Myself and Aleque aren’t professional graphic designers so we are unable to provide graphics upto the professional level that we all desire. Many of our ideas can only be conveyed in text format.
The main 2 things to take away from the image you are referencing is:
Readable text
Slight contrast difference between the fader and db meter
D-Struct has provided a MixConsole GUI redesign graphic of professional quality that touches on some similar points:
Better choice of grey colour palette
Slight contrast difference between faders and db meters
If the text was readable and scaled properly when resized under the “Routing, Inserts, EQ, Sends” tabs, than I would consider his design far superior to what we currently have in Cubase.
I honestly fail to see the point. All of you are doing stuff for the mixer. But the elements have to be everywhere on the GUI. What will your design look like in the Inspector? In the editors?
I understand you are doing this in your spare time and maybe the Steinberg GUI devs get some nice ideas looking at this.
Personally I would prefer if they would get the entire user interface on the same level before they start something new again. I feel like we have at least three generations of GUI design in the PC version of Cubase. And we need resizable plugin GUIs, and and and…
To give at least some small, quick feedback since you asked so nicely: I like some parts of the design. I think there is generally too much bright/dark contrast.
Yes I understand your points, the first step is to choose the correct grey colour palette that will be applied throughout the entire Cubase application.
However, we should not be waiting for years to get readable text in the MixConsole that aligns correctly and resizes correctly when resizing mixer channels though…
IMHO this is a major part of what I dislike about the current Cubase GUI. Why does everything have to be so monochrome?
I find it a lot harder to navigate an interface where every element is of the same size, shape and color.
This should be their urgent emergency solution, imo. Not everyone has the perfect eyesight and the best glasses. How can you get anything creative done, if you get headache trying to discern, what the tiny text on the screen says.
Also, another thing we need to talk about. Preferences window:
Then it will look like it’s from the same software and your eyes won’t get bleached.
I’m glad you are being honest. What I created was merely a stepping stone towards something better. If you have nothing, then it’s hard to make something good. But when you have something that has flaws, at least you can detect the flaws and work from there. But images do help, much more than any super detailed descriptions.
@D-Struct You are doing some real good work there. I like your thorough descriptions, and the image that you uploaded looks awesome. If I could change 2 things: Maybe consider increasing the font size just a little on the “Routing”, “Inserts”, etc. And separate the 4 buttons just a bit, maybe by creating a “cross” between them either using a black line of a light-grey line. Or just create slightly more space between them. But that is just my opinion.
Absolutely 100% agreed. All of it… Replace all those teeny, t-t-t-tiny fonts everywhere.!! Please SB…
What we see here is about eyestrain and workflow. Its not about ‘muscle memory’ and knowing where everything is/what its for, so one shouldn’t need to be reading any of the labels, etc… Well, yes we do… Data value points for example.
So, for SB, the UI design can’t be about ‘visually uncluttering the UI for uncluttering’s sake’. That sort of thinking/practice has to stop.
Apart from those of us who’ve been round the block a little, with eyesight diminishing through age (a fact), it is very much about ‘Accessibility’ needs (the actual visually impaired) and feeling comfortable in the environment.
Look at this topic - 26 days old and over 200+ active responses. Says it all.!
For anyone interested, here’s a comparison between an Audio Channel in the Mix Console in v12 and v14 where the channel width has been reduced to a minimum—my personal preference.
Having a MixConsole “minimum channel width” preference setting would be quite nice to have to prevent zooming out past a certain width. Maybe some kind of zoom preset management system like what’s in the main project window could be nice aswell.
I’d love to hear from someone on SB product side - we’re ready to do a community powered UI overhaul here. Tons of great feedback and valid criticisms coming through!
@Puma0382 thank you for showing these examples! C12 seems to have a better UI concept of expand/collapse container for sections in the mixer and the labeling is setting a more clear visual hierarchy as well as being more legible with an adequate size. There is a lot of complexity around the EQ interactions too.
You are absolutely right. A mistake on my part.
However that will not impact the total height of the channel, only the “dead space” between the the most bottom rack (the Direct Routing in this case) and the start of the channel controls (Mute and Solo buttons).
Thank you for the feedback! Yes agree there should probably be a little more prominence to the section headers for the Routing, Inserts and so on. Eventually it would be good to rationalize those with the same/similar interactions for the Inspector panel.
Adding a bit more shading around the 4 button layouts totally helps them feel more like primary commands while still being fairly subtle, here’s that with a few other updates:
