Optimum screen size

Every time I’ve increased my screen real estate I always wonder how I could ever have managed before the upgrade. :laughing:

Yep!

:smiley:

I just went from 27" 2560x1440 to 30" 2560x1600. Lovely.

I hear you. Personally, I grew tired of constantly zooming in and out. Using shortcuts made it easier, but was still annoying. I almost never have to zoom out from default view anymore…only zoom in for more detailed editing. :smiley:

2 x 1920 x 1200 monitors here. Years before that I had two giant sized Iiyama CRTs, and I was overjoyed when one of them went wrong and I had to swap out for thin LCDs!! I’d like to get a 3rd one but I don’t have the space on my desk :slight_smile:

Mike.

Assuming your listening sweet spot forms the perfect triangle, which in my experience it generally does, I think you have to have reservations about getting too big of a screen.

As mentioned above, your eyes need to be x feet (2-3 feet?) from the screen.

But then where do you place your monitors? Maybe 3-5 feet apart just next to the edge of your big screen?

Oops…now to find the sweet spot you have to continually roll your chair back…to get 3-5 feet, so that doesn’t work well. So now, place those monitors further back to keep that perfect sweet spot.

But now…with the monitors placed further back and a perfect triangle it sounds poor and definitely “not sweet” because sound waves are reflecting off the back of that big screen.

Someone at Gearslutz posted a wonderful huge touch screen with the monitors placed 1-2 feet behind the touch screen. I asked about how that could effect the sweet spot, but no one cares about stuff like that. Hey…it’s a big touch screen! :laughing:

Yes, this was a key issue when I migrated from 2 to 4 screens. Adding the 2 screens partially blocked my monitors bottom sections (I knew this going in). I ended up getting new adjustable monitor stands, raising them about a foot and used angled isolation pads to aim them downwards directly at my ears. While more screen space is nice, proper monitor placement is essential. So make sure to take this into account before making any purchases.

One other minor issue with a lot of screen space is that it’s easy to loose your mouse pointer. Windows has a setting that lets you locate the pointer when you hit ctrl.

I also have my audio monitors up high with Mopads angling them to my listening position. Another reason I have the video monitors placed like I do.

The top is video monitors of drum room, control room, and guitar isolation room. The drum room cam is for visual contact while bands are recording. I record vocals in my treated control room so that camera is to save my neck. The guitar isolation room has a robot mic stand in it so the video is helpful there.

The monitors on the left are just me being spoiled on my office PC. I like having lots of screen space! :slight_smile:

Running 2 X 19" LCDs = 2880 horiz pixels. Would love larger LCDs for more vertical space, but anything bigger and I feel like I would be positioning my near-fields to accommodate my lust for eye-candy/screen real estate instead of optimal speaker positions for my ears. :confused:

I place my 4 video monitors side by side, a bit low, and aiming slightly upwards. I’m using the old fashioned non-skinny flat screens which I don’t think are available today. I think this is perfect except…you have to tolerate the boarders between the monitors. That takes a bit getting used to.

Unfortunately you can only see audio 1 monitor outlined in red, but it’s well above the video monitors.
gibsaultmusic3.jpg

That’s why I personally think that 2 x 24" monitors next to each other is the maximum without having to make too much sacrifice to the sound stage of your speakers. Unless you are further away from your screens than the standard say 3". But too far will also not be ‘near field’ anymore? Tilting your speaker more than 15% vertically will influence the quality of the sound, especially the frequency range. I think it’s better to place extra monitors above each other rather than 4 in a row. But hey, everything in this life means compromises. It all depends on what for you personally is more important. A good page for info is this: Speaker/Studio Monitor Placement Secrets | Room Setup 101

+1

And greggybud’s low-sitting row of monitors may seem like an idea solution (since you can position the speakers closer to where they’d need to be), but I can tell you from experience that if you spend your work days with your head tilted down a lot, you will eventually develop problems with your neck and spine! So the order of importance goes:

  1. Ergonomics and speaker placement.
    -then-
  2. Extra LCD eye-candy goodness.

I started with analog dual video monitors around 2001. I think it was Matrox? I work 4-6 days a week 2-6 hours each day for years. I switched to 3 flat screens around 2005, then added a 4th when C7 was released.
If there is any head tilting it’s very slight. More like just slightly lowering the eyes.

