Which DAW Has the Best GUI?

[antic604]

Ok, thanks for answer. That makes sense, as for you 125% is scaling up from 1080p (1px is presented as 2.5px), 125% for 1440p is making it look like 1080p with 100% thus all pixels are interpolated (2.5 px are presented as 1px) and therefore it has artifacts in calculation.

There's several misconceptions here:

1) If 1px is presented at 2.5px then you're talking about 250% scaling

2) DAWs that have vectorised GUI or high-res assets - Bitwig, Live, Studio One - they still draw borders around buttons or grid lines as 1px (or maybe 2x for 200%) but scale everything else, so they still look very sharp

3) Only DAWs that have low-res assets and not vectorised GUI behave like you suggest, but because there's no such thing as half or quarter of a pixel, they need to stretch the GUI. So for example in Reason, when you use 125% scaling Reason will show 1st three pixels normally and 4th pixel twice. This causes the GUI to be blurry / fuzzy and much, MUCH worse than what you see on your pictures:

Reason, 100% scaling:

r100%.png

Reason, 125% scaling:

r125%.png

[apoclypse]

I am Studio One user and, unfortunately, I have to warn you that in reality (especially on Windows with high DPI scaling turned on 125%/175% or any other "uneven" setting) Studio One doesn't look as nice as it seems from the screenshots (at least up to current V4).
First of all, I've noticed that Presonus, even on their own website, is photo-shopping Studio One's look in promotional pictures, adding "glass" effect overlay so it looks like interface has more depth and dimension that is actually having and they are setting up elements and colors carefully in order to look more "eye-candy" and professional looking.
In real-life situation it's really tricky to get that specific look, especially with built-in color pallete with randomly scattered (without any order) color options for tracks. And then, if you turn on see-through (translucent) events, so you can see grid through colors of events are atrocious and really uninspiring nowhere near accurate as pallete (see attached picture).
Notice different (and distracting) strength of grid's vertical lines all over the place due to wrong/broken built-in scaling for 125%. It looks terrible and misleading.
Also, with high DPI on, in Windows, fonts are really bad. You can see in attached picture that some of the fonts are very thin and tall, while others are more squashed and bolder, with uneven width between characters, like they've used 10 different types of fonts for creation of S1 and they don't work together.
I also use Studio One on OSX and it is different story. It looks much more "unified" because it doesn't suffer from font issues like in Windows (I've also noticed that when you change Windows main font, it also changes some of the fonts in S1) and scaling works correctly, where all grid lines are same width.
Besides that, I find different parts of program very weakly separated and almost melt into another with no clear depth of separation between arrangement and mixer or info view for example.

Studio One V2 was much easier on eyes and subconsciousness where elements were more clearly apart not just with colors but also bit of shading and faux 3d-ness.
Since V3, Presonus broke that separation and went Ableton's way of making everything flat (and boring/uninspiring) with even more dull colors and bad fonts. Ableton was designed with minimal distracting elements in mind, while S1 has too much text, lines and elements which are too distracting not being clearly "separated", but melted into one big mess.

Later versions of Logic suffer from same problem, trying to be "modern" and "minimal" while sacrificing separation and professional look they had in versions 6 and up until X.

Cubase seems like getting into this trend, too.

Studio One went 'flat' with Version 3 for function, not fashion. This is when PreSonus switched over to scalable high DPI, making most elements vector-based. Studio One was one of the very first DAWs to do this, 5 years ago. It did not look as good as version 2, but version 4 vastly improved many of these issues, and I assume version 5 and subsequent versions will continue to improve it more.

That Studio One looks better on Mac than Windows should be no surprise. This comes down to how graphics are handled by the OS. Mac has always looked better, particularly fonts, while graphics handling on Windows has always been heavily flawed, and still is. There is a reason graphic designers use Mac almost exclusively. You are just going to have a better time with MacOS than Windows.

I really, really hate the way fonts looks in Windows. They prioritize clarity vs being more faithful to the font. MacOS is more faithful to the font so pixelated fonts are rarely a thing. Before retina displays this was a bit of an issue as this introduced blur but once retina displays became a thing fonts became way more readable without sacrificing the look of the font. Windows still hasn't figured this out even on hi-dpi screens they are still using that cleartype garbage. It hurts my eyes to see jaggy fonts all the time on Windows.

[DS_Joost]

Yup. Fonts have been Windows' pain point since it's inception. I don't think they will ever get around to fixing it. Otherwise they would have done so already.

It's Windows mostly, not the DAWs

[jonljacobi]

I completely disagree on fonts in Windows vs MacOS. I far prefer working in Windows on my retina iMac because the fonts are clearer. There are issues when Windows scales text in some programs but otherwise I find it far easier on the eye and I can use smaller text.

[Forgotten]

I completely disagree on fonts in Windows vs MacOS. I far prefer working in Windows on my retina iMac because the fonts are clearer. There are issues when Windows scales text in some programs but otherwise I find it far easier on the eye and I can use smaller text.

