DPI awareness

 

Note: DPI Awareness is only available on Windows 10 build 1809 (October 2018) and above.

Sonar version 2024.06 introduces support for DPI Awareness, which improves rendering and reduces blurriness, particularly for font rendering. DPI Awareness may sharpen graphics and make text easier to read. Improvements will be most noticeable when using large, high resolution displays (such as 4K) and with Windows display scaling set higher than 100%.

Enabling/disabling DPI Awareness

To enable/disable DPI Awareness:

1.	Go to Edit > Preferences > Customization - Display.

2.	Select Enable DPI Awareness.

3.	Restart Sonar.

The next time you start Sonar, a notification appears to confirm that DPI Awareness is enabled.

Display Scale slider

The Display Scale slider in Edit > Preferences > Customization - Display allows you to adjust the display scaling of Sonar independently from the global Windows display scale setting (Settings > Systems > Display). Select a custom scaling size between 75%–125%.

 

Note: Low Display Scale values work better at higher DPI resolutions. For example, a low-resolution 1080p screen at 96 DPI, so a Display Scale value of 75% will result in a tiny UI that is potentially difficult to read. On the other hand, a 4K screen at 75% will also show a tiny UI, but may still be usable because it has 4x the number of pixels.

 

Per plug-in DPI Awareness

In addition to the global Enable DPI Awareness app setting, you can also enable/disable DPI Awareness on a per plug-in basis for VST plug-ins. DPI Awareness is enabled by default for all VST plug-ins and can be disabled on a case-by-case basis depending on whether the plug-ins are compatible with display scaling. For example, some older plug-ins may appear too small on large, high resolution monitors, in which case disabling DPI Awareness might be preferable.

To enable/disable DPI Awareness for a VST plug-in:

1.	Open the VST plug-in's property page.

2.	Click the VST2/VST3 drop-down menu in the VST plug-in toolbar and select Enable Plugin DPI Awareness.

 

Note:   4 Display scaling is always disabled for DX plug-ins 4 Plug-in scaling is stored globally for a plug-in, not per project 4 Per plug-in display scaling is only active when the application has Enable DPI Awareness enabled in Edit > Preferences > Customization - Display

 

See:

Customization - Display

New features