Old chestnut, but I’ve just been using N8 and find that it still looks and feels much better than the N10 GUI.
The N8 transport controls and the Project screen right-click menu are much sharper and solid looking with the black icons on the light-grey background.
In my view the white icons against the grey background in N10 look fuzzy, insubstantial and a bit ‘toy town’.
Just my private view - no animals were injured during this investigation.
I couldn’t agree more. N10 is a total botch job so far.
I hardly dare to add “+1”, because visually NU8 is still worse than any version before 6. :-/
Serwus oida!
Go on - force yourself 
I force me every day, Oida. ;-D
Have to use NU10 due to its 3D capabilities and (the surprisingly useful) audio alignment tool, but GUI-wise it’s quite a PITA here.
Hello, Oldtimers
Mia oide Knochen schaffens oimno in’d arbat…lol …
Oiwai luschti’ frisch und munter…
Dietz is right. N6 was even better then 8 and 10 is a mess!!
As to those dreaded gray on gray ikons: I was complaining about this since I first saw them.
Who can be so ignorant or hateful to do this to our old and weary eyes?
I still don’t have to wear glasses,yet, but those poor contrast knobs ( along with some other shortcommings in design )
are quite wearing after hours and hours in the saddle.
Is it such a problem to change this for the better or even to make them customizable?
Anyway, stay healthy you all…
Servus, Big K
Just on a positive note: I recently had to install and use the latest version of Pro Tools on WIndows 10. Not sure if there is a current professional software that is uglier. Just the almost empty space at the top of windows takes up like 80% of my poor 1920x1200 monitor.
That’s good - ur leiwand!
Pfiat di.
I was just thinking the other day about how PT appearance has changed very little over the years. You can go back to PT v5 (1999) and see the same basic elements.
In the mean time Steinberg has gone from VST 32 to SX (where Nuendo kicked in) and then post SX - all very different in appearance and many cases function.
In a way there is a virtue to consistency. You grow with new features but the familiar remains. A very comfortable interface for many.
And fewer ruffled feathers as Steinberg does every time they make a big change.
Personally, I don’t think PT is ugly . . . all the same I much prefer Nuendo 10.
Hugh
To be clear; I only commented on it looking ugly and mostly because of how the windows function on Win 10. I agree on consistency and I do think PT looks fine on OSX.
I’m kinda glad this subject is coming up time and time again, and that I am not the only one who thinks the 10. GUI is appallingly bad.
Steinberg simply copied the style from Apple, their dark theme has white text on dark background. It is a pain to the eyes, especially in Nuendo because it’s so poorly implemented. As Chris said, ridiculous contrast settings, lack of visual separation in general, a total heterogeneous patchwork with artifacts from multiple GUI generation of previous versions coupled with pointless, performance eating eye candy.
Anyone counted how many times they’ve changed the text colour on the inspector tabs from black to white and back? At least twice over the years, but correct me if more often.
The white outlines around tabs and buttons…it appears as if the 1st week intern was assigned to the task - an untalented one on top of it.
The icons are probably the worst i’ve ever seen. If you were to show them to anyone outside the context - no one would recognise what most if them are supposed to depict.
Colours: thanks a bunch for the light blue, which apart from progress bars is randomly scattered over UI elements entirely unrelated to another. The inspector and the system performance meters look like the inside of an Arpaio jail, an insult to the eyes, probably as intended. Again, entirely pointless, ugly and out of context.
And to those who now go: I don’t care about the GUI, if the software performs well otherwise: you’re mistaken unfortunately. It’s an essential aspect that supports a software’s usability, reduces fatigue, accelerates the workflow and ideally : becomes almost invisible during in the process.
I am pretty certain I’ll be staying on 8 for a very long time.
That’s it, in a nutshell. Plus the inability to save GUI Preferences reliably (… I just had to re-do my meters’ colors yesterday).
If you don’t need to change them a lot, can you not just restore the defaults.xml from backup? I would have long gone nuts if I hadn’t kept a gazillion safety copies.
And yeah, the colour prefs are buggy, also via the GUI. It permanently resets to this crappy blue hue when trying to dial in sth useful.
Just to finish off my rant: am I the only one who finds the factory colour settings absolutely crazy? I mean, who the hell is in charge of that? What is this supposed to accomplish?
@LordExtra : We are definitely on the same page.
I hope someone’s listening and that there will be some improvements or reversions in the next update.
And previously:
Thanks for the hint - that’s what I do anyway. The problem is that I couldn’t save a complete “meaningful” version of my Prefs a single time, so I have to re-adjust things manually whenever NU10 f****-up its settings for no apparent reason.
Ugh yeah sorry stating the obvious. Interesting though, I managed to set stuff up without it messing about. Not sure how much it likes toggling prefs via the key commands though…maybe there’s the odd culprit in there which screws shite up.
Have you tried to xdiff the .xmls to see where the error lies? I mean, right after it fecked up again…
Yes, I manually edited some of the worst offenders, but I have to admit that it takes more time to do this as trying to re-build the crucial settings in the Preferences. If there were meaningful guidelines (even semi-official ones … hint, hint …) from Steinberg what we should look for in those XMLs, then things would be much easier to fix, maybe …