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What Is the Future of the DAW?

djmag.com

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Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#61

Post by shashasha »

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…

Yeah +1 on version control being a dream. If real, functional version control for any DAW in the manner it sounds like you have in mind exists I will start making music with DAWs again!

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#62

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

barkingcat wrote: post #50
jrajav wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think DAW makers don't already specialize a ton in DSP, algorithms, and concurrency - I can assure you that that's definitely the case, and that innovation and optimization happen at a very healthy pace. There is significant market pressure to run tracks and plugins in a highly optimized way. Several DAWs have a visible CPU-usage meter, and some allow users to directly configure a process isolation model…

Yah these are all well understood, however, you don't get to nuclear reactors without inventing some new math supporting subatomic physics. Saying that audio has "different set of constraints from other types of workloads" and giving up on fundamental algorithm research is just defeatist, throwing in the towel, and frankly really insulting to human advancement. Come on, we need some new algorithms and just saying "wh…

> An imaginary scenario might to to invent an algorithm to convert/transform sound/pressure wave information into another domain, one that is not dependent on serial time, and then do the operations, and then re-convert it back to the time domain that we usually associate with sound processing. Where, within this alternative domain, parallel processing is possible.

We already do this. It's called FFT, which transforms the data from the time domain to the frequency domain. You can, if you want/need to, parallelize frequency domain processing. There's oodles of interesting audio software that does this.

But again, parallel processing is only interesting for speed. And we mostly have plenty of speed these days.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#63

Post by duped »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #58
duped wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple other taxonomy of DAW users that you're ignoring, which are people creating audio content that isn't music.

See my #4 ... but also feel free to expand the taxonomy!

I would say that there's a pair of taxonomies, one being of audio content (social audio, radio, film, multimedia art, music, etc) and one being of the level of user (hobby/beginner, student, pro, academic, etc) and the problem with DAWs are that they generally gravitate towards where the money is, which are pro users in music and film.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#65

Post by dist-epoch »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #40
thegagne wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ableton and Reaper are way too complicated for kids. I'd say they are 14+ software.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#66

Post by squarefoot »

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?

Take a look at Reaper. It's a professional quality tool, but easy enough to get started with for kids too, its license is very friendly and the trial version isn't limited in any way. The Windows version always worked for me under Linux using WINE with very low latency, but they made a Linux port which is great. If you use the Linux port, you may want to use Yabridge to load Windows VSTs in a transparent way.

http://reaper.fm/

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#67

Post by dist-epoch »

taywrobel wrote: post #2

If anyone else is as frustrated as I was with the article mentioning “the DAW” 73 times without defining once what the actual acronym stands for, it’s “Digital Audio Workstation”.

Defining DAW is like defining SQL. If you need the definition, you are definitely not the target audience.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#68

Post by capableweb »

vladsanchez wrote: post #6
taywrobel wrote: post #2

If anyone else is as frustrated as I was with the article mentioning “the DAW” 73 times without defining once what the actual acronym stands for, it’s “Digital Audio Workstation”.

+1 Feels like they don't care who's their readership. Felt like they told me: "If you're not in the industry, Google it." DAW : Digital Audio Workstation https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-a-daw

> +1 Feels like they don't care who's their readership. Felt like they told me: "If you're not in the industry, Google it."

Caring about their readership is exactly what they're doing, just that you happen to not be what they think of when they imagine the typical reader. The typical reader is already into music production and with a 99% certainty know what a DAW is.

I wouldn't expect every tutorial on "Google's Official Android Developer Blog" to explain that "JVM" means Java Virtual Machine, some resources really are for people who already know a bit about the subject area.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#69

Post by jdietrich »

robenkleene wrote: post #22

The umbrella topic to this is one of my favorite topics in all of software and one where strangely we as an industry don't seem to have internalized its lessons: That the right approach to building a software program (like a DAW, NLE, bitmap/vector editor) emerges early. This is why these applications have lifespans measured in decades, and it's extremely rare for a new player to be able offer anything new, different…

DAWs haven't converged on a "best" approach. Most use a traditional linear workflow that's essentially a digital multitrack tape, but Ableton and Bitwig use a clip-based workflow that tends to be better suited to improvisation and live performance.

I think the factor you're missing is path dependence. The approach that becomes dominant isn't necessarily "best", just a stable equilibrium where switching costs are greater than potential benefits for most users. I'm typing this comment on a QWERTY keyboard, but I don't believe for one second that it's the optimal layout - I just can't be bothered to learn Dvorak or Colemak or whatever.

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