I can't find an acceptable color theme. Need more options to customize colors (like CbB)

[jimlynch22]

I can't find an acceptable color theme even after tweaking my monitor settings: 

1. In PRV note names are hard to read in dark themes.
2. In Track View, notes are hard to see in light gray theme.

[Colin Nicholls]

@jimlynch22  Given your constraints I recommend you stick with Mercury or Mercury classic.

In PRV, If you are a fan of "light background PRV" - like me - it's about your only sane choice.

In Track View, you can adjust the data zoom level (as I think you have done, I think) to make the note blobs larger, and choose track colors that improve the contrast of note blob to background.

[jimlynch22]

On 8/2/2025 at 11:54 AM, Colin Nicholls said:

@jimlynch22  Given your constraints I recommend you stick with Mercury or Mercury classic.

In PRV, If you are a fan of "light background PRV" - like me - it's about your only sane choice.

In Track View, you can adjust the data zoom level (as I think you have done, I think) to make the note blobs larger, and choose track colors that improve the contrast of note blob to background.

Thanks, I think this is the best option for me. I didn't like it at first, because I use Snap to Scale all the time and the illegal notes for a scale are super heavy black, but I guess I can used to it. Thanks for your helpful suggestion.

[AB99]

3 minutes ago, jimlynch22 said:

Thanks, I think this is the best option for me. I didn't like it at first, because I use Snap to Scale all the time and the illegal notes for a scale are super heavy black, but I guess I can used to it. Thanks for your helpful suggestion.

This is interesting.  I have never used snap to scale.  I need to check it out.   I can see where people can differ about these heavy black lines.  Personally, they seem sort of helpful in knowing what notes are not subject to the snapping.

[Colin Nicholls]

3 hours ago, jimlynch22 said:

because I use Snap to Scale all the time

Ugh, I've never used it. Yeah that's suboptimal for me too. I don't know whether we should log bugs/feature requests for individual color tweaks or just group them all under a general "hurry up with user color customization already" thread.

[Helios.G]

21 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Ugh, I've never used it. Yeah that's suboptimal for me too. I don't know whether we should log bugs/feature requests for individual color tweaks or just group them all under a general "hurry up with user color customization already" thread.

Honestly none of the themes are offensive in an of themselves to me, but if we could get small things like waveforms and midi block editing, that would probably go a long way for many of us.

[Bass Guitar]

All the current themes are a total compromise. 
 

And it’s not just the colour. It’s the microscopic check marks and icons. 

[Helios.G]

1 hour ago, Bass Guitar said:

All the current themes are a total compromise. 
 

And it’s not just the colour. It’s the microscopic check marks and icons. 

I honestly turned off gui resizing in the app and on the windows side of things.  My laptop and my desktop are both 1080p, and I don't need the scaling, at least for now.  That helps lots with the text and some plugins.  All I need is a way to switch the waveforms from dark mode to light mode, and I'd be golden.

[Rickddd]

I don't mean to hurt any feelings of the cake bakers, but I've thought since day 1 of the the new sonar that the Bandlab free version was WAY easier on the eyes. Yeah, its a little boxy, but my eyes went "ah....." as I worked with it.  The new sonar, as much as I like a lot about it, my eyes goes "yikes..."  I've seen so many updates that listed "improved colors"  and maybe they were, but they were improvements to color schemes and visual design (to my eyes) that fundamentally fell short of what cakewalk bandlab had achieved from the git-go.  I get it - the bakers needed to distinguish it from the free version, but at what cost? I'd PAY to have my cake and eat it too...

And as someone mentioned here above, the small check-marks and symbols  don't help matters any.

Again, let me state that I'm a fan of CW... been using it since Cakewalk Studio a dozen years ago.  But the current visual design.... sucks.  New colors alone are not going to make it as easy on the eyes as the prior version.

And just to be clear..., and maybe its just me, every time I open it up I think "ah... I miss the good old days".  I feel giving those of us that feel this way an option to revert visually to what once as would strengthen product loyalty.  Just my 2 cents.

Edited Tuesday at 10:20 AM by Rickddd

[John T]

I've been banging this drum for a while myself. I don't exactly miss the old days or anything, and my objections are also not aesthetic ones. I think it's just inarguable that functionally, the new design is less at-a-glance readable *and* less internally consistent than CbB / old Sonar in many areas. 

I understand that it's a small team, and what they achieve regularly is impressive. But if there isn't time / money / whatever for a solid UX designer to take a pass at it, we really could do with more customisation. 

Edited Tuesday at 11:50 AM by John T

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

1 hour ago, John T said:

But if there isn't time / money / whatever for a solid UX designer to take a pass at it, we really could do with more customisation. 

Maybe we could have a GoFundMe

[Terry Kelley]

I suspect Meng can afford it. 

Edited Tuesday at 01:34 PM by Terry Kelley

[AB99]

3 hours ago, Terry Kelley said:

I suspect Meng can afford it. 

