Gran Vista and Carbon Themes [Updated to CbB 2021.12]

[Xoo]

That was close to my conclusion too :-(

 

Thanks

[Michael Fogarty]

slightly off topic, but was is Fazioli F308? Do you have a 10 foot grand in your studio?

 

[Canopus]

On 10/25/2019 at 1:41 PM, Michael Fogarty said:

slightly off topic, but was is Fa****i F**8? Do you have a 10 foot grand in your studio?

Oh, I wish.

No, what you see in the screenshot is unfortunately only a VSTi, albeit a good one. It’s the True Keys Italian, a sampled Fa****i F**8 from VI Labs.

With a size of 10’ 2” x 63” (3.08 x 1.58 m) and a MSRP of $224,600 for the real thing, I find a VSTi better suited for my living space. Not to mention my wallet.

 

Edited October 30, 2019 by Canopus
Obscured grand piano references to see if the recent explosion in views may be SEO related.

[Canopus]

The number of views for this thread used to be between ten or twenty each day. For the last week or so I’ve notice that the number of views without any apparent reason has jumped to maybe ten times that. Today I found that there must have been over a thousand views for the last 8 hours!? And as far as I can see they keep rolling in. I’m totally baffled. This is actually making me feel uneasy, as it might seem as if I am boosting the number of views on this thread, which I’m definitely not.

The most logical reason for this to happen would be if some big site suddenly posted a link to this thread, but I’m unable to find any such reference through Google. Or, optionally, if some words in a recent post would stir some massive interest. But I can’t understand what those words would be.

However, being aware of all the more extensive use of SEO in user forums – could that have something to do with it? As this sudden increase of views seems to have occurred in the last week, one obvious suspect would be the reference to an Italian made musical instrument. However far-fetched that may seem, I have obscured the name of that instrument in the last post to see if that makes any difference.

And, @Michael Fogarty, if you read this – would it be possible for you to do the same change in your post above as well?

Additionally, I’ve placed a reference thread in another corner of this forum for easy comparison of user statistics.

[DeeringAmps]

Link removed 

Edited November 2, 2019 by DeeringAmps
Remove link

[Canopus]

1 hour ago, DeeringAmps said:

You can check out the F*****i Model F**8 here.

Um, yeah, thanks, but if you read my previous post I was actually trying to remove any links or string references in this thread to that instrument, in order to verify whether the sudden increase of views has been caused by an attempt by some SEO service to increase the number of hits relating to that piano. Public forums are known to be used for manipulation of Google search results like that. The only two reasons I can think of that may have caused many thousands of views of this thread for the last week are either a bot, most likely SEO based, or some madman without a life, vigorously hammering the refresh button.

A few days ago I sent a PM to one of the BandLab support staff, asking if they could look up the referral or otherwise the source of these views from the server request logs. I haven’t yet received any reply, but hopefully they’re looking into it. It’s all there, so it shouldn’t be hard to do.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Canopus

[Starship Krupa]

The hit count boost thing is really weird, especially given the theory about the Italian piano maker that I'd never heard of! Perhaps that piano maker intends to remedy that. Successfully in my case.

And thanks for all the updates on some of my favorite "dark" themes, Canopus. The ability to switch themes, and the availability of such great-looking ones as the ones that you do really add a great deal to the Cakewalk user experience.

[Canopus]

Both the Gran Vista Black & Blue and Carbon themes have now been updated to support recent modifications in CbB 2020.04. This includes the addition of Arranger Tracks and individual ProChannel module presets.

Additionally, the menu drop-down indicators on the Media and Plugin tabs in the Browser have been made brighter for increased visibility. Scrollbar backgrounds have also been made slightly brighter in order to give better contrast against the scrollbar arrows. Unfortunately at this time the black scrollbar arrows can unfortunately not be modified using the theme editor.

Please note! Due to the addition off Arranger Tracks in CbB 2020.04, all tab images in the Inspector got smaller. Because of that, the Gran Vista and Carbon themes version 1.07 are not backward compatible with CbB prior to release 2020.04. If you are planning on using older versions of CbB you should thus not update Gran Vista or Carbon beyond version 1.06. 

As always, download the themes from the links supplied in the OP.

[TheSteven]

Thanks for updating my favorite theme!

[Canopus]

To anyone using the Carbon theme; I’m sorry but I just noticed that I’d forgotten to remove some of the glossy design elements found in Gran Vista. I have now uploaded a new Carbon theme file, so those of you having downloaded it during the last 24 hours might want to download the updated version.

[Brian Cadoret]

Thanks very much Canopus for your Carbon theme.

I also use Samplitude Pro X as my DAW  which has a Carbon "skin" maybe a touch darker than yours.

Anyway I find it really nice to have the two DAWS in the similar colour, a good work flow for me.

