Cubase and 4K monitors?

Oh sure, certainly one large screen would be overall better and more convenient and more flexible for even an ‘average user’ like me, who doesn’t have big demands… I’m sure much more so for power users.

Coming from (3) 17" squares to (3) 24" wide screens is a huge improvement, so much that I can now comfortably fit & use the Arrange Window & Mixer Window on one screen, I only occasionally feel the need to stretch them across to another screen…the ‘wide screen’ aspect is the greatest improvement of all for me.

Actually, things are a little different now that I’m using a separate computer to run all my VSTi’s on. Unlike before, I now have only (2) screens on my main DAW, and the 3rd screen is on my dedicated VSTi machine…which can get a little crammed up…but since there’s no audio tracks on it, and I only work with one VSTi window at a time anyway, it’s not much of an inconvenience. I really see the 3rd screen on the 2nd computer like I did before, since I had always used the 3rd screen on my main DAW as my dedicated VSTi display anyway…but it’s way better because of being a larger & much wider screen.

Not soon, but I have been ‘considering’ buying a 4th screen…I have a choice to consider…either buy another identical 24" and stack them (in two stacks of two) … or buy a big screen, and use the three other 24" ones around it…but then again, that isn’t very symmetrical, and I’d likely just use the two 24" screens on either side, with the big one in center at my desk.

You don’t have a signature with your equipment listed, so I might be missing the mark here.

If you are using PCs, you can either:

a) Leave your VSTi machine ‘headless’ (no monitor) and just RDP into it from your main machine as required, or

b) Use one (or more) monitors connected to both machines, and switch video source inputs.

The advantage of the first scenario is that the machine doesn’t have to be in the same room, so its noise isn’t being added into the room. It also means that it can be pushed harder with some overclocking and fans running at higher speeds.

I use PC’s, running XP Pro, with older quad core Q9300 CPU’s. I most often work with only one machine at a time as a stand-alone, using both simultaneously only when bouncing my VSTi machines virtual instruments audio out (as a stereo sub-mix) over into my main audio DAW machine, where I then work my audio tracks. I have a KVM switch too, 4-port for future expansion. I have lot’s of options to experiment with.

I’m actually planing on isolating ALL my PC’s away from my desk area, and I’d never track audio (my voice or an acoustic guitar) with more than one machine running.

Two emerging Ethernet-based technologies that enable that are:
a) AoIP - Audio over Ethernet, like Dante or Ravenna, combining audio data, control, clock, and even power (by PoE), into single cables
b) PCoIP - basically lossless compression of video plus USB, leaving only a small box driving monitors and USB.

Both allow for:
a) remote servers, including virtualised
b) routable peripherals, including audio interfaces
c) use of cheaper Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) routers and cables
d) simplified wiring
e) dynamic configurations.

All of these are of particular use to studios, as they simplify and unify the wiring, just like VoIP did for building wiring. They could run a few 10GbE (or greater) lines down the building, feeding a 1GbE router in each room, to which all devices there are connected. Any control room could use any studio. Every performer, even in the one studio, could have their own interface, providing inputs and foldback outputs, fed by the room’s PoE router.

Currently, PCoIP cards are rare and expensive, but that will change if there is more take-up. Fortunately, it will be helped along by the increasing use of virtualisation by enterprises, which is a huge market compared to audio.

A bit OT, but…

AoIP - Audio over Ethernet, like Dante or Ravenna

I’ve briefly looked into the technology before & now once again briefly … looks like fantastical stuff! :slight_smile:

But for the time being, until I win the lottery, and being this is just a hobby studio here…I thinking more of the poor mans solution :smiley:

I’ve been considering a much more basic solution of isolating my current PC towers…like, just placing them directly on the other side of a wall in a closet, or inside a huge, more than 5 foot rack I had salvaged, or do both…with appropriate ventilation considered of course. Once the PC towers are isolated from me, I’ll then run all my VGA cables to my video monitors, and my audio interface Host cables to my rack of breakout boxes. I plan to have them close enough apart that no extensions to VGA & Host cables will be required. Other considerations & preparations have been made…like power/reset/LED rack I’ve built that can handle/control up to 4 PC’s, … it has 4 PC power buttons, 4 reset buttons, 8 LED indicators. Each PC interfaced by CAT-5 cable/connectors. A USB DVD RW drive will be connected to my 4-port KVM’s USB hub for when I need it, for convenience.

