Need Large TV for PC monitoring

[csarami@ncsu.edu]

Hi,

I am looking to buy a large TV to use it for music writing ( Dorico and Cubase) mainly.

I read online that the LED or ELED tvs are the best. My studio is semi-dark and would like to have the TV as large a as possible.

Any help would be much appreciated it!

CS

[ef37a]

I have been doing this for years and have used a variety of TVs and computers. There are a few things to consider. First off, I am Windows 7 and 10, can't help about macs.

Connection: VGA or HDMI? If the latter, does your PC have such a port? My Lenovo you see has a Mini Display port. PITA as I had to buy an adaptor. VGA is low res' and old tech' but always seems to work. Note, first time you connect via HDMI the TV might not show despite your 'hacking'. Fix is to power cycle the TV. Note also that many very new TVs no longer have VGA.

Aspect ratio: Not the same and you might find you have to compromise the picture size to include all parts of say a DAW.

Video compatibilty: If you have a problem with a PC and have to run in a low resolution mode, Safe Mode say, the TV might not display that so always keep a bog standard monitor handy for diagnostics.

Last thing, I have a desktop PC in another room and a VGA -Ethernet-VGA link through a wall to an old 32" Sony Bravia. Works very well except the screen drops out periodically "NO PC SIGNAL FOUND" comes back on its own and I can cope because it is only used for a printer/scanner. I put the problem down to the 10mtr or so cabling?

Dave.

[Moroccomoose]

How large is large and why?

If you are looking for more real estate to fit more windows on the screen, or to have menus consume less space on the screen, then you need to increase pixel count, not just simply go large.

You will get more real estate on a physically smaller 27" 4K/UHD than you would on a larger 30" HD.

If you are happy with the real estate you have, but the screen is simply far away, then a cheaper lower resolution screen might work.

Personally, I wouldn't get too hung up on the screen technology, unless you have a need for highly calibrated colour for video or photography work. Most modern flat screens are so good now that they a plenty good enough for DAW work.

My order of importance for selecting my next monitor will be:
No. Pixels (i.e. 4K), Connections, Price, Size (Range 27 - 32"), Screen technology

HDMI is pretty standard on most TVs and PCs now, but definitely worth checking your connections, as Dave said.

Horses for courses as usual!

Stu.

[OneWorld]

How large is large and why?

If you are looking for more real estate to fit more windows on the screen, or to have menus consume less space on the screen, then you need to increase pixel count, not just simply go large.

You will get more real estate on a physically smaller 27" 4K/UHD than you would on a larger 30" HD.

If you are happy with the real estate you have, but the screen is simply far away, then a cheaper lower resolution screen might work.

Personally, I wouldn't get too hung up on the screen technology, unless you have a need for highly calibrated colour for video or photography work. Most modern flat screens are so good now that they a plenty good enough for DAW work.

My order of importance for selecting my next monitor will be:
No. Pixels (i.e. 4K), Connections, Price, Size (Range 27 - 32"), Screen technology

HDMI is pretty standard on most TVs and PCs now, but definitely worth checking your connections, as Dave said.

Horses for courses as usual!

Stu.

I bought a Toshiba 4K HDTV. I don't have it at the maximum 4K resolution though as the fonts are tiny, so I have it at a few notches down from the full 4K resolution. It is a 40incher.

A friend of mine who does artwork for games, who is in the market for a new
monitor called round at my gaff whilst I was using the PC and he exclaimed how clear the display was, and was quite surprised when I told him it was a TV and not a monitor.

As it happens, I also have a proper computer monitor (Phillips) and quite high spec for my music computer, again a 40 incher. It is a yar or so older than the Tosh TV, but anyway, I can hardly tell any difference between the monitor and the TV, except the TV was half the price. OK it has to be admitted the refresh rate for the monitor is higher 100MHZ, but that has no impact as regards the clarity in my situation, I suppose it would if I used it for intense gaming where there is a lot more going on graphics wise

[ef37a]

Yes, reason for bigger is important. In my case it was just a steady decline in the Ole Minces.

My first change was due to the fact that I did not have a wide screen monitor to match my laptop and so things looked strange on the square format. I actually bought a cheap Bush 22" FSTV from Sainsburys because my main 32" TV had gone Ts U and I was negotiating a replacement. 'Er indoors HAD to have a telly!