 

Brian 

Edited April 26, 2020 by Brian Cadoret

[richard k sennett]

Thank you for the hard work

[Canopus]

Both Gran Vista and Carbon have now been updated to support GUI modifications in CbB 2021.01, or more specifically the addition of four buttons to the Large size Select module. There are some additional modifications as well:

• The Control Bar buttons used to set areas for Select, Loop, and Punch have been slightly modified, in that the marker triangles on those buttons have been gi­ven the same colour as the corresponding function in the Track View; yellow for Loop, green for Selection, and red for Punch. This is a feature that I’ve borrowed from my Lead theme where it was introduced. Here’s how these changes look in Gran Vista, but Carbon has similar modifications.

            

• The Arm All Tracks button in the Control Bar’s Mix Module has previously been blue (as it is in Mercury). However, as the Arm button on each individual track is red, Arm All Tracks has now been made red as well for better consistency.
• The meters in the Performance module have been changed from orange to blue to better match the theme’s overall appearance. That colour wasn’t pos­sible to change at the time these themes were created, but has apparently been quietly exposed to the Theme Editor since then.

            

• Unselected synths in the Synth Rack now have a dark background colour, as the previous blue highlight background for both selected and unselected synths may have been confusing.

Download the themes from links supplied in the first post. There you will also find a link to the release history.

[Canopus]

Both Gran Vista and Carbon have now been updated to support GUI modifications in CbB 2021.04, or more specifically the addition of a Tempo tab in the Inspector pane. As a consequence, all Inspector tabs have been resized in order to make room. This addition has also made all existing themes incompatible with CbB versions earlier than 2021.04, which mean s that you should not install any of these themes until you have installed CbB 2021.04 EA or later.

The themes can be downloaded from the links supplied in the first post. There you will also find a link to the release history.

[Canopus]

A modification made to 2021.04 build 175 rendered the buttons in the Meter/Key view practically invisible in dark custom themes. This has now been fixed in the themes Gran Vista and Carbon . See below, before and after.

The themes can be downloaded from the links supplied in the first post. There you will also find a link to the release history.

[Canopus]

No changes have been made to CbB 2021.11 that require theme updates but I've made two changes nonetheless. This is purely a maintenance update, triggered by comments in two different user threads in the CbB forum.

• The total number of events at the bottom of the Event List was very hard to see as the text was rendered in a light-gray colour on a bright background. That text has now been slightly darkened to stand out better. The problem is that the same text colour is used elsewhere on a dark background, so perfect contrast is impossible to get in both locations. See below, before and after. On a side note, the problem with the Event List counter is actually found in the default theme Tungsten as well.
  
  

• I’m not a big fan of theme changes that radically deviates from the graphical elements used in the default GUI, as such changes might make the user documentation hard to follow. However, I’m prepared to make exceptions when the default GUI in itself is contradictory to what most users probably would expect. A recent thread regarding the PDC (delay compensation) button in the Mix module has highlighted one such problem. When the PDC button is activated it actually turns PDC off. The FX button in the Mix module has the same problem; when it’s activated, it actually turns all effects off. I have tried to remedy these problems by updating those two buttons with a strikethrough in all my themes. I also changed the colour to red when activated. Here’s an example that shows before and after in Gran Vista and Lead:
  
  
  
  
  
  Maybe not as visually appealing, but in this case it's function before form. YMMV.

[Xoo]

Why not keep blue highlighting?  To me, the line through (good idea!) is good enough - maybe make it more obvious though?

Edited November 8, 2021 by Kevin Perry

[Canopus]

7 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

Why not keep blue highlighting?  To me, the line through (good idea!) is good enough - maybe make it more obvious though?

I tried a few different colour/strikethrough combinations but none of them looked as good as I would have wanted. In the end I went for a traffic light metaphor using a red highlight. Considering that the strikethrough was red in inactive state, it also made sense to keep and simply amplify that colour in the button’s active state. At the same time, keeping the number of colours down minimized the risk of having the active button look too “busy”.

[Xoo]

2 hours ago, Canopus said:

I tried a few different colour/strikethrough combinations but none of them looked as good as I would have wanted. In the end I went for a traffic light metaphor using a red highlight. Considering that the strikethrough was red in inactive state, it also made sense to keep and simply amplify that colour in the button’s active state. At the same time, keeping the number of colours down minimized the risk of having the active button look too “busy”.

Fair enough - I'm a bit of a sucker for the same colours on the buttons (like you, I feel it can make it busy).

[Canopus]

I’ve finally realized that the 2x (Plug-In Upsampling) button in the Mix Module is an override button as well. As I never use that button it wasn’t clear to me. For consistency that button has now been modified in the Gran Vista and Carbon themes similarly to the two buttons mentioned recently in this thread.