My room should be very silent after that…at that point I may start to actually hear my video monitors!

Look at Dante Via, which is software aimed at turning any computer with a legacy audio interface into a Dante device.

Dante Via…hmmmm, not a wealth of information but it looks interesting Pat :slight_smile:

http://www.audioprointernational.com/news/read/infocomm-2014-dante-via-coming-in-q4/07206

I wonder if they intend to compete with Vienna Ensemble Pro :bulb:

Dante is to hardware what VEP is to software. They both bring Ethernet networking, but work at different layers.

A little back-story that may be interesting.
In January 2014, I emailed a suggestion to Audinate stating:

You have the Dante Virtual Soundcard system host software, but have you
thought about producing Dante client software that would allow a computer
with one or more existing Firewire/USB/PCIe sound devices, each with their
own ASIO drivers, to be unified and controlled by Dante?

The client could even run on the Dante host system, integrating its legacy
devices.

I suspect you are looking at your clients as being the ‘big’ operators, and
most of your licencees are only producing devices with large I/O arsenals.

However, there is a huge small operator market from the
home/bedroom/hobby/small studio sector that could be on Dante NOW, and
while keeping their current devices, just expand as their requirements ments
grow. This is what AoIP promises.

Many of these people are frustrated that they cannot expand their current
I/O capabilities, either on the local machine or remotely, without having to
replace perfectly functioning hardware.

On 24/01/2014, Aidan Williams, the CTO for Audinate, replied:

Thanks for your suggestion! We are always looking to make Dante more widely
used.

I’ve passed your email on to our product management and I’m sure it will
help to influence what products and features we work on next.

After I came across Via on 25/06/2014, I replied:

Looks like my idea has become Dante Via?

to which Aidan replied:

As you can imagine, we have been working on Dante Via for long time before the launch last week at Infocommm. Your email (and others like it) gave us confidence that the features we planned to provide in Dante Via would be useful to a wide range of people.

Since Via will not be released until December this year, I have a suspicion that all is not quite the timing Aidan suggests. We are only talking about a Dante protocol wrapper for an ASIO driver here, both of which Audinate have prior experience with, so I would suspect that there would only be a few months for development, if that, and a lot of testing! Do the date maths.

Hmmmm!

#2 4K on way!
After having my 4K for a month, we are now getting a Samsung 48" HU8500W for my wife.

I have been progressively moving mine further away from me as the artefacts from the font-scaling technology were noticeable. The distance is now 75cm face-to-screen, which is about right, though 80cm might be perfect for a 55".

48" would be about the perfect size for monitor/TV convergence, if you are not going to watch TV from a large distance away. To have the same size pixel pitch as on the 30", a 4K would have to be 45", so the 48"'s pixel pitch is only 6% larger.

Small 4K displays
Given that Cubase, along with many other desktop programs) relies on high UI information density, and will likely be that, notwithstanding touch-enabling (still lots of non-touch info to look at) for a while, anything much smaller than 48" is going to cramp the visuals.

Smaller size 4Ks will tend to favour visual editing, but there is still the issue with non-scaling text being too small. Having never run displays at anything other than their native resolution (mainly because non-scaling text looked terrible), I have never examined the effect of scaling everything up had on the look of pictures in dialog boxes and non-auto-scaling programs). Any comments?

Just for Windows users, there is the capacity to change the sizes of individual UI elements, like window captions bars, menu text et al, rather than just proportionally scaling everything up.

Glasses
As for glasses, the less range in focal lengths, the better. I find my dual range ones OK, so I can still look down at my desk to read, but the triple range ones require head movement, and not just eyes, to read the full height. Compared to scrolling pages on a smaller screen, it is not a big deal.

I originally got the triple range because I got fed up with having to take them off just so I could clearly see people who came to my desk to talk, but since I am in my home-office basically full time now, the duals are in use full time.

