 is doing the opposite.
Now letās look at here
The most noticeable change in style is that the new design almost simply tiles the bars straightly into inspector. In the old, traditional Cubase design we could immediately divide these bars into four parts in subconscious at a glance:
Thicker empty space and the dislocation makes parts more distinguishable from each other.
In Cubase 13, they are all tiled with very thin empty spaces, which makes things apparently messier.
However, we can see the new VSTi snapshot icon here is a lovely design to help us make a quick concept of what plugin is there.
The texts display here makes it easier for new users to know what the functions are compared to Cubase 12, but leaving out icons really puts pressure on long time users eyes.
Colorizing panel is seemingly missing, and clicking on the first bar is laggy in Cubase 13.
(To be continued)
19 Likes
For the first time in my almost 20 years of using cubase and then Nuendo Iām contemplating not spending to get version 13 (Iām on Nuendo 12.0.70). For the first time Iām getting the feeling that GUI has crossed a too wide bridge for me. Iām aware people are most often than not averse to change, and I remember letting go of old designs with sorrow (like cubase sx, or the mixer look up until c5) only to be shocked with how dated they looked when revisiting after years, and how good c6 and subsequent looked and, more importantly, how fluid, calm and effective was the allowed workflow. Design was thoroughly modern, but the focus was on improving the seasoned user experience, bringing a sense of tranquility and sofistication, effectively giving the sense of a proper pro piece of machinery.
From the posted pictures I feel that is gone. Marketing people is running almost all the shows nowadays; and the target demographic has largely became teen-spirited folks, with a desdain for acquired habits and traits, a misconception about āmodernityā (whatever that might be) and all-around more child-like mentality about all things digital and the way this digital domain is presented to the world: no longer an extension or representation of the real and tangible, but an objective construct of pure digital concepts (hence the dismissal of hardware-like soft buttons, gradients in color shading, etc). I, for once, donāt go with the trend. I donāt get along with this philosophy. I even believe it is in some form a dehumanization of habits, a surrender to a sterile digital domain of procedures.
Iāll guess Iām now of to start the Cubase/Nuendo 14 wishlistā¦
10 Likes
LOOKS PRETTY GREAT
and hey, look at the dark (not āstillā bluey-grey) pop-up window.
Iām puzzled as Chris has some colors-mojo going on.
Start at 5 minutes and 30 second in to see the DARK mono to stereo popup.
Gonna watch looking at colours carefully.
Hey, let us know what the size and resolution of your screen is (or what you work at) - when being critical, if you wish.
ON A 4K screen the bigger track name text AND the bigger M and S for solo mute are way easier to see at 3840x2160 ā on 50 inch screen.
We also use 1080 screen - various sizes. Theyāre all āgulpā usable and look great.
Iām about to go to sleep ā after all the puzzling hub-bub, the intense dislikes, and some specific peopleās needs causing criticisms (all written above) ~> I booted up CUBASE with everything in mindā¦ and thought. ~~>
HUH, sheesh, whatās the big deal?
Better usage of real-estate big-time. Way easier to see for us anyways. GENUINELY Sorry if people are having issues.
Weāre THRILLED with everything.
I have heard from an EU friend in the know that CUBASE 14 will be GROUND-BREAKING.
I expect a lot more will make sense in a mere 300-ish days *-)
[POSSIBLE TONE-DOWN and/or COLOUR change MODS]
HEY, Iām gonna try playing with video card color setting to see if that might help tone down or other, for visibility complaints, and perhaps for people who donāt like all the, WHITE, was it?. heh-heh
yep, sleepie-time
BEST WISHES TO ALL
2 Likes