After criticizing what I considered the disjointed, inconsistent Cubase interface for the longest time, I have to give Steinberg props for finally making Cubase look much more unified and even pleasing to look at with Cubase 13.
It seems like most of the dialogs have finally been harmonized in terms of their look and feel. I am rarely surprised these days by the odd window from the 1980s rearing its ugly head. Of course, there are still several different size/style scrollbars throughout the UI. I suppose that’s just Cubase.
I would be curious to know if people have suggestions for ways in which the Cubase UI might be further unified and made more pleasing to look at.
For instance, the various Presets dialogs (for things like Track Presets and plugin presets) seem somewhat unconventional. Clicking in the preset field reveals a “window” (panel?) instead of a standard drop down menu. What’s slightly confusing is that this window seems to be attached to the preset field. But that’s not the case since the window can be moved and resized. What’s even less intuitive is the fact that this window can only be dismissed by clicking outside the window (as if it were a menu but it is not). It seems like there should be an “X” button to close the window or something similar.
But this is a minor quibble. Regardless, I would be curious to hear other people’s thoughts on the current state of Cubase’s UI (as of v13 Pro).
I don’t think it’s ever realistic to expect that something of the functional size and depth of Cubase can be totally overhauled in one release.
It reminds me a bit of living in a building while significant renovations are happening. It will be inconsistent (and a little messy) at times, before all of the old has been replaced with the desired new and one gets to fully enjoy the renovated goodness.
I think practically every Cubase release has become overall meaningfully better than its predecessors. It’s just that sometimes the renovations may have been in areas that some users didn’t notice as much, because there are myriads of different use cases and audio workflows - and Cubase can handle incredibly many of those competently.
I made the mistake of living through a home renovation once because I was too impatient to move into my new house. What a nightmare! Having construction workers walk through my bedroom at 7:00 am because they were too lazy to enter through the side gate to get to the deck off the master bedroom was especially memorable (although it’s something I would really like to forget).
show.