Probably so.   I think many of us are grateful for Meng saving this sofware program when things looked really grim some years ago.  And then he did not charge for CbB for quite a few years.   And then he made a free Sonar available.

So, I think we have to acknowledge all the great things Meng has done and hope he wants to devote resources into improving the visual/graphic issues.   There have been posts from the Bakers about how this is a work in progress and others have chimed in about patience.   Overall, I am optimistic.  We are dealing with a lot of great people.

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:35 PM by AB99

[jimlynch22]

19 hours ago, Helios.G said:

I honestly turned off gui resizing in the app and on the windows side of things.  My laptop and my desktop are both 1080p, and I don't need the scaling, at least for now.  That helps lots with the text and some plugins.  All I need is a way to switch the waveforms from dark mode to light mode, and I'd be golden.

How do you turn off gui resizing?  

[jimlynch22]

On 8/3/2025 at 12:49 PM, AB99 said:

This is interesting.  I have never used snap to scale.  I need to check it out.   I can see where people can differ about these heavy black lines.  Personally, they seem sort of helpful in knowing what notes are not subject to the snapping.

Snap to scale is wonderful if you compose in PRV, especially for multi-part harmony.   You can create your own scales, too. The dark lines show what notes are not in your chosen scale; when it's turned on, you're prevented from putting notes on the dark lines, and when you drag notes up or down, the same is true.

[Helios.G]

6 minutes ago, jimlynch22 said:

How do you turn off gui resizing?  

Ok, on the cakwalk sonar side,  hit P to get to the preferences menu.  Go to the advanced view and scroll to the display section.  At the bottom of the page are the dpi settings, uncheck that. 

On the windows system side of things,  go to where sonar lives on your system, right click the sonar.exe icon and click on properties in the pop up menu.  Once the options box pops up, go to the compatibility tab and look for "change high dpi" settings.  Click on that, and uncheck both dpi options and hit ok.  

That should disable dpi settings in cakewalk completely.  It did for me, let me know if it works.

[Salvatore Sorice]

6 hours ago, AB99 said:

Probably so.   I think many of us are grateful for Meng saving this sofware program when things looked really grim some years ago.  And then he did not charge for CbB for quite a few years.   And then he made a free Sonar available.

So, I think we have to acknowledge all the great things Meng has done and hope he wants to devote resources into improving the visual/graphic issues.   There have been posts from the Bakers about how this is a work in progress and others have chimed in about patience.   Overall, I am optimistic.  We are dealing with a lot of great people.

 

Agree 1000%

We had a great DAW that was abandoned. Got a wonderful, unexpected reprieve when it was rescued - and then given away and supported(!) - for FREE for (about?) 8 years. Now, we have (IMO) a BETTER DAW, that will (hopefully) start getting mainstream attention - plus there is still a FREE version!

Don't think a rational person could ask for anything more.

Thanks Meng - and THANKS for all the hard work the Bakers continue doing. At this rate, won't be long before Cakewalk Sonar is the gold standard of DAWs (my humble opinion :^)

[Helios.G]

22 minutes ago, Salvatore Sorice said:

Agree 1000%

We had a great DAW that was abandoned. Got a wonderful, unexpected reprieve when it was rescued - and then given away and supported(!) - for FREE for (about?) 8 years. Now, we have (IMO) a BETTER DAW, that will (hopefully) start getting mainstream attention - plus there is still a FREE version!

Don't think a rational person could ask for anything more.

Thanks Meng - and THANKS for all the hard work the Bakers continue doing. At this rate, won't be long before Cakewalk Sonar is the gold standard of DAWs (my humble opinion :^)

I love cakewalk, I've used it loyally since producer edition 6.  But if we want to have it be adopted by more people, then giving people options on the gui side is a small ask.  That's a low bar that every major daw has, except ours.  I am grateful that sonar is still here and kicking, but working with the user base builds good will.  Good will turns into word of mouth and becomes it's own viral campaign.   We should all want this.

[jimlynch22]

22 hours ago, Helios.G said:

Ok, on the cakwalk sonar side,  hit P to get to the preferences menu.  Go to the advanced view and scroll to the display section.  At the bottom of the page are the dpi settings, uncheck that. 

On the windows system side of things,  go to where sonar lives on your system, right click the sonar.exe icon and click on properties in the pop up menu.  Once the options box pops up, go to the compatibility tab and look for "change high dpi" settings.  Click on that, and uncheck both dpi options and hit ok.  

That should disable dpi settings in cakewalk completely.  It did for me, let me know if it works.

I disabled DPI and I didn't see any difference. However, I did discover the display scale slider right below, so I bumped that up and now my old eyeballs are happier.  Thanks for your suggestions!

[Helios.G]

7 minutes ago, jimlynch22 said:

I disabled DPI and I didn't see any difference. However, I did discover the display scale slider right below, so I bumped that up and now my old eyeballs are happier.  Thanks for your suggestions!

I'm glad that you got a solution.  Did you restart sonar after turning off dpi? Just curious, that might be it, either way,  as long as you're happy with how it looks, that's all that matters.