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


GreenLight

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On 7/20/2022 at 10:22 PM, Bill Phillips said:

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.

Sounds like a good resolution for that size. But I can totally get that if it's too wide, you're going to get a "tennis effect" with your head moving back and forth all the time... 😬

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5 hours ago, GreenLight said:

Sounds like a good resolution for that size. But I can totally get that if it's too wide, you're going to get a "tennis effect" with your head moving back and forth all the time... 😬

Not  yet. 🙄 My Cakewalk window occupies 60-70% of the screen. I use the rest for plugins & docs.

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On 7/19/2022 at 1:09 PM, GreenLight said:

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!

Hey so I tried to up the resolution on my monitor just to see what i might be missing and it turns out I'm maxed out probably due the age of the monitor.  It has to be at least 10 years old.  So now I might be monitor hunting in the near future.  Here is what I look at every day...

Sonar On SCreem.jpg

Edited by Jimbo 88
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4 hours ago, Jimbo 88 said:

Hey so I tried to up the resolution on my monitor just to see what i might be missing and it turns out I'm maxed out probably due the age of the monitor.  It has to be at least 10 years old.  So now I might be monitor hunting in the near future.  Here is what I look at every day...

 

Great to see your setup! Lots of interesting gadgets... :) A good 'ol JV-1010, do you still use it? (I still have a JV-2080 in my rack, but I guess I ought to sell it as I don't use it... if those are sellable these days?) Ah, ah Kensington trackball, I got one last year, as a complement to the mouse.

You're using the monitor on top to show video when scoring to picture? Cool! (No neck pain from that high angle?)

 

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21 minutes ago, GreenLight said:

Great to see your setup! Lots of interesting gadgets... :) A good 'ol JV-1010, do you still use it? (I still have a JV-2080 in my rack, but I guess I ought to sell it as I don't use it... if those are sellable these days?) Ah, ah Kensington trackball, I got one last year, as a complement to the mouse.

You're using the monitor on top to show video when scoring to picture? Cool! (No neck pain from that high angle?)

 

...so the JV 1010 is just used to give me a piano sound out of my midi controller (StudioLogic 88) when I'm not connected to a sound in a DAW.   I have a rack of similar modules behind a wall I can access, but have not used in years! Probably should sell them, but you never know when ya might wanna fire them up just for fun.

The monitor on top is really just a hair above eye level when I sit straight up... which is what I try to always do and is a good tip to know.  The better your posture, the easier it is to work long hours.  I never sit back in my chair.  So I really do not look up at the top monitor.  Much of the time I also have notation software (Sibelius) rewired in that monitor.  When I'm working not scoring to picture I always have notation up. 

A very clever trick I learned from Jerry is to put a dummy track in Staff View up on the top screen that works as a sketch for melodies and chords and then open a separate Staff View in the docking station below to edit arrangements.  Something not possible in any other DAW, but CbB.

 

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1 hour ago, Jimbo 88 said:

...so the JV 1010 is just used to give me a piano sound out of my midi controller (StudioLogic 88) when I'm not connected to a sound in a DAW.   I have a rack of similar modules behind a wall I can access, but have not used in years! Probably should sell them, but you never know when ya might wanna fire them up just for fun.

The monitor on top is really just a hair above eye level when I sit straight up... which is what I try to always do and is a good tip to know.  The better your posture, the easier it is to work long hours.  I never sit back in my chair.  So I really do not look up at the top monitor.  Much of the time I also have notation software (Sibelius) rewired in that monitor.  When I'm working not scoring to picture I always have notation up. 

A very clever trick I learned from Jerry is to put a dummy track in Staff View up on the top screen that works as a sketch for melodies and chords and then open a separate Staff View in the docking station below to edit arrangements.  Something not possible in any other DAW, but CbB.

Smart with the JV module for instant piano sound, maybe I should do the same... Although I can't call myself a piano player, I do occasional piano practice and quick access to a piano sound can sometimes be the difference between practice or no practice. 🙄

Good to hear you've got the ergonomics nailed! 👍😀 It's so important – when I see some people's studio pics, I think "I wouldn't last there for a day"... 😂

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On 7/19/2022 at 1:27 PM, 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:

image.png.0e69c7663fd68237c8ae9690d3b67f02.png

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."

In 2021.04 there was a setting added for this. Check out the Windows 10 high DPI rendering option (experimental feature) section about 2/3rd down this page

I just stumbled across the setting while looking for something else in the help.

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On 7/30/2022 at 4:54 PM, scook said:

In 2021.04 there was a setting added for this. Check out the Windows 10 high DPI rendering option (experimental feature) section about 2/3rd down this page

I just stumbled across the setting while looking for something else in the help.

Thanks @scook, I tried the EnableWin10DPIAwareness setting earlier but if I recall correctly I didn't really see any difference.

