Best monitor size for Cakewalk? – Windows scaling & non-DPI-awareness problems

[GreenLight]

Summary
I just bought a 25" Dell at 2560x1440 (QHD) resolution and I just cannot get a satisfactory experience with Cakewalk since I have to use 125% scaling and Cakewalk does not like that.

Questions for you guys:

1. Is anyone using a 27" with 100% scaling, is that workable? Not too small?
2. Or is 4K on 27" with 200% scaling another option? I'm wary of this, as it seems like asking for trouble to do anything but 100% scaling...

The fractional scaling problem (125% etc)
Since 2560x1440 resolution is too small to use at 100% scaling on a 25" monitor, I have to use 125% scaling in Windows and that's where the problems start. 125% scaling is the only feasible option for me, but as @jono grant pointed out back in 2020, "Cakewalk looks great at 100 or 200% but not as good in between like 150 or 175." I will have to add 125% scaling to the "no good" list as well.

At anything but 100% scaling, all Arturia's lovely synth GUI's look blurry in Cakewalk, but Ableton Live, for example,  displays them crisply no matter the scaling setting. It is unfortunate that Cakewalk is still non-DPI-aware in these high resolution days.

Solutions
As was pointed out in a Reddit thread, with non-DPI-aware apps, there are two options:

• Using “System (Enhanced)” DPI-scaling mode in W10 for making the app almost DPI-aware - this improves menus, but not plugins.
• pixelized upscaling at integer scaling ratios (2.0 in case of 4K at 200%) instead of blurry upscaling at fractional ratios like 1.25 (125%) for those apps the “System (Enhanced)” option can’t help with.

Thanks for any thoughts!

[sjoens]

I use a 29" widescreen 2560x1080 that looks great @ 100, 125, 150, & 175%.

[Jacques Boileau]

I use a 32" 2k monitor (2560 x 1440) and its a great size to have lots on the screen but still easily readable. It is also a great size to have studio monitors on each side if that is you setup.

[Jimbo 88]

Of course much of this is all preference and how you work and use CbB.

I do have a 27 inch main monitor and am pretty happy with it.  The thing is I also have an old flat screen monitor that I use for Picture playback only and another smaller monitor that I use for Console view.  I could easily doc the console and view it on the 27 monitor in front of me.  And I feel I would be pretty good with it.

 

My main monitor is set at 1920 x 1200 and 100%--and I'm good with that.

Hope I helped.

[michheld]

And even for the small legacy plugins there's a solution: I use Microsoft ZoomIt. It will give you the possibility to zoom into the screen spontaneously - just by pressing Ctrl+4.  Ctrl+ArrowUp/down will give you more or less zoom. The zoomed cutout will follow your mouse. Just try it as a workaround. Best regards.

[Lord Tim]

I'm using 5120x1440 as my main monitor, basically a very wide version of the one in the OP and at 100% it's all good for me, but it's definitely personal preference for sure. I did have an ultrawide with a 1080 high instead of 1440 and it felt way too big for me and not nearly enough stuff vertically for my liking.

[rsinger]

I use a 32" Viewsonic QHD monitor (2560 x 1440) @ 125% scaling and everything looks fine to me.

Edited July 19, 2022 by rsinger

[bitflipper]

Cakewalk is DPI-aware, afaik. At least It has always seamlessly adapted to whatever display I'm using, and there've been a few over the past 36 years. Adapting to different monitors implies that the application "knows" the current resolution (as informed by Windows), which is all DPI awareness means. Yes, there is a more advanced mode that lets programs adapt on the fly to changing resolutions. But that only comes into play when, say, you drag the track view to another monitor that's at a different resolution than your main display. If Cakewalk is distorted or blurry, it isn't because it doesn't know the DPI. In fact the monitor is probably at its default setting of (probably) 96 dpi. The distortions are caused by the monitor attempting to fake a lower resolution.

I always use a display's native resolution, because that's always going to yield the best results.  At one point I had a 20" monitor that was too high-res for its size, making the text difficult to read. That issue went away when I replaced it with a pair of 24" displays. Nowadays I use a pair of 34" widescreen displays, which work much better with my old eyes. Both are running at the same resolution.

As for what the "best" monitor size is, I'd say the biggest one that will fit between your speakers without impinging on line of sight to them. For me that worked out to 34", which was as large as I could go and still have an equilateral triangle between ears and speakers without the display occluding them. My two displays are not side-by-side, obviously, but stacked. I actually prefer that setup because it's not as far when I drag something to the other display.

[GreenLight]

5 hours ago, Jacques Boileau said:

I use a 32" 2k monitor (2560 x 1440) and its a great size to have lots on the screen but still easily readable. It is also a great size to have studio monitors on each side if that is you setup.

Thanks for your input, Jacques!

Yes at 32", 1440 resolution should be very well readable... although a dual monitor setup requires you to sit rather far from it? I'm monitoring very nearfield, at about 130cm (51 inches), which is troublesome for dualscreen...

5 hours ago, sjoens said:

I use a 29" widescreen 2560x1080 that looks great @ 100, 125, 150, & 175%.

