not crazy about the white GUI

[mhschmieder]

f you want cave paintings, try Motif . Back in the early to mid-90's, I had to support all the "standard" (and even proprietary) windowing systems of the time, and while Motif was "supposed" to be a step above the basic X Windows, I still find it the clunkiest and most counter-intuitive in its interface patterns of any GUI toolkit I've ever used (of the ones I can still remember, at least ). Who can tell when a button is raised or depressed? The beveling seems arbitrary and provides no obvious hint. If MOTU were especially cruel, they would have employed Motif for DP6!

[grimepoch]

And people still use Motif! Where I work. That and CDE can die in a fire. I use IceWM myself, because it's simple and I use the dark gray interface.

If they used Cocoa, then I think supporting further color tweaks will be easier. I care more for the main windows and not sub windows myself, but, we'll see.

I've not used it heavily yet, installing it now, so really I need to give peace....I mean DP, a chance

[James Steele]

easier on the eyes, the black is.. but the colors and shadows reversed out look a bit odd...

i vote for skins in 6.1

I don't think you'll see skins EVER. I know if I were MOTU I wouldn't do it. You give up control over the appearance of your app and if someone makes a really *LOUSY* skin that makes your app look awful, you don't want any confusion in the marketplace over it.

I totally agree with you on that point, James. I'm not a fan of "skins" but to be able to slightly "tone down" the overall "whiteness" of the Mixing Board window would be grand. Also, I LOVE the new look options of the Sequence Editor window (I'm going by MOTU's representation on their website). It looks great. The ONLY thing that bothers me is the Mixing Board window.

Hey, I'm just being honest. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining.

I want a DP that I can work with for hours and hours. As it stands, it will hurt my eyes, in the long run.

I'm still catching up on this thread, so forgive me if you so my post elsewhere, but CHECK OUT THE UNIVERSAL ACCESS CONTROL PANEL.

Adjusting the contrast settling in that panel will do wonders as far as making it less harsh if you're in front of it hours at a time.

[James Steele]

i felt that way about OSX, too.. but, of course OS9 seems like cave paintings to me now.

Boy does THAT hit home with me!

[Shooshie]

i liked it too... i'm all for the white and minimalist look... but, in practice, i fear it's just too bright...

Fair enough...my copy's supposed to arrive tomorrow, I guess I'll go out and buy some new mixing sunglasses.

I don't need a copy of DP6 to know that this is going to put me in a bad situation. I already wear very dark prescription shades, since getting meningitis. In fairness, I guess my situation is unique. Still, I can only hope that MOTU will consider this in a future update.

Gary B. (Timeline), if you read this, let us know if you are going to change DP6's color scheme like you did with DP5. I seem to recall you changed colors of various parts of the Mixing Board window. If there is a way to tone down the overall look of DP6, it would make all the difference in the world to me.

I don't want DP6 to look like Logic or anything but, this blaring white look is pure torture for me.

666, I wonder if you could use the Mac's screen inversion feature? I forget the keycode for it, but I think you have to turn it on in the control panel first. er... System prefs. Then a keyboard command inverts your screen. I just gave it a try with one of the DP6 screenshots, and it's really not that bad. I mean, it's not great by any means, but it was pleasant enough to consider working in. If I was faced with a visual dilemma like yours, I might be tempted to try it. With the key-command, you can always flip it back to normal when you need to.

Shooshie

[bOing]

My mom used to always say "don't borrow trouble." So I am going to wait until I use it before I decide.

Smart woman. In this case though you can see the mixer in the posted screenshot (DP6 is here thread) and that it is in dire need of a background to tone down that black/white contrast that's occuring.

I also see that there is a discrepency (slight, but it's there) in the RGB values of the TO screenshot MOTU offers versus the one in the screenshot mentioned above. So what you see isn't what you get, perhaps. Could be the export on the image too. But that mixer, you can't mistake that it looks as bare as the Arctic tundra. It needs some lichen.

(light baby blue would look cool)

[grimepoch]

So now having played with it, it is a bit bright. Most noticeably in the background of the mixer window.

it will take a bit to get used to the new UI, most of it looks nicer I feel.

I do not understand why the dB value below the slider in the mixer is not darker. It's not easy to see on some of my monitors.

The only thing I am REALLY disappointed with is that dragging regions around STILL causes the wiper to disappear.

Oh well.