It should be noted that in March this year, msmcleod actually said that the EnableWin10DPIAwareness "...setting is highly experimental, and not recommended." 🤔

There are some further DPI related Windows settings one can set on the cakewalk.exe shortcut: the new "System (Enhanced)" option for High DPI scaling override actually seems to improve the menu texts in Cakewalk, but it obviously cannot improve bitmap graphics.

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Hi everyone, I installed Cakewalk for the first time today and the UI is just so tiny on my 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor that it's sadly unusable for me. Setting scaling to 150% in Windows makes it too blurry to be usable and setting to 200% makes it too pixelated to be usable. I'm on Windows 8.1. Googling this it seems most people complain about the interface being too big, but such is not the case here. :-) I assume there is no scaling options in Cakewalk itself? Thank you!

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2 hours ago, Adam Janz said:

Hi everyone, I installed Cakewalk for the first time today and the UI is just so tiny on my 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor that it's sadly unusable for me. Setting scaling to 150% in Windows makes it too blurry to be usable and setting to 200% makes it too pixelated to be usable. I'm on Windows 8.1. Googling this it seems most people complain about the interface being too big, but such is not the case here. 🙂 I assume there is no scaling options in Cakewalk itself? Thank you!

You describe Cakewalk's scaling problem with current hi-res/hi-DPI  screens correctly. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find a good compromise with that screen size and resolution. There are some small mitigations that you can try with Windows' High DPI settings on the Cakewalk shortcut, I think they were described earlier in this thread.

As I created this thread, I thought a lot of people would have problems with it, but surprisingly many don't. For example, the people responding in this thread are either using very large screens (32") or lower resolutions, creating situations where you don't need scaling. Then there are probably also those who don't care or notice if things are a bit blurry as well... :)

Noel from Bandlab said a couple of years ago that they are aware of it: "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"

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4 hours ago, Adam Janz said:

Hi everyone, I installed Cakewalk for the first time today and the UI is just so tiny on my 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor that it's sadly unusable for me. Setting scaling to 150% in Windows makes it too blurry to be usable and setting to 200% makes it too pixelated to be usable. I'm on Windows 8.1. Googling this it seems most people complain about the interface being too big, but such is not the case here. 🙂 I assume there is no scaling options in Cakewalk itself? Thank you!

Wow, 8.1? Brave choice. Whatever we might say in public about Windows 10, recent releases DEFINITELY improved app scaling and support, so I hate to say it but an upgrade in your case might be... an upgrade with respect to screen scaling.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you Greenlight and Colin Nicholls for your replies. My apologies for the late response, I wasn't receiving notifications from this thread. Yeah I may eventually be forced to upgrade to Windows 10, but the first time I tried to (back in 2016), Windows 10 nearly destroyed my workstation (sending it into an endless boot loop). I'm presently using Ableton, and am likely to stay with that as the UI is less cluttered and lot more familiar to me. That said, if Cakewalk ever gets better HighDPI support, I'd be willing to take another look. ☺️ Have a great week ahead!

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I have been using 4K TVs for monitors at work and home for about 3 or 4 years now. People that game don't like them because they usually don't have the refresh rate that good Computer Monitors have. However, for what I do they work good and are much cheaper.

Another drawback is that the 4K tvs that are cheap start at around 40" and you need a big desk or to sit a ways away from the monitor to view it.

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On 7/19/2022 at 9:50 AM, 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.

I had a similar monitor for a short time. Loved it. Miss it. (sigh)

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I have the same issue. In my case, I use a 28" 4K – 3840×2160 – monitor I normally run at 150% scaling (that is, simulating the workspace a 2560×1440 resolution would normally give at 100%). Size is just about right for me, but the fact that Cakewalk is DPI unaware is bothering me a bit, since it looks particularly blurry on my screen. My other PC, a Surface Pro 8 running at 2880×1920 with 200% scaling (1440×960 workspace), actually looks fine, since the pixelation doesn't bother me at that size and 200% gives me no blur, but I'd still like a crisper look. I came here looking for answers, but I guess this has been an issue for a long time with no solution in sight.

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5 hours ago, José Pedro Barbosa said:

I have the same issue. In my case, I use a 28" 4K – 3840×2160 – monitor I normally run at 150% scaling (that is, simulating the workspace a 2560×1440 resolution would normally give at 100%). Size is just about right for me, but the fact that Cakewalk is DPI unaware is bothering me a bit, since it looks particularly blurry on my screen. My other PC, a Surface Pro 8 running at 2880×1920 with 200% scaling (1440×960 workspace), actually looks fine, since the pixelation doesn't bother me at that size and 200% gives me no blur, but I'd still like a crisper look. I came here looking for answers, but I guess this has been an issue for a long time with no solution in sight.

Have you tried 100% scaling? I have a 38" 3840x1600. I use it at 100% scaling and have no trouble with legibility or blurriness in Cakewalk or anything else. I'm guessing that the text size would be a little smaller on a 32" but it may not be noticeable.

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