It certainly used to be the case that a Mac was what you went for if you wanted better graphics on a monitor, but I think Windows bridged that gap years ago.

[antic604]

I completely disagree on fonts in Windows vs MacOS. I far prefer working in Windows on my retina iMac because the fonts are clearer. There are issues when Windows scales text in some programs but otherwise I find it far easier on the eye and I can use smaller text.

It certainly used to be the case that a Mac was what you went for if you wanted better graphics on a monitor, but I think Windows bridged that gap years ago.

The issues with text scaling are still there, for software that was not updated to accepth high-DPI scaling. Just take a look at the top of this very page, to the top-left of the Reason screen at 125%.

But indeed, that's pretty rare nowadays.

[mgw38]

I completely disagree on fonts in Windows vs MacOS. I far prefer working in Windows on my retina iMac because the fonts are clearer. There are issues when Windows scales text in some programs but otherwise I find it far easier on the eye and I can use smaller text.

It certainly used to be the case that a Mac was what you went for if you wanted better graphics on a monitor, but I think Windows bridged that gap years ago.

On a Mac, things are more consistent. I recently switched from Mac to Windows and I do have to agree that 95% of the time, the Windows fonts look better. And the remaining 5% they look like they came out of the 90s. On a Mac they always look the same and that is good, but not that good.

[Forgotten]

I completely disagree on fonts in Windows vs MacOS. I far prefer working in Windows on my retina iMac because the fonts are clearer. There are issues when Windows scales text in some programs but otherwise I find it far easier on the eye and I can use smaller text.

It certainly used to be the case that a Mac was what you went for if you wanted better graphics on a monitor, but I think Windows bridged that gap years ago.

On a Mac, things are more consistent. I recently switched from Mac to Windows and I do have to agree that 95% of the time, the Windows fonts look better. And the remaining 5% they look like they came out of the 90s. On a Mac they always look the same and that is good, but not that good.

I have a MacBook next to me and working on a Windows laptop right now. Can't say that there's much difference really unless I tilt the screen as the MacBook seems to be easier to read at an angle. Years ago I'm pretty sure no one would have compared and said they're comparable.

Back in the early 00s I was working for Raytheon, and they had a standard approach of buying Macs for anyone doing design work as they were the only things that looked OK on large monitors. It was even difficult to get any good design software on Windows back then - everything was Mac only.

[wombat778]

It's not listed in the poll, but my eyes find Renoise very aesthetic in a retro way. I also find Bitwig's GUI very appealing.

[TheMaestro]

How obvious is it that everyone has just voted for the host they use? It's pathetic. I cannot believe I am the only person to vote for Cakewalk, it's GUI is very clean, clear, uncluttered and consistent, at least from the screenshots I've seen. I also can't believe Live has the most votes, it's GUI is awful. There is nowhere near enough contrast between control and the background which means you have to stare at it closely to see what's going on. As a Cubase user, I certainly can't believe anyone thinks it's GUI looks nice. It's a horrid mish-mash of colours and styles. I think it looks awful. If it all looked like the native plugins, it would be incredible but seeing those nice GUIs feels like the devs are taunting me.

My Top 3 would be Cakewalk, Studio One and Logic. Whenever I see any of them in YT videos, I think "ooh, that host looks nice, I should try it out" but I never do. Learning Cubase was enough of a struggle for me, although switching again probably wouldn't be nearly as hard.

Why most vote for the DAW they use?
Because GUI was probably considered when they chose or got used to their DAW.
GUI is also much more than just looks, so judging a DAW’s GUI from screenshots might be the only pathetic thing in this thread.

You're mixing up GUI with UX.
GUI = "graphic user interface", not as much about the whole experience as UX "user experience".

And I picked DP and Studio One. I don't own Studio One, it's just much better looking to me than most, and people rave about it's UX. I don't plan on getting it ever, but it's nice to look at. I like the way Live looks but IMO at times it's adherence to a singular look gets in the way of the UX, especially with the included plug ins. I really relied on track colors and having a system more in Live than any DAW I've used.

I'll never understand the argument that something looks bad because it's dated. Not all modern GUIs are great. I love Bitwig, but I don't particularly like it's GUI, it's too toy like. Apparently I'm in the minority here.

I know GUI and UX very well. And they go hand in hand when discussing “the best GUI”.

And I just tried the Studio One demo and can’t see what the wonderful look is all about. Not to talk about the terrible workflow.

[dermichl]

Where are the Reaper boys who usually enter virtually all DAW threads?

They are busy recommending R.... for use on iOS...

[TheMaestro]

Akai VIP is also missing.

[sleepcircle]

i wonder how long this thread will last

[antic604]

i wonder how long this thread will last

Until Reason gets high-res GPU-accelerated GUI, at which point we'll all agree it's the best one and we'll settle this once and for all

[sleepcircle]

ah yes.










when that happens, all the bickering and self-important exaggeration will stop. and no-one will ever attach their ego to the program they use, ever again.