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What Is the Future of the DAW?

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Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#31

Post by matjus »

DAWs will need to refocus on managing recordings of live performances -- young kids are starting guitar bands again, and in a few years I think we will enter yet another period where electronic sounds are out of fashion.

I'd also like to see more music creation nuts & bolts built into DAWs, like integrated lyrics, a quick way to shuffle pieces of a song like "bridge" and "verse", visualizations of key center shifts, chord builders and so on. A lot of that stuff is out there but it's definitely an afterthought.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#32

Post by roblh »

kid64 wrote: post #27
roblh wrote: post #10

DAW version control is one of my dreams. If I could have a really tight git equivalent for reaper projects, it’d be so cool. Plugins are, as usual, the biggest barrier there. Doesn’t seem like there will ever be a good way to deal with different people having completely different plugin collections. Unless someone makes “Netflix but for plugins” or something. The other thing I saw the other day that I thought was coo…

Sounds like you're talking about both version control and project portability, which are different concerns. But with respect to version control, many systems like Cubase use XML project files. As long as you don't physically delete any audio from your disk, basic version control on your machine using git should be possible.

It’s true that you can dump a project into a git repo, but the real problem is diffing. It would be pretty miserable trying to reconcile any significant changes or conflicts. What I think would be cool is a tool for auditioning and merging specific changes that’s backed by git somehow. I’m not really sure what it would look like though.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#33

Post by barkingcat »

DAW innovation will only come with inventing new algorithms.

There needs to be significant number theory and computer science algorithmic work related to sound and how we represent sound with data.

GPU's currently cannot work with sound data in the processing chain, and multicore is basically just used to scale horizontally (ie to have more plugins or instruments)

New algorithms are needed to scale out audio processing, as well as make use of new hardware types (for example, using the gpu)

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#34

Post by _9hey »

A DAW is an all-in-one tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing, and more. There are several factors that make this coupling necessary - the high performance requirements of DSP, the lack of better standards, and subject matter expertise.

To innovate in the space, we need an ecosystem of interoperable tools which can be used seamlessly to perform the same tasks reliably.

I think of the paradigm shift between apache http server and nodejs. Does the server run the code or does the code run the server?

If DAWs switched to the nodejs model, what would be the entry point?

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#35

Post by maroonblazer »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #5

TFA starts down an important path - identifying different categories of users - but doesn't really get this quite right IMO. There are (at least) four categories of DAW users: 1. Professionals who are being paid to make music, and for whom time is essentially money. Tools that speed up the production of that music are both financially valuable to them, and also make their overall lives easier (if done right). 2. Musi…

I like your taxonomy. I fall into #2.

Logic Pro X is the DAW I'm most familiar with and while not "AI", it's "Drummer" plug-in is uncannily good. So good it's indistinguishable from AI. I want more of that. Give me "Bass Player" and "Keyboardist" and "Guitarist", etc, with all the options that "Drummer" currently has, to select style/genre, kit sound, etc.

Another wish list item: Let me point the DAW to a 4/8/16 bar section of multitrack original music I've created, and suggest n number of directions to take it, spitting out each of the individual instruments on their own tracks, so I can mix/match/edit. My imagination is limited; that's where I'd like AI to help.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#36

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

roblh wrote: post #32
kid64 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're talking about both version control and project portability, which are different concerns. But with respect to version control, many systems like Cubase use XML project files. As long as you don't physically delete any audio from your disk, basic version control on your machine using git should be possible.

It’s true that you can dump a project into a git repo, but the real problem is diffing. It would be pretty miserable trying to reconcile any significant changes or conflicts. What I think would be cool is a tool for auditioning and merging specific changes that’s backed by git somehow. I’m not really sure what it would look like though.

In the mid-late 2000's, Ardour (and a couple of other DAWs) had support for branching undo/redo histories.

We (Ardour) abandoned it, because the universal experience of non-programmers was that they had no idea how to even begin to use this sort of feature. The majority of DAW users don't come ready to deal with the complexities of a branching workflow, or even a desire to learn it.

There is at least one band out of Madison, WI that uses/used git with Ardour during the height of the pandemic to facilitate remote collaboration on new pieces. They gave a talk (and played) at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague last year.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#37

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

te_chris wrote: post #29

How can you write this article only interviewing a bunch of startups? Tim Exile is a very interesting and visionary dude, but without serious contributions from Ableton or Apple on the DAW side this article feels a bit listless - none of these others are real players in the space.

You might want to consider what that sounds like if you rewind it to say, 2002. Ableton is a small startup in Berlin. The dominant DAWs include several that don't even do MIDI. Apple hasn't yet acquired Logic by buying Emagic.

Why would expect the next steps to come from "real players in the space", when the previous next steps did not?

Look at how quickly Presonus managed to build Studio One to a crazy-level of credibility (it helps that they hired someone who had already done it twice).

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#39

Post by Stinky_Lisa »

matjus wrote: post #31

DAWs will need to refocus on managing recordings of live performances -- young kids are starting guitar bands again, and in a few years I think we will enter yet another period where electronic sounds are out of fashion. I'd also like to see more music creation nuts & bolts built into DAWs, like integrated lyrics, a quick way to shuffle pieces of a song like "bridge" and "verse", visualizations of key center shifts,…

PreSonus Studio One has what you're describing. Im switching from logic pro to a new DAW and so far studio one has the most of my boxes checked.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#40

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

thegagne wrote: post #9
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #5

TFA starts down an important path - identifying different categories of users - but doesn't really get this quite right IMO. There are (at least) four categories of DAW users: 1. Professionals who are being paid to make music, and for whom time is essentially money. Tools that speed up the production of that music are both financially valuable to them, and also make their overall lives easier (if done right). 2. Musi…

Any recommendations for #3? Particularly with low barrier of entry for kids? Something you can use a midi keyboard and a mic with?

Ableton has like a 3 month trial and honestly the stuff it comes with out of the box is way more than enough to determine if you want to continue with such a hobby or if it's not something you'd be interested in long term. The tutorials are plenty and easy to follow as well.

I use Reaper as well, but it takes a while to get that "useable" for modern(ish) music production. The benefit is there's plenty of free virtual instruments/VSTs to download. All of them have downsides though as does reaper itself. In Ableton I can make an EDM track relatively fast given the out of the box presets - especially synth drums - but in Reaper using a free VST like HELM makes it kind of a pain to use. YMMV.

No matter what you choose, I do HIGHLY recommend downloading Spitfire LABS though - the free instrument packages are massive and highly customizable. It's truly amazing.

Here's some good VSTs for Reaper:

https://plugins4free.com/instruments/ (when the site works)

https://web.archive.org/web/20181203014924/http://sonic.supe...

https://guitarclan.com/best-free-vst-plugins/

EDIT: oh also trying to master a track in Reaper with free plugins is frankly pretty bad for a beginner vs Ableton's preset limiters and other utilities. The Cuckoos plugins are messy to deal with in my opinion.

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