Sound On Sound says it all: Too Dark

Can sheep even walk backward? :laughing:

Yes! ‘Sheepishly’. :slight_smile:
{‘-’}

I’m not 100% sure the theme is too dark. I don’t like it, but I won’t blame the darkness. It’s all about contrast and positioning and structure so that you can find what you are looking for. I find the new mixer to be a morass of blobs of indistinct washes of color. I can’t tell which channel goes with which fader. I can’t tell which row goes with which column. I really just can’t find anything without actively trying to look for it. Even with the faders grouped, I can’t easily delineate one channels setting from the next. I have no such problem in C6.5 or prior. I find trying to use the mixer extremely fatiguing and cumbersome. That doesn’t even take into account the clickfest, lack of positional/zoom memory, losing plugins behind the mixer, can’t use hotkeys unless you click on the mixer, rack configs not working, workspaces not working, linking only partially working for solo/mute/record … etc … etc … etc … and that’s after a year of patches … wooohooo

+100000000000000
{‘-’}

I am by no means a mixing dude or anywhere near being a recording engineer, so these lines are simply an observation.

So it seems a few of things irritate many with the new mixer, two of them are darkness and disorientation. I’ve seen this discussed in several places now. So I went and searched for pictures real life mixers, and strangely enough there are a large number of dark faced mixers, and not at all bad to look at, I included a few in this post. I also saw many that “pleased” me more than others and some that directly displeased me. I think what pleasing translates to is an immediate understanding of what I saw. What JMCecil talked about above.

So in looking at them all, a few light ones too, but I concentrated on dark ones (for obvious reasons) and it appears to me that one thing is strikingly missing or rather I think it was supposed to be there by clever illusion (more in the bottom part of the mixer, with the sliders). I am talking about a very distinct separation of channels. The ones of most disinterest to me had very weak “lines” of separation between channels, where they were sort of disorienting, and the ones with lines (and I like many dislike a lot of lines in a UI, but) they immediately “registered”.


16262_resized_sound_300.jpg

Instinctively I also went over to PT11 to take a look at its mixer (click on “Images”) and I have to say it is by no means any better, at least not to my eyes. Way too busy. However, again, I am not mixing a whole lot, so these are just my personal opinions.

More distinct delineation between mixer channels is a definite +1, regardless of colour.

Sorry to say, but I much prefer the ProTools mixer over the new Cubase one… I don’t think it’s ‘way too busy’ by any means and the whole thing is sober ; everything seems streamlined and put at its right place. I especially like the graduations on the meters and channel faders and the sends ones. All this seems more ‘professional’ in a way…

Never saw ProTools at work, but I guess that its users don’t have to deal with key commands behavior problems, clicking fest, strangely cut labels, hidden buttons and gain values, erratic sizing of racks, close to invisible strip separation between faders, etc.

If ProTools is so reputated for mixing tasks, there must be actual reasons and, seeing this, I guess that this UI has something to do in them…

Please don’t be sorry, there is absolutely nothing wrong in disagreeing, let’s keep a healthy discussion. :slight_smile:

My comparison of the PT11 mixer was not with C7, but with the mixers I looked at. There is something about them that either of the two soft mixers do not have (yet), but I cannot quite put my finger on it. Channel separation is certainly one issue, though I think the PT11 mixer already is better than C7. So something else…

I am including a current PT11 mixer image here, purely for reference, as well as the advertised C7 mixer.
(That way in the future, we can compare with older versions.)


I much prefer the look of Cubase Mix Console, but I would like to see better channel separation.


Mauri.

For me, PT´s Mixer is more readable and easier on the eyes - see fonts, colours e.g.
But I prefer Cubendo´s MixConsole - customizable solution, great features, better workflow, better overview…
Absolutely: this is a good step in the right direction!

I really love Nuendo 6.x´s Mixer:

:slight_smile:

So, I misunderstood your post, sorry, and no harm done… :wink:

To be honest, there are great ideas in the MixConcole concept, no doubt. But, as more and more usually in the Steiny way of doing, the whole thing seems half-baked, with too much issues left that should have been ironed out at first place. Other examples of this way of doing are the RCE or the ASIO guard : they are not actually working as advertised. We are at a point where 6 updates have already been delivered, this through a 10 months period, and still, the whole MixConsole thing (as other ones) seems clumsy, with a strange and erratic behavior (see my previous post and JMCecil one).

Back to topic : to be honest, I don’t think that the overall Cubase UI darkness is the main problem. What is the most irrtating is the removal of efficient UI features without warning, more or less replaced by half-baked ones…

I actually think I could get used to using the new mixer if some contrast was added and all those functional problems were dealt with.

JC, is that you?

I was thinking about you just the other day :sunglasses:

However dark Cubase 7 seems, it’s not as dark as Ableton Live 9! I have the light version (came free with M-Audio Oxygen 49 keyboard) and it really is a dull, gray experience, which is why I love Cubase!

I couldn’t care less what a guy who knows what the inside of Darth Vader’s codpiece looks (and smells) like thinks.

Yeah, real tough having to use that grey matter, isn’t it? The problems of the world are being caused by people who don’t think enough. Maybe you should think about that.

Now that sounds to me like the start of a kool song.

/Dm7-5/
JC, is that you?

………/G13-9/.…………/Cm9/
I was thinking about you just the other day.

{‘-’}

Maybe you should think before posting crap like that :unamused:

Mauri.

Maybe like this:

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12562494

The next line of course would be: “and how you never really loved me, even though I gave my heart away” :neutral_face:

F*ing beautiful t!
I love this forum.

/Dm7-5/
JC, is that you?

………/G13-9/.…………/Cm9/
I was thinking about you just the other day.

……………………………………………………Fm7……………………Ab/Bb………./Ebmaj7…Fm7…… Gm7…./Am7-5—>D7+5-9/Gm7
The next line of course would be: “and how you never really loved me, even though I …gave my heart a…waaaay”
melody notes.…………………………………Eb…C…Eb…C…Eb…C…Eb…F……Eb.F…G…….G…Ab…Ab…Bb…Bb…C

Anybody else? Jump in here guys!

Too bad we can’t do score/notation directly on our posts. (feature request maybe?)
After all we are musicians right?
Oh well back to the ‘b*tching and complaining’.
{‘-’}