I’ve been hearing about a new line of Apple monitors that may be coming out this year. And Dell makes an 8k monitor, if you’re willing to part with a kidney!
They all seem a bit too pricey for me, but I’m just curious if anyone is using Dorico on a monitor with a higher vertical resolution than 2160 (standard 4K).
Just for fun… anyone running Dorico in 8k?? Step forward, mortal, and claim your reward!
In a word, scaling. So, the size of the monitor I got (28") means that a 1.5 scale is warranted to make things legible; 1x is too small, and 2x is cartoonishly large. If you have multiple monitors at different scales though, sometimes certain windows get confused and that’s especially bad if those windows aren’t resizable (this was a problem I had with Noteperformer for a good long while; not all the content was visible). There were some other issues that I ran into on Windows, but sadly I’m drawing a blank. They were mostly annoyances similar to that though. Maybe some things with gaming? Running games at 1080p to be able to use high graphics settings really didn’t look great, and my previous 1080p monitor, though only a few inches smaller, looked fine in the same situation. I seem to remember some annoyance with youtube videos too? Can’t remember…
Additionally certain OSes don’t support fractional scaling very well yet… which is a problem because I couldn’t resist being a hipster and switching to Linux. Just couldn’t stand Windows for a number of reasons and Mac is nice but still has a few of the same problems as Windows AND it’s wayyyy out of my price range. So, even if all my Windows issues were or are now sorted out, I’ve gone ahead and adopted a whole new set of issues
So, yeah, the short of it is that 100% of my life is compatible with 1080p, while some percentage less than that is compatible with 4K.
I find a 4K 43" monitor useful to show tabloid pages at actual size. While 8K might make this sharper, I don’t see it as necessary. 4K works fine for me; increased resolution would not let my eyes see smaller images comfortably.
Funny story, I’ve actually been running my 4K monitor at 1440p to avoid the fractional scaling issue. I’m finding it to indeed be a nice compromise, at least for now. Only drawbacks in my case are specific to running at a non-native resolution, those being a little bit of blurriness and some coil whine from my graphics card. But as far as screen real estate goes, especially in terms of Dorico, 28" of 1440p is real nice. I probably wouldn’t be interested in 4K until at least the mid-30s.
Pixel density is much more important for a clear display. A 32" 4K will have a pixel density of around 150ppi; a 27" will be 163ppi.
Apple ‘Retina’ displays are c. 218 ppi. Some of the new laptops are even higher, c 250 ppi.
Of course, the smaller the pixels, the greater the need for appropriate scaling. MacOS doesn’t actually look very good on low-density displays anymore. My 27" 2K Thunderbolt Display (at only 109ppi) makes some of the text in Dorico’s panels look a bit crappy.
Also, make sure your computer can drive that size at a decent refresh rate. 30 Hz is too low, and can make your eyes tired.
This is it. I had a 32-inch 4K, but the pixel density was not great. I downsized to a 27” and am much happier. And with a monitor arm, it’s easy to move it closer.
I guess the Pro display XDR would be the ideal monitor at the moment. I’m just a bit worried if the 6k resolution would affect the performance of Dorico. It also seems to be a bit problematic with viewing angles. And it is of course very, very expensive… But perhaps these issues will be addressed in the next version - I would love to have that kind of screen estate without compromising resolution.
Eizo has had the square 1920x1920 FlexScan EV2730Q out for many years - I have four. My main development computer has three with the music (Dorico/Nuendo) computer with one. Yes it’s great for scores, less moving around, and overall a better monitor if you use your computer for anything but watching movies.
For example, I think you do a lot of Vocal stuff? Anyhow here’s a score on my screen
The idea behind Apple “Retina” is that, at the desired viewing distance, you should no longer be able to distinguish the pixels. I’ve seen people use a widescreen TV across the room as a display. As long as there are enough pixels in your field of view, that’s the key.