Here is why:

  1. The keyboard controller is just barely high enough for me to fit my legs under sitting on a normal office chair. The keys are 26 inches from the floor. In other words, I made it slightly low allowing room for the video monitors, and fully realizing audio monitors would have to be set back from the video monitors and above them. That is a musicians performance sacrifice having the keyboard controller lower than “normal.”

  2. The audio monitors (you can only see 1 audio monitor highlighted in the red circle. Ignore the Sentry EV.) are set back…about 17 inches from the video monitor. So there is some reflection. I experimented by removing the monitors for the difference and decided this compromise worked for me.

I’m not gear savvy at all. My monitors are the old fashioned non-skinny screens found in any used store for $50. All 4 identical size are 15h high x11.5 vertical and 19 diagonally. I don’t think they are sold any longer correct? How are these identified compared to the newer video monitors?

Screens with more pixels allow more flexibility with window placement layouts, though they may make it more difficult to place speakers optimally. This is because you will want to avoid windows crossing screens, especially if the pixels are different sizes.

If you do have multiple screens of the same size, try to have a screen in the centre, as dialog boxes will straddle two monitors beside each other.

I used to have 4 30" 2560x1600 Dell monitors in an inverted-V arrangement, with the speakers facing down from over the outer two monitors that were angled towards me for optimal viewing.

Now I have a central 55" 4K curved screen with the speakers either side, with a 23.5" touchscreen on each side, angled at about 45o, and closer to me than the speakers. I find the wide distance of the speakers gives me a good stereo image. However, it is a bit too close, and if I would recommend a 48" 4K TV to anyone wanting to place it at the back edge of the desk.

Critical until Cubase is made fully pixel-density-independent is to keep the pixel pitch in the .25mm range, such as:

  • 27" 2560x1440 = .233mm
  • 30" 2560x1600 = .25mm
  • 48" 3840x2160 = .277mm
  • 55" 3840x2160 = .315mm.

I haven’t found that to be the case and I don’t have a monitor in the center. Dialog boxes for me appear on the monitor that is set to be monitor 1 in Windows - which is the 2nd from the left of my 4 monitors.

That’s correct unless I’m misunderstanding him.

In Windows set-up, where you arrange how you want your monitors to be placed, and place them in any order you specify, you click on “make this my…” to be the default monitor, then it switches and you have a few seconds to “keep this…” All icons and message boxes will then show up in the monitor you specify.

Probably true, as it has been a while since I have had two screens side-by-side, so recent OS versions may have got with the ‘multi-screen’ reality.

However, what I do remember is that if I tended to use the content on one screen more than the other, it was a nuisance having to be turned towards it all the time. Using a centrally placed screen for such situations was best, with side screens holding ancillary less-viewed windows.

I stacked my 2 screens vertically instead of horizontally, problem solved :wink:

If one is straight in front, the upper (or lower) one is at a very awkward angle for viewing on a regular basis, making it less usable than a side screen. Of course, smaller screens would be less of a problem.

In my early days, with two 30"s, I had them positioned vertically, with the lower one’s screen almost on the desk and angled slightly up, while the upper was angled down. Of course, 30"s are large enough that the lower one still occupied most of my vertical viewing space with my head level.

When I got another 30", three horizontally was the obvious topology, with the outer two angled in.

Adding another, I shifted the oldest 30" (Dell 3007) up top, angled down, especially since its colour gamut wasn’t a match for the Dell 3008s. I would put Outlook and other less used programs up top. Even with all those screens, for the project I was working on, I still had windows behind others.

The bottom one is very small and angled upwards, so the viewing angles are fine.