Optical overhaul, colors

[Warevo]

You guys may forgive me as it may be a bit kind of shallow but every time I come back to my beloved Mixbus 32C/Mixbus from other current DAWs like Pro Tools etc. I have to think why this beautiful Mixbus DAW has to look that old fashioned. 

I mean, first of all, I'm aware of that it's not the most important part of a professional DAW to offer an optically appealing, sharp look and secondly, I know, it's of course the intention of Mixbus to remind optically to the famous consoles as it brings their great sound characteristics to the digital music world. 

However, I'm pretty sure that Mixbus could gain much more attention from the younger generation of musicians, producers and engineers if the GUI would look just a bit more slick and modern. 

As the basic optical appearance of Mixbus obviously is bound to the original console design, maybe it could be useful to give the basic colors of Mixbus an optical overhaul, simply more modern shades of the used colors or something. 
Even if it may sound ridiculous to some people but this has kind of an impact on the users as we use to stare at the program for hours, days and months finally during working on our projects. 

I just have to think from time to time that Mixbus DAW has developed that great through all the last versions (stepped in at v6), has become a really cool, stable and versatile DAW to do all the work with (not only mixing), yet has retained it's definitely unique sound quality. It would deserve more attention by the current music production world as many new users could benefit from the great work of the Mixbus team. 

And one thing, I personally think, which could be helpful to make Mixbus more attractive to younger users as well certainly could be kind of a more modern, a bit more kind of sharp look (without cutting it's famous roots of course).   

Again, maybe an overhaul in regards to the basic color design of Mixbus could be a useful step in this direction because this would not interfere with the technical design of the GUI or the program itself because on the technical side Mixbus has developed greatly and certainly has become a modern DAW with the benefit of a really one-of-a-kind sound quality and kind of an analog console workflow. 

So, I know, this probably is not an important feature request but it's something this beautiful, great DAW would deserve finally imo. 


Cheers everybody.

[ROG]

Window - Preferences - Appearance - Colours

Create your own bespoke colour scheme.

[Warevo]

Window - Preferences - Appearance - Colours

Create your own bespoke colour scheme.

Thx for your reply. 

I know that I could customize it to my personal liking but that's not what I wanted to say. 

It's the general/official appearance what you see when you open Mixbus without having to spend further time on customizing. 

Most people who come from Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase etc. do not want to go in and do it theirselves. 
They just want to open their DAW and work in an inspiring and appealing environment. And it's not that Mixbus is ugly or something, not at all. 
It's just that it drags you too much kind of back in time from an optical point of view. 

To solve this "issue" it's probably not enough to only change some colors (although even this has to be done by someone who knows how to design a current program optically, 
not by any user) but there probably also have to be done some subtle changes on the shapes of buttons, windows, knobs etc. 

I´m no designer myself so I don't know exactly what it all needs to achieve a more modern appearance of a program but I certainly notice when it could be a positive thing to do it. 

Anyway. 

It was just an idea which has come to my mind several times already. And I also have heard people complaining about it. 

I personally love Mixbus and I would wish more people to know about it and use it. 


Cheers.

[sunrat]

I like how Mixbus looks.

[deefedor]

Love the way it looks!! I wish the several other DAW’s I use had a classic look that MB imparts. Makes me sort of feel like I’m sitting at a classic console…. Just my 3 cents….

[arthie]

There are definitely more important things than look…stability and system requirements would be my most important ones… no feature is so important then stability.. would choose a stable system over a fancy one each time.

[Ben@Harrison]

@warevo:



Each incremental change in the GUI has instigated some comments ... sometimes good and sometimes bad.

I'm burdened with the knowledge of why we made every GUI change.  At each step along the way, we were trying to solve a specific problem.

Probably one of the biggest challenges is that we can't anticipate what size or kind of monitor is used.  We have some users on 13" laptops and others with large, 4k TVs.  But that's only half the story.  Some users want to see as many knobs as possible, while others want everything to be as 'big' as possible.   And our 'knob per function' ethos means we must soemtimes prioritize the usability and accessibility, over the aesthetics.

