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Font size and contrast improvements needed


Steven White

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One of the reasons I went for the new Sonar was that I heard there were improvements to the blurriness. While things are a little sharper, the fonts are still too small in many places, and often are low contrast to the background color. I have tried the different themes, they all have this issue.  The fonts do get a little bigger when you increase the display scale, but the size of the modules and strips becomes too unwieldy. I don't need bigger strips, What I need is larger font and more contrast. For example, in the tube module the font is almost the same gray as the background, and in the sequencer strip the letters for mute and solo are large enough but the names of the instrument are too small - it's the same strip, so there is definitely room for a larger font. I hope these improvements can be made, I don't think I will renew if I have to keep squinting to use the program. Sequncerstrip.png.e94826cff7bba5c0215b4745b6f82fc8.pngTubemodule.png.69e3339dce7ee73ec5938ae18b75107d.png

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100% agree with all this. Readability should be the first priority, "nice design" choices are distant second. The current color and design choices are as if they don't want to distract users with text and numbers making them as unnoticeable as possible.  If they don't have decent designers then just make all the colors editable as in the older Cakewalk. And please, PLEASE, keep things consistent - if a user chooses light colored themes don't force them to have random dark elements such as this horrid black menu and dark themed Articulations and Export dialogues. Ones chooses a light theme for a reason.

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I am looking forward to the return of the theme editor. The vertical grid lines and background color of the piano rolling shutter window can be freely set, and when selecting a track, the background color of the left channel bar changes with the color of the selected track. Just like the bandlab color scheme. As an old user of Sonar for over 20 years, it's very difficult to give up Sonar from Sonar4 to now, isn't it? I sincerely look forward to this return! Thank you Sonar!

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There is a feature in preferences called dpi awareness. It is on by default, and improves readability 10-20% if used on a large high def monitor.  I definitely see an improvement with it on.  BUt maybe it got switched off by accident?

It's still not good enough or as easily readable as bandlab cakewalk was however.  I hate to show my age but you can always tell when young  graphic designers design things they often assume eyes of every age can read them.  That appears to me to be the case here. Those faint drop down 'v's are especially annoying.  It's called eye strain, children!

Since DPI awareness is on by default it may already be the case. In that case, try it with it off. One never knows. And remember, cakewalk must be reloaded after the dpi awareness checkbox is changed.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/28/2024 at 3:31 AM, Bristol_Jonesey said:

You say you've tried the other themes, but the lighter ones seem a lot more readable than the dark ones, at least to my eyes

Many of the elements are more legible in the light theme, but not light grey or other light themes, but there are some controls that are in a light color font that become hard to see, and some font sizes that remain very small even with display scale at maximum. The problem with display scale seems to be that it increases the size of the large things even more than the small things (I guess that is what 'scale' means) when what is needed is just an increase for the few but important items that are just way too small, markers for example.

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On 11/30/2024 at 7:05 AM, Rickddd said:

There is a feature in preferences called dpi awareness. It is on by default, and improves readability 10-20% if used on a large high def monitor.  I definitely see an improvement with it on.  BUt maybe it got switched off by accident?

It's still not good enough or as easily readable as bandlab cakewalk was however.  I hate to show my age but you can always tell when young  graphic designers design things they often assume eyes of every age can read them.  That appears to me to be the case here. Those faint drop down 'v's are especially annoying.  It's called eye strain, children!

Since DPI awareness is on by default it may already be the case. In that case, try it with it off. One never knows. And remember, cakewalk must be reloaded after the dpi awareness checkbox is changed.

I have tried with DPI awareness on and off, on is def better but doesn't compensate for very small font and low contrast of some text elements.

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On 11/29/2024 at 12:12 PM, happy816 said:

I am looking forward to the return of the theme editor. The vertical grid lines and background color of the piano rolling shutter window can be freely set, and when selecting a track, the background color of the left channel bar changes with the color of the selected track. Just like the bandlab color scheme. As an old user of Sonar for over 20 years, it's very difficult to give up Sonar from Sonar4 to now, isn't it? I sincerely look forward to this return! Thank you Sonar!

I didn't really like the theme editor too much. A lot of the elements were images, not editable. this is what i thought would get fixed with Sonar BBL. 

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On 11/29/2024 at 1:22 PM, Wookiee said:

I suggest you make your feelings felt in the feature request forums as well as here. It has been said a theme editor, which was only introduced with X3, is on the cards but no timetable has been set.

I'm sorry, I can't find the feature request forum.

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