Ableton, Plugins and HDPi on Windows???

[Trancit]

Hi there...

I just wanted to give Suite 12 a second try but I have my issues with scaling on my 4k system with 150% scaling (which I need because of my eye sight (I am not the youngest anymore)...

Plugins like Scaler2, Avenger, Rapid, all Melda plugins and many more do have GUI problems when autoscale is disabled and I didn´t went 4k to leave autoscaling enabled and have a blurry GUI...

What options are there to work around this issue??

1. Ableton won´t change (be able to change) anything soon from their side (confirmed by a dev post)...

2. changing the compatibility settings for the link to the exe to overwrite Windows scaling by programm seems to make trouble here on my side and perhaps is the reason for my continous crashes I had before as I used it all the time when trying Ableton...
I.e. I had this workaround already enabled before I went through my plugin list to rightclick the entries in the browser to uncheck autoscaling...
Suddenly at every 4th or 5th entry I rightclicked to uncheck Live froze and had to be terminated by the task manager

I disabled the compatibility overwrite of the link and the crashes were gone...

So this workaround doesn´t seem to be an option on my machine...Idk if others experienced the same...

On top of that issue this workaround causes hefty GUI problems with the VST3 of Serum that one has to use Serum VST2 which disables automating Serum with real values...
Steve Duda says he will not change the VST3 of Serum as this is clearly Ableton´s fault that one has to use this (in his words) wonky workaround...

3. changing the Windows scaling to 100% and doing scaling in the individual programms...
This does work but man... many things like the window top bars stay soooo tiny...
Idk if I can get really warm with this hybrid "works in some respect but is damn ugly and tiny in other aspects"...
I think there would be a possibility to change the Windows scaling with a script just before Live starts to use it just for Ableton only though...

Did I miss any alternative ways??
What are you using??
How do you deal with this issue in general??

[BertKoor]

You can switch to 200% scaling when working with your daw. Should be crystal clear instead of blurry...

[Trancit]

You can switch to 200% scaling when working with your daw. Should be crystal clear instead of blurry...

Will try... but I guess it steals too much screen space for the whole programm...

[midi_transmission]

There is no other solution than 200% scaling unfortunately when it's about a sharp image on the screen in every case. It's not the developers fault.

4k on large screens is not a good decision by the industry and we have to suffer as a result.

The problem is that the dpi of the screens expects 150% or 125% scaling, which does not work well with many guis as you notice. You can't render 1.5 pixel line on a pixel grid. So two pixels has to be used with a reduced brightness to look similar to a 1 pixel line.

5k at 27" would be the much better solution and Apple is doing it for exactly this reason. This is exactly twice the resolution of the previous WQHD screens.

There are only workarounds to ease the pain. Some plugins have an own way to scale (several gui variants individually optimized for typical scaling levels). When you disable plugin scaling by the daw (most have a setting for this) and use the one from the plugin (set to 150%) it can be fine. But it depends on the plugin.

It's trial and error and finding the best compromise between sharpness, usable screen size, host gui size, os scaling and plugin scaling for you personally.

I've never found one that satisfied me, and as a result I even prefer the lower technical quality of a WQHD screen to get around these issues.

[BertKoor]

You can switch to 200% scaling when working with your daw. Should be crystal clear instead of blurry...

Will try... but I guess it steals too much screen space for the whole programm...

After 200% scaling you can make all a bit smaller again:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... cc37d99b9a
(alas in my experience playing with the font size messes up most guis too much, devs don't test this, but worth a try)

[J Veronica]

The only thing that 100% worked for me was replacing plugins that don't scale to hi dpi (looking at you, Izotope).

[andrewbrewer]

Hey there! I feel your pain. I address this issue by using multiple daws for different purposes. I still use ableton, a lot. It has the cleanest interface and (in my opinion) the best native devices. However, when I want to use VSTs, I use Bitwig instead. They work much better there, including the scaling. I also use some other daws for different reasons but ableton and Bitwig get the most of my time

[Trancit]

There is no other solution than 200% scaling unfortunately when it's about a sharp image on the screen in every case. It's not the developers fault.
...

Cannot be... in all other DAWs it just works fine without any interaction... set Windows to 150% scaling, open the DAW and everything looks good and works like expected...
It´s just Ableton making trouble in this regard... so it´s at least their plugin handling engine´s fault...
And they confirmed it... they just don´t feel it would be something urgent to change...

[midi_transmission]

There is no other solution than 200% scaling unfortunately when it's about a sharp image on the screen in every case. It's not the developers fault.
...

Cannot be... in all other DAWs it just works fine without any interaction... set Windows to 150% scaling, open the DAW and everything looks good and works like expected...
It´s just Ableton making trouble in this regard... so it´s at least their plugin handling engine´s fault...
And they confirmed it... they just don´t feel it would be something urgent to change...

Ok, I think most daws doesn't look good with 150% scaling. Small lines are always blurry compared to 200%. In addition, the redraw performance is often slower than with 100% or 200%.

But I understand now that you mean something different and say that plugins are always auto scaled in Ableton or they look even worse.

[midi_transmission]

Have you checked the setting for compatibility and high dpi?

I don't remember the exact names, but I hope it's possible to follow anyhow.

Right click on the taskbar on the program icon, right click on the program icon, properties, then the second entry from the buttons says something about high dpi, open that. In the new dialog there is a setting at the bottom, activate this and change that the dropdown from system to to program.

Melda and Ableton looks fine this way using 125% OS scaling without auto scaling active. When the plugin offers an own scaling you can use this now. Otherwise it looks like with 100% os scaling.

Ok that's a pity. I read your post again, exactly this seems not to work for you.

[Trancit]

Ok, I think most daws doesn't look good with 150% scaling. Small lines are always blurry compared to 200%. In addition, the redraw performance is often slower than with 100% or 200%.

But I understand now that you mean something different and say that plugins are always auto scaled in Ableton or they look even worse.

I understand what you mean...

Luckily I am absolutely not nitpicky in this regard... this doesn´t matter to me at all... just what I can stand is the blurry GUI if you do a complete autoscale of a plugin i.e. compared to it´s native scaling due to HDPi support...
If small lines are a bit blurry respectively redraw performance loss I don´t even recognize neither can I tell the difference between frame rates as long as it stays more or less fluid...

[Trancit]

...
Ok that's a pity. I read your post again, exactly this seems not to work for you.

Yep... somehow this seem to cause lots of trouble on my system...
It´s perhaps the graphics card... Idk...

[midi_transmission]

Do you have crash reports that you could send to Ableton? Afaik Ableton creates crash report for debugging when it happens.