30Hz usage
While for me, 30Hz is only temporary until HDMI 2.0 video cards are out, I have not found 30Hz tiring, and I am using the 4K as the main monitor (at 55", could it be anything but that?) for 8 to 12 hours a day, and a TV for some hours more.

I have not used it with Cubase for any real work yet, but it is fantastic for everything else. It is nice to have enough room to have space for programs like MYOB to take up half the screen, and still have room to have online banking open for reconciliation.

Compact computing = BRIX
Given the satisfaction with 30Hz, and since we needed to get another video card for the 48", plus my wife’s computer was basically a huge box filled with air and far more computing power than was required, we decided instead to replace it with a Gigabyte BRIX GV-BXi3H-4010, which has 4K@30Hz built in. Basically, a video card would have set us back AU$160, whereas the BRIX+4GB RAM was AU$425, so it was a no brainer.

It is so tiny (114x108x43mm/4.5x4.3x1.7"), mainly because it is limited in what can be modified, namely only RAM (up to 2x8GB) and mSATA and SATA III drives, much like a laptop! And it turns on and off so fast (no POST screens). Unfortunately, such miniaturisation is not plausible for my computing requirements.


I know it is another one of my long rants, but I hope it gives some help, and some considerations to think about, for those who might be considering taking on 4K.

The 48" is in place. Looks a good size for combined monitor and TV use. I would recommend it as the best balance of price, pixel size, range of viewing angles and deskspace.

Right on Pat :sunglasses: … still kicking the idea of if I need another monitor…one larger than my fairly new 3 24" wide screens that is.

When I tie in my home video surveilence sytem into my music room, I may want to do something different. But my innitial idea is to just tie the surveilance systems DVR into my home studio’s 4-port KVM VGA switch, and give me an option as if it was just another music machine. That’ll be great for when I keep hearing ‘noises’ when I have on my headphones :nerd:

I still have my two 23" FHD touchscreens, so I have something that I can use for such miscellaneous inputs.

If you are composing for video, even with a 4K, it may be wise to keep a smaller screen on which you can run Cubase’s video window at full frames, therefore bypassing the need for the video card to handle high speed 4K when only part of the screen would actually need it.

For your DVR, you can run it into the smaller screen via your switcher, and so keep Cubase up front and centre even when the phantom noises encroach!

You may notice that many TVs have Picture-In-Picture (PIP). However, at least with the Samsungs and I suspect others, the TV tuner MUST be one of the two sources, and only at a maximum of FHD, so it is disabled if using a 4K source.

For those who get a 4K display but have a card that only supplies 3840x2160@30Hz, there is something strange that can happen that gives some odd multi-colour tinges to text.

To ensure text is OK, make sure the refresh rate for the monitor is set to 30Hz in the computer, by:

  1. Open the Screen Resolution dialog
    _ by right-clicking an open area of the desktop and selecting the Screen resolution option.

  2. Open the dialog for the monitor and video combo
    _ by clicking the Advanced settings link.

  3. Open the Monitor panel
    _ by clicking the Monitor tab.

  4. Set the correct rate
    _ by selecting the 30 Hertz option from the Screen refresh rate list.


    It defaults to 60Hz because the input is capable of it due to being HDMI2.0, but the card is actually not capable of sending it out, so the TV thinks it is getting 60Hz, but only getting 30Hz, so the oddities may be due to aliasing. However, changing it to 30Hz makes the text not look kaleidoscopic. Changing it to 60Hz definitely produces the effect.

The other benefit of setting it to 30Hz is that the Entertain option becomes available on the Picture Mode list in the Picture settings for the Samsung TV. I think that the Entertain mode is the lower-latency game mode, with some of the delaying picture processing effects disabled.

Looks like the TV-video-computer talk-fest produced a ‘failure to communicate’ (as per Cool Hand Luke).

If anyone has any questions about this, please ask. I had no idea why the colour effects suddenly disappeared one day and just as suddenly reappeared today when I tried out a new spatial arrangement in the Screen Resolution dialog. Now I have the reproducible process with which it all makes sense!