So, week or two later I had a spare 22" TV and tried it out with a desktop. Blown away I was by the punchy, bigger picture and there seemed to be no loss of resolution? Just to look at emails and Samplitude I just need things bigger!

In fact this 15.6" Lenovo is getting a strain. I can up the zoom but then you are scrolling all the B time. I am going to make a bracket back of my workbench upon which to hang a Celcus 22" FSTV.

Dave.

[Dynamic Mike]

I use a 46" LED Toshiba via hdmi. It's not to increase screen real estate, just to allow me to sit further away from the desk to reduce the risk of dinging my guitars. I was given a 70" plasma screen but had to abandon it because on a dark screen like cubase you get too many reflections. I use a simple number pad mapped to cubase as a controller whilst recording.

[csarami@ncsu.edu]

Thank you all for the reply. Maybe I should update my OP.

I need more space to write orchestral music and tracks. I was thinking 55+ inches TV. I have a powerful windows laptop and iMac and can use both.

[OneWorld]

Yes, reason for bigger is important. In my case it was just a steady decline in the Ole Minces.

Dave.

Same here, and when I set the monitor to the highest res, the font is so tiny I can hardly read it. But if I notch the resolution back a bit, I can even read the screen from some distance away, so, I don't end up keep dinging the guitar on the edge of the desk.

I also use a MIDI foot controller, which I configured to operate the Cubase transport controls plus a few common commands, even to the extent of having written a few macros that invoke several commands, really handy.

I too suffer with the current fad for 'any colour as long as it is black', makes reading the screen more difficult for me

[Moroccomoose]

That being the case, then definately you need more pixels, so to that end, I'd be looking at 4k (UHD) screens.

Bigger isnt necesarily better, it depends how far away your monitor is from your eyes. When I've hooked up to the TV, I found sitting close to it, its not that good. Sitting close to a 50" tv, you just see big pixels (in my experience, YMMV!)

As you are looking for 'large' personally I would be looking at a 30-32" monitor. On a desk , that is still pretty big!

Stu.

[Moroccomoose]

I don't have it at the maximum 4K resolution though as the fonts are tiny, so I have it at a few notches down from the full 4K resolution. It is a 40incher.

I think it is possible to maintain the screen's native resolution , but increase the font sizes and icons in your OS. That wpuld yeild a further improvement as the TV would not need to scale anything. I believe windows has settings for just this purpose.

Stu.

[csarami@ncsu.edu]

I think I can have it as large as 55" looking at the recommended viewing distances.

[Sam Spoons]

Beware of going too big or you'll find yourself having to refocus too frequently, at least that's what I found though YMMV.

[csarami@ncsu.edu]

Thank you Sam, I will think of that. Maybe I go with 40+ instead.

I see Gibbons on the large TV. I just asked him about it.

[AlasdairEaston]

This is timely. I've just got myself a big 50" 4K TV to use specifically as my monitor in the studio. There did seem to be some pitfalls so I spent a bit of time doing my homework before taking the plunge. I was going to start a thread here about it because I saw so many questions on-line from people looking to do the same thing.

Maybe my own scenario is too specific for many but I'll lay it out here. It'll hopefully help some folks.

My old set up was 2 monitors, a 24" and a 27" (neither bought specifically for their DAW job) so the two different sizes was a bit awkward. I knew I wanted a single large screen but I didn't want to scale up the screen contents. I wanted the fonts, buttons, etc to be around the same size on the new screen. I just wanted more space to work with.

Also, I'm on Reaper, and running with many plugins from all different makers, some of which allow their GUI's to be re-sized and some that don't allow that.

Reaper itself has some scaling it can do (apparently) based on your screen size and resolution, but based on the reading I did, this seemed like a sticky area. A bit of a lottery with so many factors affecting whether it all worked out right for any given set up. I really wanted to avoid all of that.

To avoid a whole set of other potential pitfalls, I decided that I was only going to run Windows with no scaling, i.e. at 100%. The whole interaction between Windows scaling, Reaper scaling, support for scaling in different Reaper themes, approaches taken by different plugin makers... it all seemed like a headache with potential showstoppers everywhere. So I decided my rules: Reaper, no scaling; Windows, no scaling.

So my approach was to get a single bigger screen where the pixel size (or pixel density, whichever way you want to think of it) was the same as my current set up. So everything I use on-screen should be about the same size as before but there'd just be a lot more screen space to play with.

