I wonder (and admire) what DaVinvi Resolve is using for it's UI. It seems very polished but is also very performant and is even cross platform.
They're using Qt. All the Qt libraries are there inside the app's package on macOS.
Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
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Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#72I don't know much (or anything, really) about DAW development, but as a Reaper user I know you can make a cross-platform DAW that performs extremely well on very little ressources, including displaying many instances of all the things the author is talking about (spectrograms, audio files, zoomable midi clips, etc.) in real time, on a Raspberry Pi, while playing audio and driving physical synthesis plugins.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#73Isn't Bitwig using a C++ backend with a Java frontend? It it were me I'd probably choose between biting the bullet and going all rust, or if I was planning on interop anyway, then go for something a bit more high level like AvaloniaUI (C#) or a thin java solution on top like Bitwig or the Jetbrains platforms.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about the performance but web is THE most capable platform that itself is cross platform. As for performance, text editor with dozens of plugins and syntax highlight is no joke either and I have no issues on my MacBook Air with only two cores from few years ago - abandoned Jet Brains IDEs for a web based text editor (VScode) and works pretty well even on large code bases.
I think you have failed to comprehend what a DAW actually needs to do/render, quickly.
You're not wrong to assume so. I think I should have said that minus the DAW and otherwise generally speaking for let's say 95% of the use cases, the web is pretty OK.
So instead of editing the comment above, I'd agree with your underlying point about DAW and complexity of the UI. It is no trivial.
As a backend engineer, the progress on web platform certainly is dazzling from Web Assembly to Web GPU, Flex, Grid, Container queries and lately view transitions.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#75I wonder (and admire) what DaVinvi Resolve is using for it's UI. It seems very polished but is also very performant and is even cross platform.
They're using Qt. All the Qt libraries are there inside the app's package on macOS.
Amazing. Didn't know Qt is so capable in the right hands. Doesn't even look like typical Qt app.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#76Its weird to see the impressions of someone who has apparently never used the equipment used in music production trying to talk intelligently about said devices. So many incorrect assumptions its really painful to read as someone aquainted with audio engineering. Interesting window into how the devs see it nonetheless.
It seems like the level of experience of the average poster here has been decreasing steadily over time.
I'm sure there's a clever term for it, but a lot of developers (and this is probably a timeless thing) think they can dive into any industry and make a difference, or see things from a different point of view and therefore better.
I mean it has a basis in reality, loads of people here will have joined companies that were years behind, companies in new industries. Myself I've gone from cable TV to investment banking to public transit to B2B e-commerce to telcoms to the energy industry, but nowhere did I assume to think I knew better. Not when it came to their main industry anyway, software development and practices, sure, that's kind of my jam.
When it comes down to it, every job is just data in, data out, localization and date / number formatting. And trying to get my colleagues to not overcomplicate things, like come on, it's just a simple list view, if you're bored by that you're on the wrong assignment.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#77Slint dev here. I'm a bit disappointed to see that Slint is considered a non-starter. In fact, one of our users is currently working on exactly that (a VST plugin for an audio application) and they are about to release it very soon. Unfortunately, I can't share a link until it's officially released. The author seems to dismiss declarative UI without explaining why. From my perspective, declarative is the best way to…
Do you have plan for wgpu?
We're working on interop, so that when you select Slint's Skia renderer on top of Vulkan or Metal, you can import a wgpu texture if wgpu's Metal or Vulkan adapter was chosen.
What kind of feature set do you need?
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#78What we need is a AAA game where the main character fiddles around on an in-game DAW in some abandoned recording studio to unlock a cool zombie-blasting weapon. That will guarantee that any widget redrawing therein happens as efficiently and responsive as possible. Maybe put it in the first level so that audio engineers can easily get to it and just hang out in that part of the game to do their work, glitch free.
I do feel like there should be more crossover between video game & GUI development; most game engines are crossplatform nowadays, GUIs in games are nothing new (and probably reinvented all the time), and everything is GPU rendered already. I've yet to see any desktop app that isn't a video game built in e.g. Unreal or Unity. I did see a colleague build a website widget (iirc it was about placing furniture or a TV in…
I have seen a handful of desktop software apps built in Godot over the years. For example, https://bauxite.itch.io/bitmapflow is an app which I've gotten value out of built in Godot.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#79> Ideally I want to support loading user-generated themes. I really hope this just means "alternative colour palettes". Otherwise they're about to make one of the hardest UI programming tasks I can imagine exponentially harder. I've never understood the passion for themeability. It's like going into a restaurant and expecting to participate in the cooking of your meal. As much nostalgia as I have for the heyday of Wi…
Completely agree. I'd even go so far as to say that beyond pure accessibility and compat concerns (color blind modes or high contrast erc) even that is going too far with customization.
Re: Digital Audio Workstation Front End Development Struggles
#80> This performance is not a problem if the app is small or the app already redraws every frame like a video game. Seems to me like immediate mode UIs were dismissed rather too quickly. Why not update a DAW UI like a video game? It has similar realtime requirements.
Yeah, immediate mode seems like a perfect fit for a DAW. I see a lot of common misconceptions in the article. It seems like this is mostly an opinionated list of hypothetical issues imagined by the author, not something backed by a lot of data gathered from implementation experience.