4K/5K screens for DAW

Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

T-CM11 wrote: Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:52 pmHead and eye movement are relative to size (and distance), not the amount of pixels. e.g. A 14 inch 4K laptop has the same amount of pixels as a 65 inch 4K TV.
A 14" 4K laptop and a 65" 4K TV have the same number of pixels, but the greatest distance that your eyes require to resolve a certain object on a 14" 4K display is less than the distance required to resolve the same object on the 65" 4K display. This means that two displays of equal resolution but different PPI happens any display size require the same field of view. This is not my opinion, it's geometry. The only difference is that, with a smaller display, our eyes need to converge more because the focus is on a close object, which some people may find fatiguing. If you have high visual acuity, you will be able to put your display further from your eyes which will give you a narrower field of view, and therefore you'll require less head and eye movement than someone whose visual acuity requires the monitor to sit closer to them.

Put another way, for a fixed PPI, a display that has more pixels across will obviously require more left-right head movement. You could push the display back away from you to reduce the extent of head movement, but the projection of the pixels on your retina will become smaller, and therefore your eyes may not be able to resolve some objects.

Assuming your eyes are equally capable to focusing on near and far objects, near-and-small and far-and-big would produce effectively the same viewing experience, because the projection of the screen on your retina would occupy the same retina space, if that makes sense.
T-CM11 wrote: Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:52 pmALL aspects (resolution/size/distance/panel type) are important, depending on the use case. You're thinking too much of your own situation. Not everybody is a 100% ITB sit-at-desk user.
If I wasn't 100% ITB I'd just have a large monitor hung on the front wall or on a trolley for flexility, and display scaling set to something like 150% so I could see it from other parts of the studio.
T-CM11 wrote: Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:52 pmFor my other PC (general usage / also music production / no audio hardware / desk-based), I find my 27" 2560x1440 (40 cm viewing distance) to be perfect. The PPI is on the high side, but older, non-resizable plugins are still usable.
Your viewing distance of 40cm for a 27" 2560x1440 display sounds about right. For that monitor my viewing distance would be 45 cm, so it's similar to yours. Of all currently commercially available resolutions, 2560x1440 strikes the best balance of screen real estate and viewing comfort (narrow field of view and long viewing distance at 100% scaling). At the same PPI as your monitor, a 4K display would still be 40 cm from your yes, but your head and eyes would be moving a lot further to reach the display edges.

I've tried bigger screens and multi-display setups and I'm not convinced having everything visible simultaneously is necessarily beneficial, since my eyes can only focus on a relatively small area of the screen at a time. I still have to rely on short-term memory to retain and compare information. I do have a custom AutoHotkey script that enables me to do things like toggling a window always-on-top property (left-click+T) and to perform editing operations such as copy, cut, paste, clipboard swapping and delete with mouse and left-hand keys combinations (the mouse buttons function as modifier keys). I also use a script to launch a rather nifty screen capture app which I have bound to a keyboard shortcut (left-click+Backspace, and my backspace key is Caps Lock on my Ergodox EZ keyboard). This largely reduces the need for more display real estate as the window will stay on top regardless of focus, which is similar to having a secondary display. All this is just thinking outside the box to improve my workflow. Getting a massive screen is the brute-force approach.



PS: The Chinese screen show on the video works extremely well. The only snag is that the UI is in Chinese... I just ignore the Chinese characters and remember what the buttons do, but I'm sure there's an equivalent English alternative.

Post

Scoox wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:04 pm PS: The Chinese screen show on the video works extremely well. The only snag is that the UI is in Chinese... I just ignore the Chinese characters and remember what the buttons do, but I'm sure there's an equivalent English alternative.
Video not available... probably a regional restriction :)

Post

T-CM11 wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:16 pm
Scoox wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:04 pm PS: The Chinese screen show on the video works extremely well. The only snag is that the UI is in Chinese... I just ignore the Chinese characters and remember what the buttons do, but I'm sure there's an equivalent English alternative.
Video not available... probably a regional restriction :)
Oops... it was set to private. Should be visible now.

Post

Scoox wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:42 pm Oops... it was set to private. Should be visible now.
Thanks for that video! Deskpins seems fine for that purpose too :wink:
https://efotinis.neocities.org/deskpins/

Post

T-CM11 wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 2:57 pm
Scoox wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:42 pm Oops... it was set to private. Should be visible now.
Thanks for that video! Deskpins seems fine for that purpose too :wink:
https://efotinis.neocities.org/deskpins/
Yeah, that'll work too, though a shortcut is much quicker once you get used to it.

Post

I switched to using a 50" 4K Samsung TV as my primary monitor and have been very happy with it. It's like having four 24" HD monitors all in one. However, I have done the quad-monitor setup in the past, and I found having the equivalent space on a single screen results in a more conducive workflow.

Post

waxtrax wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:28 pm I switched to using a 50" 4K Samsung TV as my primary monitor and have been very happy with it. It's like having four 24" HD monitors all in one. However, I have done the quad-monitor setup in the past, and I found having the equivalent space on a single screen results in a more conducive workflow.
I'm guessing you have either very good eyesight or excellent neck mobility.

Post

Scoox wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:09 pm I'm guessing you have either very good eyesight or excellent neck mobility.
Both are definitely declining with age, so I guess we'll see how I feel about it in a few years time! :hihi:

Post

waxtrax wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:31 pm
Scoox wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:09 pm I'm guessing you have either very good eyesight or excellent neck mobility.
Both are definitely declining with age, so I guess we'll see how I feel about it in a few years time! :hihi:
My 4K at 125% scaling is palatable. Towards the end of the day I tend to switch to 150% scaling as my eyes get tired. 4K at 150% is basically a 2560x1440 display, which, IMO is the golden ratio in terms of comfort. However, it's not so good for productivity as you can't have two windows side-by-side. I think it's fair to say no display is perfect for every situation.

Post

Scoox wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:09 pm
waxtrax wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:28 pm I switched to using a 50" 4K Samsung TV as my primary monitor and have been very happy with it. It's like having four 24" HD monitors all in one. However, I have done the quad-monitor setup in the past, and I found having the equivalent space on a single screen results in a more conducive workflow.
I'm guessing you have either very good eyesight or excellent neck mobility.
While I think that a 50" screen for "desktop usage" is (ergonomically speaking) a bad idea - there are other ways to use a screen (I'm thinking of a hybrid setup, or using the PC/DAW mostly as a multi-track recorder).

If your position isn't fixed, you can switch between moving farther away (overview) and closer (detailed part).

Post

T-CM11 wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 4:02 pm
Scoox wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 3:09 pm
waxtrax wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:28 pm I switched to using a 50" 4K Samsung TV as my primary monitor and have been very happy with it. It's like having four 24" HD monitors all in one. However, I have done the quad-monitor setup in the past, and I found having the equivalent space on a single screen results in a more conducive workflow.
I'm guessing you have either very good eyesight or excellent neck mobility.
While I think that a 50" screen for "desktop usage" is (ergonomically speaking) a bad idea - there are other ways to use a screen (I'm thinking of a hybrid setup, or using the PC/DAW mostly as a multi-track recorder).

If your position isn't fixed, you can switch between moving farther away (overview) and closer (detailed part).
True. In fairness, just because a screen has a certain size doesn't mean you have to use it all the time. It's possible to reduce the width in display settings (Windows) when you don't need all that space, or to resize a window so it sits in a more comfortable spot.

Post Reply

Return to “Computer Setup and System Configuration”