Colors are an intense topic of debate.  We have certain rules that we try to follow.  But just like resolution,  the user has final say on color brightness and saturation ...  what looks good on our monitors might not look as good on yours.

A lot of our prior decisions were made in response to feedback from specific users in specific situations that needed attention.

BUT, just being reactive to problems does not replace the need for a design strategy.  So for v9, we are revisiting everything about the mixer and re-imagining it with all the knowledge we've gained from the prior 8 releases.

This required a complete re-think and redesign of the mixer .... the knob sizes, LED indicators, font sizes, pixel alignment, colors, contrast, hiding/showing behaviors ... and hundreds of more subtle issues.

I wanted to post a screenshot to show our progress... but there are so many new features it is hard to find an area that wouldn't be a big giveaway!  And with things still slighly in flux, I don't want to show a new feature that doesn't make it into the final release.

Watch this space!!!

-Ben

[PBuryk]

There are a couple issues I see when talking about making the now (4) major Mixbus pages look more glamorous:

Given the current layouts of the Editor, Mixer, Recorder and Cue pages, only the Mixer page emulates something "traditional".
Harrison has, many times, expressed their main focus on this particular portion of the MB/MB32C product and it does indeed
show as the resulting sound is outstanding. Would popularity of this DAW increase significantly if the presentation of this one page
was more refined? Or, would that effort work against it because a slicker graphic look would demand even more processing in terms
of CPU & GPU? After all, we all here have been reading reports of issues for quite a few years due to current graphics related demands.
Jeopardizing audio processing reliability for more glitz is NOT something Harrison, or its (current) users, want!

Mixer page aside, Mixbus designers don't face the same problem with the Editor, Recorder & Cue pages. That is, there is no
previous or traditional product that they are trying to emulate, so improvements could certainly be made there to attract a younger ("more hip")
user base. Most of what we're talking about here are just cosmetically related. And, to us "old guys" that's all "what's the big deal?".
I will agree, however, that the presentation of the Recorder and Cues pages need to be improved; they certainly not as refined looking
as the Editor page. And, on these two pages, Mixbus layout designers have a LOT of leeway as both pages came about from virtually blank canvases.

Finally, I agree that the color scheme (especially of the Mixer page) could be improved. I've always disliked the color assignment constraints that are
due to the way many of the widgets share color designations. This, of course, won't improve until more (or all!) widgets can be assigned their own
color IDs so, for example, changing the color of the Comp enable button LED does not also change the color of the EQ filter button LEDs. Once that
is done, then the overall coloring of the Mixer should satisfy any user.

Cheers!
Patrick

[ROG]

I'm one of the people who rarely move from the mixer screen, so it's great to hear Ben say that this is one area being looked at in V.9
I think the mixer workflow is 32C's strength and after I'd completely redone the colour scheme, I've been more than happy with it.
I skipped v.7 and v.8 simply because the new features didn't improve my mixing experience, but the possibility of added features to the mixer is exciting.
I only hope that Ben hasn't over-sold this and all we get is a new learning curve, but then I can always roll back to v.6.

[Andy76]

Most people who come from Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase etc. do not want to go in and do it theirselves. 
They just want to open their DAW and work in an inspiring and appealing environment. And it's not that Mixbus is ugly or something, not at all. 
It's just that it drags you too much kind of back in time from an optical point of view.

Cubase is a total visual mess. Protools is very dull looking. Logic is the best but not perfect and Ardour borrowed some elements from ProTools and Logic.

Maybe what you are talking about has to do with ugly 3d rendering from the 90s which Mixbus is using. Theses pseudo shadows are really off putting and need proper redesigning to be subtle and modern, not amateur.

The solution is to switch off 3d and use flat interface rendering.

As to the interface itself Mixbus is head and shoulders superior to all DAWs because it has knob-per-function and scalable size and big fader caps and small meters (for weird reason almost all other DAWs have it backwards), it has console workflow which other DAW are sadly lacking.

I personally like its brown color, its is very warm and 70-s like. It makes it unique and creates a vintage vibe. "Modern" will certainly kill this vibe and I hope this wont happen. I hope the changes in UI Ben is talking about wont do it either.