Hi again, sjoens. That also sounds like a nice and large monitor for the selected resolution. I'm happy even non 100% scaling looks good, even though I can't get that to happen here. 🤔

[GreenLight]

5 hours ago, michheld said:

And even for the small legacy plugins there's a solution: I use Microsoft ZoomIt. It will give you the possibility to zoom into the screen spontaneously - just by pressing Ctrl+4.  Ctrl+ArrowUp/down will give you more or less zoom. The zoomed cutout will follow your mouse. Just try it as a workaround. Best regards.

That's a good tip! 👍 In Windows 10, you can press WIN + NUMPAD+ for the built-in magnifier, I suppose that gives similar results.

5 hours ago, Jimbo 88 said:

Of course much of this is all preference and how you work and use CbB.

I do have a 27 inch main monitor and am pretty happy with it.  The thing is I also have an old flat screen monitor that I use for Picture playback only and another smaller monitor that I use for Console view.  I could easily doc the console and view it on the 27 monitor in front of me.  And I feel I would be pretty good with it.

My main monitor is set at 1920 x 1200 and 100%--and I'm good with that.

Hope I helped.

Hi Jimbo! A lot of screens there, cool! Yes, it seems 27" is very popular, and probably rightly so... although a 1920x1200 sounds like a lowish resolution for 27", but should look great!

[GreenLight]

3 hours ago, rsinger said:

I use a 32" Viewsonic QHD monitor (2560 x 1440) @ 125% scaling and everything looks fine to me.

That sounds great, I'm surprised but glad you don't experience blurrines with a 125% scaling. Thanks for your input!

3 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

I'm using 5120x1440 as my main monitor, basically a very wide version of the one in the OP and at 100% it's all good for me, but it's definitely personal preference for sure. I did have an ultrawide with a 1080 high instead of 1440 and it felt way too big for me and not nearly enough stuff vertically for my liking.

Cool, that's pretty wide. I suspect it needs to be physically pretty large, for it to be workable at 100% scaling. Thanks!

[Jacques Boileau]

Just now, GreenLight said:

although a dual monitor setup requires you to sit rather far from it? I'm monitoring very nearfield, at about 130cm (51 inches), which is troublesome for dualscreen...

Depends on how it is setup. I also have a double monitor setup. But my second monitor is on top of my 32". The second monitor is a 22" and angles a bit towards me since it is high. I think I am even more nearfield than you with my setup. 😋 The tough part was finding a monitor support tall enough to have the 22" above the 32".

[GreenLight]

2 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Cakewalk is DPI-aware, afaik. At least It has always seamlessly adapted to whatever display I'm using, and there've been a few over the past 36 years. Adapting to different monitors implies that the application "knows" the current resolution (as informed by Windows), which is all DPI awareness means. Yes, there is a more advanced mode that lets programs adapt on the fly to changing resolutions. But that only comes into play when, say, you drag the track view to another monitor that's at a different resolution than your main display. If Cakewalk is distorted or blurry, it isn't because it doesn't know the DPI. In fact the monitor is probably at its default setting of (probably) 96 dpi. The distortions are caused by the monitor attempting to fake a lower resolution.

I always use a display's native resolution, because that's always going to yield the best results.  At one point I had a 20" monitor that was too high-res for its size, making the text difficult to read. That issue went away when I replaced it with a pair of 24" displays. Nowadays I use a pair of 34" widescreen displays, which work much better with my old eyes. Both are running at the same resolution.

As for what the "best" monitor size is, I'd say the biggest one that will fit between your speakers without impinging on line of sight to them. For me that worked out to 34", which was as large as I could go and still have an equilateral triangle between ears and speakers without the display occluding them. My two displays are not side-by-side, obviously, but stacked. I actually prefer that setup because it's not as far when I drag something to the other display.

Many good points here, Bitflipper, thanks!

You're right, it's the equilateral triangle problem that causes me grief... I monitor at close distance so space is scarce. I am desperately trying to fit a dual screen setup, with potentially a 27" + maybe something extra within at tops 130 cm (51 inches). 😅 Wow, dual 34" sounds lovely. Yeah, if you'd not have stacked them you'd be doing midfield monitoring.

I have to confess I'm not 100% on top of the terminology, but whatever it's called, Cakewalk doesn't handle scaling very well. (As a comparison, I used Ableton Live, which looks crisp on all scaling settings.)

I'm a bit nerdy though, so I dug a little more: Maybe the correct term is "scaling unaware" (see Microsoft's blog post)? Or maybe it's different modes of "System DPI awareness": "Effectively, System DPI-aware desktop applications only render crisply at a single display scale factor, becoming blurry whenever the DPI changes." (Microsoft)

One can use Task Manager to see what kind of DPI Awareness modes (Microsoft) an application reports to Windows. Here's what Cakewalk reports currently:

UPDATE ADDITION: Back in 2019, Noel said: "This is a known issue and we have plans of gradually addressing it. Its not impossible but its a significant amount of work for the UI to fully handle DPI scaling in the app. Today we let windows do the best it can - hence the somewhat fuzzy images."

