MixCraft 9 Interface Changes
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:10 pm
So I've recently decided to finally switch over from MixCraft 8 to MixCraft 9 after nearly 2 years. Up until this point I have refused to use it because I could not stand the interface changes. Even with the MixCraft 8 Skin the colors were still way off and many things were changed. Thankfully I have managed to alter many of these things and I am now in a place where it almost looks identical to the way 8 looked. Outside of a few nit picky things of course. For instance I cannot figure out a way to add the drop shadow back to the time code in the transport menu, nor do I think it's even possible. Same with making the tempo and key stack on top like it used to be. Or adding gradients back to the tracks. Things I wish were editable inside the mixskin file.
But one thing that really bothers me. Not only because it doesn't make any sense, but also because it hasn't been fixed in the near 2 years this software has been out. Is the way the track images are displayed. For some reason in MixCraft 9 any image that isn't a basic flat color like the default ones gets pixelated along the edges. It almost looks like someone did a poor job cutting the images out in Photoshop. Little white specks all the way around and throughout. Like when you zoom into a photo in Windows and it doesn't rasterize properly. Is there a reason these images are not rendering smoothly like they used to?
I also wanted to point out the very unprofessional and lazy looking Melodyne button that looks like it was written in braille. I'm not sure who was hired to make some of these visual changes but some of them come off as betaish to me. It looks even more out of place when you turn on the MixCraft 8 skin because the editor button is tactile and 3d, but the Melodyne button is flat and looks like it was already turned on. As a graphic designer it hurts my soul seeing the software I love and have been using for years suddenly update and the final sold product is eye bleeding and unfinished. What used to be sleek and refined has now catered to the his new idea of simplifying and blandernizing for the sake of being hip.
Thankfully much of these can be fixed manually which I was able to do, but it does scare me for what the future may hold as we get further and further away from version 8. There may come a time where we won't be able to get it back to the way it used to be. And with that in mind I hope a proper Mixcraft 8 Skin could be added that actually looks like 8. I have to ask why does a skin that is supposed to replicate the previous version not even change the colors back to the way they looked in that previous version? It baffles me. Keep in mind most people aren't technically inclined to even know how to make these changes themselves. I noticed tons of assets from 8 were dragged over but most of them were not added to the mixskin file. Either for unknown reasons, because they required more than what could be done in the mixskin file, or because it apparently was too hard to edit.
I don't mean to come off as an entitled nit picker, just things I have noticed and hope could be improved. The functionality of a DAW is obviously the most important thing but the aesthetics are very important too.
But one thing that really bothers me. Not only because it doesn't make any sense, but also because it hasn't been fixed in the near 2 years this software has been out. Is the way the track images are displayed. For some reason in MixCraft 9 any image that isn't a basic flat color like the default ones gets pixelated along the edges. It almost looks like someone did a poor job cutting the images out in Photoshop. Little white specks all the way around and throughout. Like when you zoom into a photo in Windows and it doesn't rasterize properly. Is there a reason these images are not rendering smoothly like they used to?
I also wanted to point out the very unprofessional and lazy looking Melodyne button that looks like it was written in braille. I'm not sure who was hired to make some of these visual changes but some of them come off as betaish to me. It looks even more out of place when you turn on the MixCraft 8 skin because the editor button is tactile and 3d, but the Melodyne button is flat and looks like it was already turned on. As a graphic designer it hurts my soul seeing the software I love and have been using for years suddenly update and the final sold product is eye bleeding and unfinished. What used to be sleek and refined has now catered to the his new idea of simplifying and blandernizing for the sake of being hip.
Thankfully much of these can be fixed manually which I was able to do, but it does scare me for what the future may hold as we get further and further away from version 8. There may come a time where we won't be able to get it back to the way it used to be. And with that in mind I hope a proper Mixcraft 8 Skin could be added that actually looks like 8. I have to ask why does a skin that is supposed to replicate the previous version not even change the colors back to the way they looked in that previous version? It baffles me. Keep in mind most people aren't technically inclined to even know how to make these changes themselves. I noticed tons of assets from 8 were dragged over but most of them were not added to the mixskin file. Either for unknown reasons, because they required more than what could be done in the mixskin file, or because it apparently was too hard to edit.
I don't mean to come off as an entitled nit picker, just things I have noticed and hope could be improved. The functionality of a DAW is obviously the most important thing but the aesthetics are very important too.