This has worked out great. I calculated that a 50" 4K display would give me that result. And my sums must have been about right. I used this site to do the numbers: https://www.sven.de/dpi/

Old set up:
2 screens, each running at 1920x1200 on 24". Pixels per inch (PPI)=94.34

New set up: 1 screen running at 3840x2160 (that's 4K) on 50". PPI=88.12

So the pixels on the new screen are just a touch larger than the old set up. Fine by me.

As to overall dimensions, the new screen is as wide as the two old screens put together. It's about twice as high though, so I've roughly doubled my screen space.

The text is all crisp, detailed and very readable. Slightly better than the old set up. So far, Reaper works flawlessly, the plugins all work flawlessly and everything seems the way it should. Phew. It's early days so I might find some wrinkles but all looks good so far.

Having all that space is phenomenal. I can have the Reaper Arrange View and Mixer View both visible simultaneously, each showing more than 40 tracks on that one screeen with everything to hand, including FX inserts, sends, etc.

The screen itself sits neatly between my speakers, just slightly behind the plane of their front edges. It's about 1 metre from me if I sit up, and more if I sit back. It looks luxuriously huge. Not at all daunting, which was my worry. Perhaps it's because the text is all the same familiar size it always has been. If the fonts were massive then I think I'd be shrinking away from it, like it was shouting at me. Maybe think of it like using a sheet of A3 paper rather than a sheet of A5. Plenty room to work.

There are important technical things to watch out for though regarding the screen. I chose a Sony Bravia KD50X80JU because it ticked all the keys boxes and dodged, I hope, all the pitfalls.

- Chroma sub-sampling. If you're going to use your screen as a monitor then it has to do 4:4:4 chroma sub-sampling at the resolution and refresh rate you need. This is to make sure text is readable. This post is going to be too long already, so maybe Google "chroma subsampling" to find out more. The website "rtings" seems to have a lot of good info on this sort of stuff. In fact, here's a link: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/chroma-subsampling

- OLED screens are prone to "burn-in" apparently, so aren't too good for computer monitors. So if you have the same static image on the screen a lot (like the Reaper tool bar, for example, always in the same place) then the screen starts to show a ghost image of that permanently, even when it should be showing some else, or nothing.

- Input lag. This can be a real problem. This means a delay between moving your mouse and the mouse pointer moving. Make sure there's a "games mode" or "graphics mode" on your screen that cuts this. I couldn't have worked with the lag. I'm using "graphics mode" on my Sony screen. It works a charm. Interestingly "game mode" on mine looked terrible which had me in a panic until I found graphics mode.

- Your graphics card or onboard graphics capability and motherboard. I have an intel i9 9900K with no graphics card, so I'm using the onboard graphics and the motherboard is an ASUS something (Z390?). It has HDMI and Displayport outputs but can only support 4K @ 60Hz on the Displayport output, so that's what I'm using. A new cable was required for me - Displayport to HDMI.

- And as for cables, make sure it can support at least 18Gbps if you want 4K at 60Hz.

- The above also means I think that you need your screen's HDMI input ports to be at a certain level, I think HDMI 2.0 for 4K at 60Hz. I don't think you need 2.1 but maybe better check.

In fact, I'm no tech guru, just a guy who had to do some legwork to make sure he was happy that what he was buying would work. So take all this as "useful info to be looked into" rather than an authoritative "how to" reference guide. I'd hate to talk someone into buying a set up that doesn't work for them.

So, there might be somethings I've missed, and it's amazing how little manufacturers document about the *exact* facilities of their products, but I'm glad I did the research. It's only been a few days of use so far, and maybe I've still to find some problems, but I'm absolutely loving it!

Sorry for the long post but it was a long journey of research till I bought mine. If this helps shorten the journey for others then I'm happy.

Cheers,
Alasdair.

[jimjazzdad]

Thanks for a great write-up Alasdair! I'm bookmarking it for future reference, For when I change to a larger monitor.

[OneWorld]

Thanks for a great write-up Alasdair! I'm bookmarking it for future reference, For when I change to a larger monitor.

I second that. This 'article' by Alasdair reminds me yet again why the SOS forums are my go to source of info - concise, informed, to the point but comprehensive. If fact I don't think I would buy anything musical and/or associated with music making, without consulting SOS first

[csarami@ncsu.edu]

This is timely.

Thank you so much, Alasdair. You did a great job helping me and many others. I guess will go with 50 same TV also.