I think this description can be unclear. Sometimes when people say/think “User interface” they may implicitely mean “User experience”. They are intertwined.
However, some people mistakenly assume that the user interface only deals with aesthetic appeal and this can be very incorrect.
I selected that option because I believe Cubase/Nuendo needs a UX/UI improvement in order to address the following concerns:
Comprehension
Ease of use
Legibility
So hopefully everyone has a clearer idea as to what the User Interface may refer to.
Exactly. User experience and user interface is why I haven’t moved to v13. v14 looks like it will be more of the same (no changes with Cubase) so I’ll be giving that version a miss too. It’s frustrating because there are some decent feature upgrades but the speed at which we can use the software has been drastically reduced.
While this is nice that’s low on the list for me. We can get more performance through brute force a lot of times (though at a price) so I prefer that lower.
I’m super glad to see the bug squashing so high on the list. I was really excited to see Steinberg implementing the ability to send the crash report, interpreting it as an attempt to do some maintenance.
The stability of any DAW obviously has a lot to do with your system config and the VSTs you’re running as well so it’s very hard to guage from a single source (me) but reliability (and performance) used to be second to none in my experience no matter the system I was using (MAC, PC) and I have a feeling it has been sitting in the backseat a bit compared to introduction of new features.
Having Nuendo crash on me with a client breathing down my neck is one of the biggest stressors. No fancy new feature can fix your day when a clients confidence is shaking because of a crash.
This being said, I can totally feel for the UI people. For some reason it hasn’t bothered me as much, but I can see how that can be a big issue.
Finally I’m kind of disappointed with no votes on old wants from the community? How about more flexible channels? Adding a reverb on a stereo track turning it into a surround output? There’s really a few things I would LOVE to finally get my hands on.
Overall though, and relatively speaking, Nuendo itself has been incredibly stable for me. Pretty much every single time it’s gone “poof” I’ve had a hardware issue of some sort. I can’t even remember a time when that wasn’t the case.
All DAWs have situations where they can fail on some systems. The worst bug I’ve encountered in a couple of decades was on PT, on a Mac. You know that professional stuff that always works.
Really the only thing I have run into that seems to be Nuendo-specific is when it deleted a “.bak” file AFTER you have gotten an error message, saved, see the file saved, can’t quit Nuendo, and then force-quit it. That seems like a Nuendo problem. Fortunately still rare.
I have Nuendo crash in on my multiple times a day! Mostly big projects with lots of VIs and plugins but sometimes a simple VO session with a compressor and an EQ…
To be fair, my system is due for a cleanup/reinstall session…
I believe the reason nobody voted for is that it was to generally described. That was the reason i choose bugfixes.
The poll in itself is nice but having only 1 option makes people choose strategically.
Would you like to expand on this? I thought there was more information available in V13, since new routing options are available in the Inspector, for Instrument Tracks, for example.
Implementing a few longstanding feature requests from the community.
Ripple edit and gapless audio are two that I’d very much like to see.
Increasing performance. Make it run smoother.
It seems to me there’s still some multi-core utilisation issues with ASIO Guard that I’d like to see resolved.
Updating the user interface.
I’m not fussed about any changes to the UI appearance or fonts or anything else but I’d like to see a re-design of the Pool and Audio Connections windows alomg with a more comprehensive channel drop-down menu in the track inspector
Squashing bugs and improving stability
Always good to see more bug cleanup, but both Nuendo 14 and Cubase 14 Pro are absolutely rock steady for me.
Delivering exciting and creative new features to stay relevant.
Don’t care.
Updating VST to improve flexibility/features of plugins.
It’s a long topic but the easiest way might be to compare Nuendo 12 vs 13 side-by-side and once you know what you’re looking for you’ll start to notice all of the issues. Information hierarchy which was depicted via color differences, font sizes, font weights etc has largely disappeared and everything starts to “blend” together. You can no longer quickly glance at something or have it in your peripheral vision and know the state . The user has to make a conscious effort to decipher what exactly is going on which means switching brain modes and ultimately slowing the entire process down.
An easy example is what they’ve now done to the control room (I’ll compare Nuendo 12 with Cubase 14 here).
You’ll notice there were distinct color differences to indicate when something was active vs not, color differences depicted which function exactly was active etc. It meant you could intuitively tell what was going on with your peripheral vision and didn’t need to try and “read” it. Font sizes have changed, things which were buttons are now radio buttons. Does v14’s CR “look” nicer? An argument could be made that it looks more modern but is it more usable? Absolutely not. For example, when you use the same color (white in this instance) to depict a state, and then use it for everything then nothing stands out and you need to mentally think about what it is you’re trying to read. It’s the same as mixing audio - if everything is loud then nothing is loud.
Go into the mixer/project window and observe similar issues. Everything now blends together into a sea of the same so all of that “at a glance” information that used to be available has disappeared. It’s difficult to summarize this in a succinct post but I’d read up on what makes a good UX and then see if it applies to Steinberg’s latest offering (spoiler alert - it doesn’t). As mentioned it’s slowed me down so much that I’ve abandoned v13 and continue to work in v12 where it’s just much faster.
I haven’t used v14 Cubase much. Are you saying that white color is being used but has two different meanings with different buttons? If so, that’s bad.
I looked at those images, interesting and as I believe, it should invoke more discussion.
I personally like what is happening with the UI, less is more so to speak but I also accept that there is actually less information available overall so for example, with the Master Section radio buttons, there could be a border introduced around the radio button, similar to how things are done on the web.
