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Not Liking the look of the New Sonar Interface


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5 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Sure. This is on a 17.6" laptop, 3840 x 2400, 250% scaling

I've not had chance to try it out on my studio rig yet

HI:) 
Sorry but does this make sense? Why not 1980 x 1200, 125% scaling?

Can't understand 250% scaling!

Bassman.

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12 hours ago, Morten Saether said:

Thanks for clarifying. The goal is not for Sonar to look just like CbB, although Sonar will feel very familiar if you are used to CbB. The focus is to have a clean modern UI that is scalable, which will have many benefits as the app continues to evolve. We will be able to do lots of slick things with the UI that simply wasn't possible before. The vector graphics have no effect on the overall color scheme.

There are to main differences in the new Tungsten theme:

  • There are fewer shades of gray for a cleaner and more streamlined look
  • Most buttons have a transparent background in the off position

There is currently no user customization, but we are continuing to refine the themes, and additional themes will be added in the future.

To add to this the “flat” look is intentional. Sonar theming is generally not going for a 3d look on buttons for definition. I suspect thats what you are comparing and finding different. It may take a little getting used to but its not less defined even to my eyes and I’m not young by any stretch of the imagination :)

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9 minutes ago, Noel Borthwick said:

To add to this the “flat” look is intentional. Sonar theming is generally not going for a 3d look on buttons for definition. I suspect thats what you are comparing and finding different. It may take a little getting used to but its not less defined even to my eyes and I’m not young by any stretch of the imagination :)

Personally, I don't care that it looks "flat" but I myself have never enjoyed the inverse clip colors where the "meat" of the sound is bright and the background is dark/black.  It hurts my eyes like nobodies business.  Each version of sonar that has had it since 6 or X I can't remember, I've gone through the trouble of changing it or getting a theme on here that has it inverse.  My 2 cents, but it's not all about style for some of us. 

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4 hours ago, Heinz Hupfer said:

HI:) 
Sorry but does this make sense? Why not 1980 x 1200, 125% scaling?

Can't understand 250% scaling!

Bassman.

Those were Microsofts "recommended" settings when I first got the laptop. No other reason. I might play around with the settings, see if it makes a difference

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1 minute ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Those were Microsofts "recommended" settings when I first got the laptop. No other reason. I might play around with the settings, see if it makes a difference

i run my work lappy on 150 without issue but that has nothing to do with this sorry 🙄

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18 hours ago, Hillmy said:

CbB is more well defined and different color shades show more details and make things very clear at first glance. I don't mean blurry. I just mean that it is more clear in CbB to figure out everything at first glance. You can even tell the boundary boxes in console and inspector view. Nothing seems flat and you can tell when one section or box starts and ends. In Sonar the Sends don't even look like a box, just a flat plane. Also buttons don't look like obvious buttons. 

I think this sums up the issues with the new Sonar Tungsten theme very well. I don’t mind it not being an exact copy but it should be better, not worse. I hope the themes are not being ‘fashion’ driven.  Totally irrelevant for an GUI you are using for music production.

We need good contrast between functional blocks, easy to see buttons and knobs, and very legible text.  The CbB Skylight GUI does that really well and is the standard to start from in any new Sonar GUI.

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On 3/12/2024 at 6:11 AM, Noel Borthwick said:

To add to this the “flat” look is intentional. Sonar theming is generally not going for a 3d look on buttons for definition. I suspect thats what you are comparing and finding different. It may take a little getting used to but its not less defined even to my eyes and I’m not young by any stretch of the imagination :)

I am not so sure I will upgrade to Sonar anymore as I much, much preferred the 3d look of SPLAT and CbB. I am particularly disappointed with the appearance of the flat buttons, knobs and sliders. Sigh.........


In some kind of wishful thinking world, I would hope that if enough users would voice their opinion about missing the 3d-ness of SPLAT and CbB, that the Bakers would revert that design decision. But of course, I am aware that this won't happen.

Maybe if the Bakers could have made their early Sonar beta more public and even surveyed us?

But unfortunately, that's all moot.  

Edited by Michael Richard
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Maybe I am just getting old but I don't think flat looks modern. I think it looks more retro and simplistic.  In the end I don't care that much but even the apps at my work are going more flat and minimalistic. I think it is more of a style, preference, then looking more modern or "better".

