Increase UI Screen Contrast: New Cakewalk Sonar

[Stephen Power]

I've just started a 3 day trial of Bandlab and I've downloaded Cakewalk Sonar. The first thing I noticed, compared to CbB (which I've had for two years, and I'm very happy with it), is the flat look of its UI.

I've tried all of the main color schemes, and Tungsten Classic suits me best, but I could do with more contrast in the tones, just to give them a bit more depth on my 27" and 40" screens.

Is there any way to enhance the UI contrast without messing with the screens themselves?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Edited June 4 by Stephen Power

[David Baay]

Using the Mercury Classic theme in Sonar, I find some things have better contrast than CbB and some are worse. My main issue is with the text in dialog boxes where the font is so fine it appears grayed out. I've reported this to the Bakers and I can only suggest that you report your specific issues as there is very little that can be controlled at this point other than choosing from the pre-defined color schemes/themes.

[Stephen Power]

16 hours ago, David Baay said:

I can only suggest that you report your specific issues as there is very little that can be controlled at this point other than choosing from the pre-defined color schemes/themes.

I did, and got a reply this morning. Basically, they've no plans to bake-in stronger contrast (or contrast settings) for the forthcoming version of Cakewalk Sonar, but they will bear my suggestion in mind for the future.

[David Baay]

On 6/4/2024 at 8:36 AM, pwal³ said:

 will a new theme editor be made available?

As I recall, providing some level of theme editing has been mentioned as a long-term goal by one of the Bakers, but I be hard-pressed to find the reference.

Notwithstanding the reponse that Stephen got, if enough users express concern about specific contrast/legibility deficiencies, I think it still has a chance of improving in some areas.

That said, my vision is not the greatest but I'm getting along pretty well with Sonar even on my 15" laptop that shipped with scaling set at 200% and which I've reduced to 160% to be consistent with the scaling of Sonar on my larger desktop monitors where the fine dialog font is not really a problem.

Edited June 5 by David Baay

[John Vere]

It is really bad. It’s been what? 3 months and yesterday I checked Solo instead of the record on a track. I do it almost every session! You just want to see a red button! 

I’ve been spending time in other DAWs and you come back to Sonar, or Next and the graphics just sucks. And I’ve yet to see a plus side to this? 
I really don’t care about looks but if the graphics make it hard to see important objects then that a bad design. 

Edited June 4 by John Vere

[David Baay]

30 minutes ago, John Vere said:

yesterday I checked Solo instead of the record on a track. I do it almost every session! You just want to see a red button! 

Which theme? I don't see a significant difference between CbB and Sonar with the Mercury Classic theme.

[John Vere]

I don’t like any of the themes That’s the problem. I used to use one of scooks themes inCbB.  
 

I’m optimistic that 2 years from now we might have a return of the theme editing software. 

In the meantime I will just put up and shut up about how much I hate the way Sonar looks.

 Isn’t Mercury the one that looks like 1996 ?  I think that’s the one I switch to to use the white background on the PRV. But then I get blinded by the look of everything else. 
I think the Scook theme was a Tungsten based version. It had green highlights. 
Like I say. I generally don’t pay much attention to software backdrop but this is just been terrible for me.  But that’s all I’ll say. I will shut up now and get back to work.  In the dark! 

[David Baay]

13 hours ago, John Vere said:

Isn’t Mercury the one that looks like 1996 ?

A bit of an exaggeration. Mercury was the original color scheme of SONAR X1 when the Skylight interface debuted in 2010. Pro Audio 4.0 of 1996... now that's a retina-burner.  ;^)

[John Vere]

5 hours ago, David Baay said:

A bit of an exaggeration. Mercury was the original color scheme of SONAR X1 when the Skylight interface debuted in 2010. Pro Audio 4.0 of 1996... now that's a retina-burner.  ;^)

I just tried Tungsten Classic and you are right. It's much better and now my record buttons are red again, thanks you saved me a lot of cursing! It will do for now but the black PRV I still find hard to use. I was using the Cosmic or the dark grey themes.