I think that if the greys were slightly adjusted to be a little more similar to the greys within Cubase would make this design look amazing.
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When my batteries are recharged I will try and create a mockup for the inspector panel.
But I do agree that we should combine our efforts and create some solid suggestions for Steinberg.
I advise anyone reading this to provide some honest, constructive feedback. If you think some things can be improved, please let us know.
Any little detail that could be tweaked, added, streamlined, removed - let us know. The goal is to maximize the readability of the GUI for the best possible eye comfort.
Yes, we should conclude this topic by posting all of our best GUI suggestions in one big, coherent post/reply. That way it will be easier to get a total overview of what the entire interface could look like, so it stays as consistent as possible when it comes to style and choice of colors. Plus, it will be easier for others to provide proper feedback.
And when itās finally polished and it canāt get any better, then we can finally post that link to the OG - Karl Steinberg, himself
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i totally agree!
my complaint (since years) is that Steinberg CONSTANTLY fiddles with the GUI ālooksā. while it may make some new customers and some amateurs happy, for a professional user it is totally counter productive!
the seemingly smallest change in the GUI requires a re-learning of workflow of various degrees. i do NOT wish to re-learn anything that is not a meaningful new addition to the functionality of the DAW. i wish to work fast and efficient and NOT ogle different fonts and placements and icons for the heck of it.
it seems even Garageband is more consistent in GUI than Cubaseā¦
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Ok so iāve done a complete rework of Alequeās MixConsole design.
Changes:
- Matched the grey colour scheme to same as Steinberg Cubase.
- Added some spacing inbetween "Routing, Pre, Inserts, Sendsā dropdown tabs for more visual clarity.
- Correctly inverted the colours for the selected channel.
- Fixed highlight gradients on most of the buttons.
- Matched the colour curve for the text on the Mute, Solo, Listen, Edit, Read, Write, Record, Monitor buttons to match Cubase as closely as possible.
- Subtle highlight gradient on dB meters.
- Subtle brightness increase on dB meters.
Here is my toolbar GUI redesign proposal:
Constructive criticism is wanted.
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Morning! Itās perfect!, seriously!
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Itās not perfect, but atleast the text can be read 
. Hint hint, Steinbergā¦
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Steinberg?? Where?? Haha
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To be honest. I would be happy if Steinberg would just add a slight contrast separation between the faders and db meters, made the text readable and made the text scale better when resizing the channels in the MixConsole.
The control room needs to be revisited. It would also be nice if the toolbar didnāt blur into the background colour.
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Awesome thread! Iāve been using Cubase for 20+ years. The GUI has been getting noticeably more complex and less usable since version 7 with the MixConsole feature and changes to the windowing model which created mouse click/focus issues with the plugin editor that are still around to this day.
As far as the overall direction of the product, itās been pretty disappointing to see round after round of āme tooā features without much real innovation and not getting the basics right over the last few years. This marketing image from 14 exemplifies the feature bloat and how out of touch the company is with creating software that actually inspires creativity and focus:
Iād love to have a nice clean mixer that I can truly customize, hereās a design concept based on the other explorations and discussions in this thread - going for a modern and fairly subtle approach:
For me, a clean user experience with minimal fuss, gets me in the zone and staying in the flow (and staying in Cubase for longer sessions). At the right times, it can be great to āopt inā to the inspectors, extra view panels and other clinical session information, but it needs to stay out of the way and not be pushed on me.
If this is the right place to give specific feedback, Iāll throw my hat in the ring too:
- Modern Cubase misses on basic product quality details like: text/icon legibility, contrast, mouse hit targets, system DPI and design system consistency.
- Please increase font sizes and fix the fuzzy icon assets!
- Recent versions of the app are poorly optimized for large screens, both in terms of responsive layout logic, and adaptive scaling.
- Adding basic zoom functionality would be a big win.
- Offer better/enhanced default workspaces out of the box. Every time I install Cubase I have to spend an hour setting up and reducing the information overload from all the various columns and lists of extended information, features and controls.
- Why not build in Toolbar, Status Line and Transport Bar to Workspaces, and offer some thoughtful configurations to cater to different working styles and preferences?
- By reducing the cognitive load and visual noise in the app, it will help make the product easier for new and returning people to pick up and use.
- Itās conceptually difficult to navigate and use Cubase, the lack of standard UI taxonomy is not present and way-finding is difficult with mixed manual and automatic context switching, as well as repetition of panel names like the Editor and Visibility.
- There are seemingly random presentations of Mute, Solo, Read, Write controls sprinkled all over the place.
- Attention to detail and craftsmanship is lacking. For example, most areas of the app, such as the Inspector or Mixer have 8 or more different font styles and sizes per panel or area (and most of the fonts are too small, no matter what type of display/device Iām using).
- Cubasis 3 on iPad has a stronger visual execution but still suffers from mismatched interaction models and core feature concepts being diluted or conveyed inconsistently.
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Great job dude. It looks amazing 
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Nice updates! The Status Line text could be adjusted, perhaps to feel both more secondary and be a bit more legible. On my system the font doesnāt kern very well.
Sort of off topic - Iād love to see a simplified preset here too, my experience has been only going to the toolbar for a limited set of features. Most features have multiple entry points. Also with less icons in the toolbar, the icons themselves could be made bigger and perhaps not even need to be as contained in boxes.
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You are clearly more skilled in graphic design lol. Donāt take my examples seriously, iām just trying to wake Steinberg upā¦ 
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Your design is by far my favourite here so far, really amazing job you did.
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No worries, thank you for the kind words and pushing on this thread. Letās see about getting the Steinberg folks to wake up!!! Itās time 
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I would love to see your take on the āControl Roomā GUI if youāre up for the challenge . Because I think the Cubase Pro v14 Control Room GUI simply sucks.
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This is amazing. Very clean, spacious yet very modern and sleek. Love this direction!
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If itās not too much can you and @wavefunktion please try re-designing the inspector window as? You guys are seriously talented!
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I concur. This is the best yet.
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I would come up with something just as good if I was capable of doing so
D-Struct is our new GUI designer here now 
He absolutely nailed it, simple, modern, sleek, clean, clear, professional. He did an amazing job, I would love to see that GUI every time I open up the MixConsole in Cubase !
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Iāll try to have a look at some more things tomorrow, would be nice to a more full fledged āproposalā - Control Room and Inspector both have some vertical list things which can be revamped and some of the channel strip stuff from the mixer concept could carry over too.
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Very honest, very blunt: I think this design is horrible to work with. Most likely it is because of the sections headers do not differentiate themselves from their entries below, especially visible in the Pre and Routing section.
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