As a side note looking at Hillmy screen shots I would have to agree that the CBL images look "cleaner" and more defined then the Sonar ones.

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that's the challenge for vector graphics - how many little lines make up a circle? and the more lines the more CPU/GPU intensive its gets. same for scalable fonts etc. so with bit images you have options to offload the display and a defined size and processing needs -- but on a 4K display, what worked in 1920x1080 is now hard to read, and scaling, well, oops - not so great. 

not a fan of the flat look but ok, my next monitor will likely be either 4K or 8K so it will help, and many apps and plugins are going that as reginaldStjohn noted, so i'll learn to use the flat views, and likely have to convince my spouse to let me get an 16ch SSL controller so i don't hurt my eyes due to blurry vectors or high contrast or ... 🙂 LOL

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Vector graphics is a step in the right direction. The default themes and stuff is fine as long as we have options to choose something else. I hope in future releases they will either include a very similar theme to CbB or give us the customization options to do so. For those of us that have strong GPUs and HD resolutions (gaming laptops for example), you can have graphic accelerations like Open GL for example and the performance will be so smooth and no latency.

So just an option for the same thing will be nice. I'm not asking for the defaults to be different. For now they can focus on developing the DAW and finally getting the product out. But I would like theme options in the future. I don't want an Ableton inspired or cookie-cutter looking DAW. 

The new Cakewalk Sonar can be the new award winning GPU accelerated Skylight 2.0 for a new era in vector graphics for the new modern age. A DAW that stands out like the original Skylight 1.0 interface was for it's age. Just saying.... no pressure. 😛

Edited by Hillmy
added the last paragraph
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Changing text and line colors can add a lot to the readability and contrast of a UI.  This should be fairly easy to do with Sonar as was done in the pre-X series Sonar 4 thru 8.5... (edit): in Preferences>Customization>Colors.

Edited by sjoens
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I'm personally not interested in a full-blown theme editor. But I think it would be nice to see more colour tweaks available in preferences.

I also think there's a gap in the current set of themes, and there should be at least one that's a bit more high contrast.

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15 hours ago, John T said:

I'm personally not interested in a full-blown theme editor. But I think it would be nice to see more colour tweaks available in preferences.

I also think there's a gap in the current set of themes, and there should be at least one that's a bit more high contrast.

More color customization will evolve. There won't be a theme editor since there are no bitmaps to replace. We have some themes not released yet that will fill these gaps when it's complete.

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18 hours ago, norfolkmastering said:

I think this sums up the issues with the new Sonar Tungsten theme very well. I don’t mind it not being an exact copy but it should be better, not worse. I hope the themes are not being ‘fashion’ driven.  Totally irrelevant for an GUI you are using for music production.

We need good contrast between functional blocks, easy to see buttons and knobs, and very legible text.  The CbB Skylight GUI does that really well and is the standard to start from in any new Sonar GUI.

Thats a generalization since its not a black and white choice. There are many people who are equally driven by aesthetics as much as function and would not consider using a product that didn’t look and feel clean and inspiring. 
Everyone is different has has varying tastes when it comes to an interface. Personally, I lean closer to favoring function but I am very affected by visual clutter. I hate using products with so many options in the UI that it causes paralysis. That said, the design team takes all of this into account.

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I love the flat look, I find it very sleek and professional. I am sure there are icons and symbols or accessibility problems that need to be addressed, but I'm very pleased to see this iteration of the UI. 

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5 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

Thats a generalization since its not a black and white choice. There are many people who are equally driven by aesthetics as much as function and would not consider using a product that didn’t look and feel clean and inspiring. 
Everyone is different has has varying tastes when it comes to an interface. Personally, I lean closer to favoring function but I am very affected by visual clutter. I hate using products with so many options in the UI that it causes paralysis. That said, the design team takes all of this into account.

I agree that aesthetics are important in supporting functionality.  It will be good to review when we’ve all had more time with the new GUI. Worth having another look at text legibility which I’m struggling with in the new Sonar GUI.  My monitors are on maximum possible resolution and I’m struggling with some of the text.

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21 hours ago, John T said:

I'm personally not interested in a full-blown theme editor. But I think it would be nice to see more colour tweaks available in preferences.

I also think there's a gap in the current set of themes, and there should be at least one that's a bit more high contrast.

This right here. I have a hard time differentiating between the background, the waveform and the gui.  It feels like all one thing, with very little to discern what's what on my screen.

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