The look of 9

[ron-e-g]

Hello, I've been working in 9 now for a few days now. Couple of things have come to my attention. First is I'm having trouble with the darker look. Even with the "light" theme selected in "display" the mixer stays dark. Are there any plans to be able to select a lighter mixer background? The Black wears on my tired ole eyes. Second, the area below the project screen..I don't exactly know what it's called,(I searched in the manuals, both 8, and 9 couldn't find it) it is the bar you slide to position the audio. I can hardly find it after zooming in or out with my mouse wheel. Light grey over Black ? I question the wisdom here. Any others had similar issues?

Thanks,
Ron

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion!

Greg

[Thomas]

I agree more options would be better. I use Dark in MC8. Dark in MC9 is not dark, it's BLACK! So I tried light and light is just a little bit lighter than MC8 dark. I'm not a fan of the black mixers either, I'll see if it grows on me. And what happened to that lovely wood grain! It looks like all those who complained for the boring flat graphics got their way. Do we need dull lifeless colors as well. I'm for bringing back the colors that are in MC8. Like Ron said- my poor tired old eyes. It seems most of the people coding are still in their pre-eyesight decline stage, which they say happens in the early 40s for most people. The 20/30 something coders need to try to look through the eyes of older folk who still make up a large portion of the software buying public. Or at least the project manager should be taking that into consideration.

[sjoens]

The "lovely wood grain" panels were simply stained with a matte black varnish. They can be stripped and restored to their previous luster by replacing the appropriate Mixrez folder files from MC8 to MC9.

mixer-texture-panel.png
mixer-texture-panel-1.png
mixer-texture-cap.png
mixer-texture-cap-1.png

The mixer... and everything else... can be color changed in the mixskin.ini file if you understand basic RGB values.
R=red
G=green
B=blue

You're welcome.

Don't forget to move/save/backup the original files b4 making changes.

[Thomas]

...and the wood is back baby. The mixskin.ini file will take some time to sort what's what as it's over 6000 lines. I'll enjoy the look and feel of the fine tonewood for now.

Thanks for the tip. I had forgotten about this stuff.

[Anorax]

The "lovely wood grain" panels were simply stained with a matte black varnish. They can be stripped and restored to their previous luster by replacing the appropriate Mixrez folder files from MC8 to MC9.

I got a really good chuckle out of this, thank you for that.

I think the point of the UI overhaul was that, essentially, the consensus among other-DAW-to-Mixcraft transplants was that the UI of Mixcraft 7 and 8 made Mixcraft feel like a 2010-era piece of software. And if it looks like something out of Windows XP era in 2019, then surely it performs like something out of Windows XP, right? Never mind how that's a ridiculously dumb logical fallacy, some consumers will feel that way and until/unless Mixcraft updated, then some potential new users were going to completely overlook Mixcraft based on appearance alone. I mean, heck, go back and look at Mixcraft 4-8 and see how the UI changed.

That said, Mixcraft could probably use better skin support, especially when it comes to the right gradients and readability and whatnot. Some DAWs (*cough Pro Tools cough*) just has one skin, and you're SOL if it doesn't work for you. Others (Ableton comes to mind, with the color saturation and hue controls on the base skins) have, well, a lot of them. If Mixcraft could find a happy medium on having enough skins to satisfy general usability needs, then that would probably be just fine.

[Thomas]

Yeah, changing the png trick works. Changing the typing key board skin and wood mixer accents was quick and easy but the mixskin.ini file is huge and there are over 1800 png files in MC9 up from over 1600 in MC 8.
I thought some of the GUI complainers had some quasi-valid reasons for the skin/GUI changes. Like scaling issues or some had trouble reading the old GUI?! There seems to be a shift to simpler graphics industry wide for who know why... faster loading times, standardization for what purpose?? possible answer:to make things easier and faster for designers? But this perceived bias against 2010 era graphics? I've said it before and I'll say it again, it seems time is going in reverse with this. MC 8 type graphics are more advanced and IMO overall nicer than the "upgraded" graphics in MC 9. We are regressing. Hopefully they did it for a good reason.

Bottom line Acoustica: You really made a lot of good functional improvements to the software and that's significant. But...please add more flexibility for the GUI. I think it would be a matter of adding more png files (a lot more) and the coding to tie it all together into an ini file.

[sjoens]

It took months of breaking it down and completely rewriting the INI file for me to get familiar with it.

@ron-e-g To make the mixer channel strips lighter:
1. Copy this line: mixer-track-background
2. Open mixskin-light.ini with Note Pad
3. Open the Find box (ctrl+F)
4. Paste the copied line in the box & click Find next
5. Once found, change the line below it from solid color = 25,26,27 to solid color = 65,66,67

Colors are standard RGB format. They can be solid or gradients, tho gradients don't always work.

The coders use 2 variants throughout the file but either one will work:
1.
solid color = 25, 25, 25
2.
solid color.r = 25
solid color.g = 25
solid color.b = 25

In some cases you can even replace an RGB entry with a PNG file & vise versa.

[sjoens]

MC9 introduced a new type of file (SVG) that's more difficult to edit. A new challenge...

[jlouvar]

What key is it in?

[Thomas]

To make the mixer channel strips lighter:
1. Copy this line: mixer-track-background
2. Open mixskin-light.ini with Note Pad
3. Open the Find box (ctrl+F)
4. Paste the copied line in the box & click Find next
5. Once found, change the line below it from solid color = 25,26,27 to solid color = 65,66,67

I can confirm this works. The mixers are gray except whatever track you have selected is still black.

[r0bbie]

Would you be able to post a screenshot so we can see what that looks like Thomas? I be curious.

[Thomas]

Would you be able to post a screenshot so we can see what that looks like Thomas? I be curious.

MC9 Color Change.PNG (160.66 KiB) Viewed 5488 times

[jlouvar]

FWIW: I have old tired eyes so I thought the black would give me eye fatigue, but it’s growing on me now and I’m beginning to like it.

[sjoens]

The current status for selected tracks is the darker color. Not sure if it's changeable but I'll check it out.

I've always preferred darker GUIs. Too much white, especially at night, is very hard on the old eyes.