I have a 22" 1920x1080 which I purposely downsized to as I like the high ppi and small screen for coding up close.

However with Cubase projects getting more complex I’m considering a 4k monitor.
UP2414Q 24" 4k can be had quite reasonable.
Is this just entirely too small for Cubase 4k?
Can Cubase scale properly in Win 8?

This guy posted a comparison of 1920 vs 4k: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/psychlist1972/10500180314/

Otherwise I am considering a U2913WM 29"

Anyone have experience with this one?
I wonder how the vertical real estate is missed it’s basically like 2 monitors.

Try almost doubling (1.83) the distance away from your 22", and see if you still think you can read it easily enough, and be able to accurately click the mouse.

In what way? Cubase is a desktop program and does not scale at all (that is, a button will always have the same pixel dimensions), but just can show more info if there are more pixels. Text and lines in Cubase will be the clearest if you use the native resolution.

Screen display height will be just a tiny bit larger than your 22", and a 1/3 wider.

A 4K will be equivalent to three of them.

Thanks for the response Patanjali.
I guess I should consider a 32+ 4k to really benefit in Cubase?
Doing guitars or outboard requires distance.
I guess ultimately a 2nd wireless touchscreen is the way.

Cubase iC Pro! Only way to get a proper cue mixer (vertical side-by-side sliders) on-screen.

They work well. You can use several devices at once, with different info on each, even up to four cue mixes.

Devices smaller than an iPad mini will give you the single function display, otherwise you get the multi-part display. See the pics on the above page. Note that this means 7" Android devices will give the single function display.

I’m considering purchasing a 4k TV to replace my current setup. I’ve attempted to arrange my two Dell 30" (2560x 1600) monitors in some configuration that would be satisfying for my workflow and be somewhat ergonomically, but ended up being a little frustrated. This is partly due to the Cubase’s current windows management limitations and my requirement to mostly work in the arrange window and the score editor - which unfortunately is “imprisoned” within the confines of the main interface project window. I’ve tried vertically stacking the two screens, and placing them side by side (both horizontally and vertically), but neither arrangement has been ultimately satisfying as the bezel width of the combined monitors breaks the contiguous flow.

I think a single 45"-50" 4k screen would be just right for my purposes, by allowing plenty of screen real estate with an acceptable font size. I may mount the TV on the wall (its a bedroom, not a studio), on an adjustable arm to be flexible with angle and placement.

If anyone can recommend a TV that is under around $1500 and has HDMI 2.0 please chime in. I’d prefer Displayport support, but I dont think there are any DP models, such as Panasonic that are available in Australia; importing costs are also usually prohibitive. I don’t need 3D or Smart TV features, but it seems that’s a default inclusion nowadays. The Seiki 50" could be suitable, but as it only supports HDMI 1.4b (30hz); I would rather a model that is a little more future proof by including HDMI 2.0 (60hz) ports such as the Samsung and LG. Any other brands, models for recommendation? Please let me know.

Tom

4K in Australia has been going through a dramatic price drop very recently.

My Samsung UA55HU9000W 55" was originally $4400 at the end of June 2014, dropped to $3600 within a month (I got 120% of the difference refunded due to the retailer’s price guarantee), but it is now $2700.

The Samsung HU7000 is a 50" 4K (no 3D but not sure if HDMI2.0) for $1200+, and the TCL U40E5691FDS 40" (3D but HDMI1.4+ and no idea of quality) for $700+.

My wife’s UA48HU8500W (3D and HDMI2.0) is now $1600, and is the one I would heartily recommend as the perfect size/quality/facilities for converged TV/computer use.

Note the very latest ones seem to have 3 year warranties, whereas we paid extra to extend our original 1 year to 3.


Just reiterating what I wrote previously, a HDMI 2.0 capable TV will tell your computer that it can handle 60Hz, but none of the cheaper video cards handle that yet (nVidia’s GTX 970/980 does), so likely you will need to set your computer output to 30Hz. Neither of us has noticed any issues with 30Hz inputs, but then we don’t game.