Edited July 19, 2022 by GreenLight
Added Noel quote

[GreenLight]

1 hour ago, Jacques Boileau said:

Depends on how it is setup. I also have a double monitor setup. But my second monitor is on top of my 32". The second monitor is a 22" and angles a bit towards me since it is high. I think I am even more nearfield than you with my setup. 😋 The tough part was finding a monitor support tall enough to have the 22" above the 32".

Haha, that's how to do it! That's what bitflipper does as well... unfortunately, that's something of an ergonomical train wreck waiting to happen, and I struggle with that already as it is. 🥴

Hm, it IS very difficult to combine speakers and monitors in a good way! 🤔

[Michael McBroom]

I have an LG 34" (2560 x 1080) that I run at 100% with all my apps and programs. It's a great monitor, especially if I want to watch a 16:9 video -- which ends up being full screen. I've owned this monitor for about 3 years now, I guess it's been. Its only drawback, if you want to call it one, is it is HDMI only.  With CWbBL, I've had zero problems, both with Win10 and Win7. I really like being able to view 22 tracks or so in the Console View.

[Lord Tim]

4 hours ago, GreenLight said:

Cool, that's pretty wide. I suspect it needs to be physically pretty large, for it to be workable at 100% scaling. Thanks!

Nah, it's really the vertical height that makes the difference - it's a 49" 32:9 monitor, basically 2x 27" 16:9 monitors joined together into one really wide one, so if people like a 1440p 27" monitor at 100% then this would look the same, just extending out on either side.

But like I said, it's definitely personal preference. 100% scaling feels just right to my eyes but might be too small for others.

[bitflipper]

4 hours ago, GreenLight said:

One can use Task Manager to see what kind of DPI Awareness modes (Microsoft) an application reports to Windows. Here's what Cakewalk reports currently:

Hey, that's pretty cool. I didn't know that was in there. One of many optional columns I've never used.

Should note that no applications that have a user interface can actually be oblivious to screen resolution. Every application I've ever written queries Windows for the current screen resolution and DPI, then creates the UI accordingly. Knowing this, the application is then able to avoid, say, rendering a button that the user can't see. Or to center a dialog, or create a toolbar. But as far as Microsoft is concerned, such applications are "unaware". What they actually mean is that the application doesn't check again after it's started up. A "DPI Aware" program is always checking screen resolution, in case it changes.

You can imagine the impact that could have on a program like Cakewalk that needs to be heavily optimized. Imagine if it had to check screen resolution every time it scrolled the track view during playback. I think it's a reasonable assumption that display parameters won't change while Cakewalk is running.

The mystery is what kind of magic Ableton is performing to suppress scaling.

[GreenLight]

8 hours ago, bitflipper said:

You can imagine the impact that could have on a program like Cakewalk that needs to be heavily optimized. Imagine if it had to check screen resolution every time it scrolled the track view during playback. I think it's a reasonable assumption that display parameters won't change while Cakewalk is running.

The mystery is what kind of magic Ableton is performing to suppress scaling.

Microsoft talk about three different scaling categories: "dynamically scaling apps: "Apps that scale themselves on the fly no matter where they are presented" (this is what I think you are referring to?), as well as "'System scale factor' apps: "Apps that understand a single system-side scale factor (usually taken from the primary display at logon time)" and finally "'Scaling unaware' apps".

Well, Noel said Cakewalk eventually get a "UI to fully handle DPI scaling in the app", so I guess we'll just have to have patience. 😄

Edited July 20, 2022 by GreenLight

[GreenLight]

8 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Nah, it's really the vertical height that makes the difference - it's a 49" 32:9 monitor, basically 2x 27" 16:9 monitors joined together into one really wide one, so if people like a 1440p 27" monitor at 100% then this would look the same, just extending out on either side.

But like I said, it's definitely personal preference. 100% scaling feels just right to my eyes but might be too small for others.

Lovely setup, real wiiiiide! I considered a 49", but it seemed most Picture-By-Picture solutions were potentially messy, so I decided to stay with physical dual screen... the KISS principle.

11 hours ago, Michael McBroom said:

I have an LG 34" (2560 x 1080) that I run at 100% with all my apps and programs. It's a great monitor, especially if I want to watch a 16:9 video -- which ends up being full screen. I've owned this monitor for about 3 years now, I guess it's been. Its only drawback, if you want to call it one, is it is HDMI only.  With CWbBL, I've had zero problems, both with Win10 and Win7. I really like being able to view 22 tracks or so in the Console View.

Thanks for the input, Michael. That sounds like a good solution. 👍 I will just have to try 27" at 2560x1440 at home to see if it's workable with Cakewalk at 100%... everything will certainly be displayed smaller than with your setup. 🤔

[Bill Phillips]

I have a 37" curved LB at the recommended 3840 x 1600 and 100% text size. I picked it because it fits between my monitors. I'm old and have to move my head right to left to see some things clearly at either side. So a wider display might be harder for me to use. I like this one a lot everything is clear in Cakewalk and plugin pop-ups.