Guitarpima
I'm glad you all like it but for me, it's hard to look at. I don't care about esthetics. I want functional more than esthetics. So, not to be rude, your wasting your time saying how much you love the GUI in this thread. I'm glad you like it. More power to you. It's not for me and it gives me a headache.
 
It may not be "pretty" but it was very functional and easy to work for long periods of time.
 

 
 

I'm with you here. It's very similar to how I had the CV looking in 8.5 before I moved to X3. The mess that became the CV was the main reason I didn't make the switch to earlier X series, but I thought the much vaunted ability to choose your own colours again would mostly solve this. However,  select black and what do you get ? Slightly darker grey ! Erm, is that the same thing now ? Not really is it. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the track view in X series is a great improvement and 8.5 TV does look very clunky now by comparison, but the console view contains many backward steps - not just colours, but the undecipherable abbreviations and general waste of space compared to pre-X.

If you go to "Edit" - "preferences" you can change a whole lot of colours, including the numbering on the console view strips and the peak indicators on track view.

I have been looking at Reaper now for a couple of days and I see you can change (or make) your own GUI to work with Reaper. They heave a lot of themes in there.
I also think that this discussion is not about brightness, color, but also how users would like to see their GUI while working on it. To be honest , I really like the GUI on Sonar and also the way everything (well, almost everything) works.
If you want the extreme changes that some people are suggesting then I would go to Reaper and download the program for free and see what you would be getting into when changing your GUI. You also have a sort of Pro Tools Gui in there. First of all, it will keep you busy and second and most important might cure you of the thought as changing the GUI.
After all I think we use the software to make music and not to be developers.
Again,only my opinion.

Glyn Barnes
I seem to be one of the few people that liked the X series colour scheme. When the colour options were introduced in X3 my first reactions was "I won't be messing with that" but I found I really like the way it has been implemented when working with busses.
 

This is my experience as well.

John
What would be nice for me would be a scalable CV. One that I could adjust in overall size and still see all its contents.

 

paulo
but the undecipherable abbreviations and general waste of space compared to pre-X.

 
Big +1 to both.

cowboydan
I have been looking at Reaper now for a couple of days and I see you can change (or make) your own GUI to work with Reaper. They heave a lot of themes in there.
I also think that this discussion is not about brightness, color, but also how users would like to see their GUI while working on it. To be honest , I really like the GUI on Sonar and also the way everything (well, almost everything) works.
If you want the extreme changes that some people are suggesting then I would go to Reaper and download the program for free and see what you would be getting into when changing your GUI. You also have a sort of Pro Tools Gui in there. First of all, it will keep you busy and second and most important might cure you of the thought as changing the GUI.
After all I think we use the software to make music and not to be developers.
Again,only my opinion.

With respect to your opinion, which of course you are entitled to express ( why do I always sound so condescending when I try to be polite? Not intended ;) ) I think that all those who are unhappy with it just want the facilities that they already once had, which doesn't really seem so much to ask.

 




With respect to your opinion, which of course you are entitled to express ( why do I always sound so condescending when I try to be polite? Not intended ;) ) I think that all those who are unhappy with it just want the facilities that they already once had, which doesn't really seem so much to ask.




Hey Paulo
Its nice to know that you dont like my opinion.
What I am saying is that if Sonar would take Panu as a sidechain to Sonar (a paid separate site) as maybe Sonar Plus, Panu could work on the GUI which would not interfere with Sonar but would satisfy a lot of users as far as their wishes in what they want to see.
I, myself believe that Sonar is on the right track in making a DAW that can stand up to any other daw without all the GUI (face) changes and giving themselves a broad base to work without the GUI tweeks.
Everyone has their own wishes when it comes to daws and that is probably the main reason that there are so many of them out there now.

Panu's Duckbar has become indispensable for me, as his Sonar Mods were in pre-X. Not just for color changes and cool rounded faders but for a dedicated system restore just for Sonar, maintenance options, etc. Panu rules!

Like I was trying to say.
Sonar is very busy with only a hand full of developers to make Sonar one of the best daws on the market and that also has a look and feel to it for the General Public. There will always be users that would like to see the Gui built up for their particular workflow and that is great. Cakewalk is working hard getting skylight to the point where they can make most people happy. It is impossible to make everyone happy.
This would be the right time for Panu to step in to help the not so satisfied customers with their wishes and hopefully get some donations from those same people. That would pay for the website and also make sure that cakewalk can stay on track making the best DAW in their own eyes.

Paulo


With respect to your opinion, which of course you are entitled to express ( why do I always sound so condescending when I try to be polite? Not intended ;) ) I think that all those who are unhappy with it just want the facilities that they already once had, which doesn't really seem so much to ask.

What worked in the past may not work in the present. Sonar now has colour customisation whether you like it or not. Right now allowing third party developers to hook into the UI would probably require various hook in points exposed. Cake would need to document and maintain them, plus cake would have to go in and put in code to disable their existing colour optimisation when third party code requests it. Also if third party code broke for whatever reason cake would get its butt kicked.

Something like that would take a lot of support and development time, plus Cake would thus be moving towards more of an open source mentality. Time then would probably be best spent improving their existing UI themselves or just go completely open source with everything and try and get everybody else to improve the product (from experience I can tell you it doesn't quite work that way in the end). In the case of the latter that would requite publishing source code and updating it on a regular basis (ain't gonna happen).

Do any paid for DAW's allow this to happen?