Sorry to be cliche, but it is a HELL OF A LOT snappier when doing edits and stuff.

[philbrown]

Sorry to be cliche, but it is a HELL OF A LOT snappier when doing edits and stuff.

Hey nothing to apologize for. A lot of my bread and butter work is editing so that is good news indeed.

[SixStringGeek]

Sorry to hear that they're not conforming to OSX standards though. OSX is a brilliant scheme for conforming app interface design, not sure why MOTU seems to want to depart from it so much.

Seriously? None of the pro audio guis conform to OSX standards. They're all styled to look like vintage audio hardware or alien spacecraft controls. I mean, look at Ethno's UI.



What the heck? Or Mach 5, or whatever. Anyhow, Cocoa standard controls are notoriously space inefficient, and the pro-look frameworks that Logic uses are private. You'd have to reproduce them yourself.

Frankly, I like the "look like hardware" approach, I already know how to use hardware. OTOH, I notice that hardware has gone from traditional matte black with silk screened labels



to silver or off white plastic (which is, I think what the new look is meant to mimic).



See the resemblance? I'd rather it look more like the Juno-106 myself (but if you've seen JambaLaya's screen shots, you know what I like )

So I see where their inspiration comes from, but I can't say I like it.

Fun side note, I was having a discussion with a developer I know who is all about sweating the pixels in his designs - always beautiful stuff - and GarageBand's UI came up. I quite like the look of GB. He said he didn't get why it had wood grained stripes on the window. Then I found him a photo of an old Moog and he just smiled.

[grimepoch]

I'd of course have to point out that companies are actually producing MULTIPLE products with different colors

Like the Triton with the tube in it is dark blue
The Oasys is black
The M3 is white (as is the Radius)

Or Virus TI is black
Virus Snow is White

Roland likes to use Silver and black (Fantoms)



The problem is everyone wants something different. The ONLY way to solve that is make a system configurable (selectable). Without that, it will be harder to please everyone (like that will ever happen!)

[bOing]

Sorry to hear that they're not conforming to OSX standards though. OSX is a brilliant scheme for conforming app interface design, not sure why MOTU seems to want to depart from it so much.

Seriously? None of the pro audio guis conform to OSX standards. They're all styled to look like vintage audio hardware or alien spacecraft controls. I mean, look at Ethno's UI.

I agree that there's no constant, only that some GUIs look homemade and cheap and others look amazing. And when you're playing keyboards, you're supposed to be looking out at the girls in the crowd, not the paint job.

However, when using VIs or other such appendages, we don't linger in them as much as we do in the mixing window of DP. And when you go from looking at a dark image - like that Alien looking "Ethno" VI - your eyeball tendons may snap while moving from one extreme of brightness to another. Hence,

"Smoking Eyeball Syndrome" (SES).

[Tritonemusic]

I'm still catching up on this thread, so forgive me if you so my post elsewhere, but CHECK OUT THE UNIVERSAL ACCESS CONTROL PANEL..

I fear that I've overlooked a number of pertinent posts, too. The very first thing I tried was "Universal Access." It's just....well...awful. Again, I know is sounds bad but I don't intend it. I'm just sharing my personal situation. I know that most people won't understand because, after all, how many people are suffering from post-meningitis symptoms? I'm just sharing my point-of-view. That's all.

[bOing]

I see from your portrait that your eyes are missing. Could this be another source of the problem? (sorry, couldn't resist). But I feel/see your pain.

I have very sensitive eyes/ears everything, so it makes a big difference to me when moving a couple of notches off the brightness, or getting rid of my CRT monitor - and looking at a "soothing" GUI.

[PrimeMover]

Yeah, I never liked the hardware look for software, it's usually just a waste of space. It's fun for maybe 10 minutes until you realize how inefficient it is. It has no possitive impact on your creative output either, past the initial "snaz" impact. This seemed to be ReWire/Reason's big thing, and I thought it just felt amaturish. I was kinda surprised when I realized that other VI and effects manufacturers were doing the same thing.

I think it's far better to have a nice, easy-to-understand plain looking UI that conforms to some kind of universal standard, with all graphical and textual readouts that you need. Waves sits very high on my list of well-constructed UIs. Simple, but easy to read, and color coded in a very logical fashion. I haven't used Waves for a number of years though, things could have changed.

[Tritonemusic]

I see from your portrait that your eyes are missing. Could this be another source of the problem? (sorry, couldn't resist).