How useful is a 5K display, really?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Tarekith
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by Tarekith » Wed Nov 05, 2014 5:15 pm

Even after lasik I still have an astigmatism, so the sharper the text the easier it is for me to focus. After a couple years using retina only displays, it's instantly noticeable that it takes longer for me to focus when I use my wife's iMac, or even something like Maschine. Crazy how fast you get used to it.
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sporkles
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by sporkles » Wed Nov 05, 2014 6:07 pm

OK, so everyone is focusing on sharpness, which is important, of course, but can anyone explain how that high resolution doesn't make everything on-screen tiny?

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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by ohigetbywithalittlehelpfrommyfriends » Wed Nov 05, 2014 6:33 pm

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Last edited by ohigetbywithalittlehelpfrommyfriends on Mon Jan 12, 2015 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tarekith
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by Tarekith » Wed Nov 05, 2014 6:36 pm

sporkles wrote:OK, so everyone is focusing on sharpness, which is important, of course, but can anyone explain how that high resolution doesn't make everything on-screen tiny?
You have always been able to scale the display resolution on any newer mac, easy enough to make things bigger if you want.
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beats me
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by beats me » Wed Nov 05, 2014 6:47 pm

So I’m looking at how clean and smooth the text is on the forum on my iphone and then how jagged it looks on my work PC because I forced myself to notice. Is that the difference we are talking about?

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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by Tarekith » Wed Nov 05, 2014 6:54 pm

yes
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by beats me » Wed Nov 05, 2014 7:23 pm

Well in that case I don’t see a 5k (or 4k) display as a need, but more as ruining every other display you look at until these resolutions become the norm. :x

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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by Donnie » Thu Nov 06, 2014 7:29 pm

I'm not 5k, but I like the extra screen space on my 2560x1400. Some friends have a harder time seeing it, but as a heavy computer user I got used to it in a day or two.

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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by beats me » Thu Nov 06, 2014 7:50 pm

In related info you can upgrade the RAM in the 5K iMacs yourself (for a lot cheaper). So if you are going to pull the trigger stick with standard 8G RAM.

triant
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by triant » Thu Nov 06, 2014 8:59 pm

sporkles wrote:OK, so everyone is focusing on sharpness, which is important, of course, but can anyone explain how that high resolution doesn't make everything on-screen tiny?
by default the UI is displayed in the same size as a non-retina interface. just with much higher pixel density. from there you can scale the GUI larger or smaller (like in ableton itself) depending on if you want to see more things on your screen (though the default scaling is the sharpest and best looking).

i've been usin a retina macbook pro since they were first released in 2012. while not critically important unless you're working in visual media, it does improve your whole experience of interacting with the UI. text, vector graphics, video/photos, and all native GUI elements look much better and going back to lower resolutions makes everything look gross. just for the sake of reading text (which we do all the time) i think the retina screen is worth it.

been waiting on Ableton to support this for a long time. good job but... does anyone else think the UI text in Live still looks kind of blurry?

fishmonkey
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by fishmonkey » Thu Nov 06, 2014 10:48 pm

the higher res means less fuzz, especially the fuzz caused by anti-aliasing. in particular, this means that curves and angled edges are smoother.

this pretty much covers it:

http://daringfireball.net/2012/08/pixel_perfect

h4nc0
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Re: How useful is a 5K display, really?

Post by h4nc0 » Fri Nov 07, 2014 12:25 pm

triant wrote:been waiting on Ableton to support this for a long time. good job but... does anyone else think the UI text in Live still looks kind of blurry?
Yes, it's not razor sharp like Logic.

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