I know this was discussed to death when X3 came out and I've read as many of those threads as I could find.  I'm not here to rehash the problems with color customization but rather to ask how all of you have dealt with the short comings? How are you setting things up in X3?
 
I have just recently installed X3 and I'm trying to get everything set up to my liking.  I love being able to apply colors to the tracks and buses but not being able to set the clip background defaults so they automatically update or even change those dark grey colors except manually via the Inspector is going to be tough.
 
The whole "dark theme" that developers seem to be using these days, (from plugins to websites), is very annoying to me.  I've had to set  my monitors to be darker that default because I just cannot stand the high contrast and overly bright colors the defaults produce.  I guess my eyes are going.  Now everything in Sonar is even more dark.  Much of the text on Sonar's Control Bar is very hard, (if not impossible), to read.  And now the very dark audio and midi clips....
 
What are you guys doing?  I've downloaded Panu's Duckbar but have not tried it out yet.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.
 
Paul

I love X3.  My only complaint is that I still miss the color themes of 8.5.3.
But it is an awesome program and worth it with this annoyance.
I like light clips with dark waves or midi notes.  I like having the next recorded clip match the color scheme that is already on that track without having to make a couple more moves.
But I still love X3 because of how it sound and its audio engine, and frankly everything else.
I still have 8.5.3 on my computer but I never use it.

I gave in and went with the whole dark clip/bright waveform thing. It helps to completely rebuild your projects from scratch in X3, and not have any older color overrides.
Then I set up my busses with colors I like, which tend to be a bit brighter/less saturated than the defaults in the color palette popup which to my mind, are too dull.
Once I've set the buss colors up - and become used to the coding - then the clips automatically take on the custom colors and I am content with the results. I got used to it. Do I prefer it? No, but I certainly don't hate it, and I no longer wish to waste energy fighting with SONAR about clip colors.
Note: For my string quartet, I override the track colors because with multi-part midi editing, I need my 4-5 bright colored and differentiated midi notes in the PRV.

I've gotten used to the current color scheme, but it's more limited in imagination for my taste. I do like the customization in color of the tracks themselves, but even those are lacking artistic appeal to me. I recently stumbled upon a screenshot of X1. I still can't get over how well thought out the color scheme was for that, the backlit tracks, especially. The color choices really had some pop and set X1 apart from all the other DAW's. My eyes were immediately drawn to it. It was so easy on my eyes, and had a different, artistic appeal to me. It's really what sold me on giving X1 a try! I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that color scheme. 

Is this thread of any help..?
http://forum.cakewalk.com...-m2882038.aspx#2883720
The Box link to the track icons .zip file is still working.

ston
Is this thread of any help..?
http://forum.cakewalk.com...-m2882038.aspx#2883720
The Box link to the track icons .zip file is still working.

Thanks Ston.  And also for all your work on the icon colors!
 
I agree with the poster who just wanted the foreground to to be black and the background to be varied colors, (although having the colored midi notes would be a great help in multi-track midi editing).  Yes it can all be changed via the Inspector but that's a lot of extra work and every time you add a track the whole scheme changes.  I guess I really liked how things were in 8.5 as it's been a hassle ever since.  But now with the very dark clips, editing will be so much more difficult.
 
I'm going to install Duckbar today and we'll see if some of this is resolved.  I'll report back.
 
Thanks to everyone who's responded and I'd still appreciate a post from anyone else and how they approach this issue.
 
Paul

I use X2 as there was a mod made by an extremely talented and generous individual who made mods. I don't even use X3. It makes my eyes physically hurt in fact, if it were not for Panu's mods, I would still be using 8.5.
 
There is no color customization. There is only 50 shade of grey and not bondage section in the manual. It's a shame too. X3 is, under the eyesore, a much better program.

Guitarpima
I use X2 as there was a mod made by an extremely talented and generous individual who made mods. I don't even use X3. It makes my eyes physically hurt in fact, if it were not for Panu's mods, I would still be using 8.5.
 
There is no color customization. There is only 50 shade of grey and not bondage section in the manual. It's a shame too. X3 is, under the eyesore, a much better program.

Panu's Duckbar Ver. 1.8.0 is supposed to work with X3.  I'll post what I find out.

Each to his own of course, but given the choice of colours I would probably pick something very similar to X3. I tend to dislike bright colours in a program.

i use duckbar with x3e. couldn't live without it.