Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is the Future of the DAW?

djmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 223 posts

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#121

Post by criddell »

luwatobil wrote: post #21
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?

I always find GarageBand to be an easy-to-pick-up app that can be used to generate fun sonic blurbs in a short amount of time. It has its own limitations, but the lack of complexity contributes to its ease of use.

When I was trying to figure out something on GarageBand I ended up on YouTube looking for tutorials and was astounded to see what people are doing with GarageBand on their phone. They play the DAW itself like an instrument and build songs in realtime. It was very humbling to see.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#122

Post by criddell »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #17
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?

Sadly, its the group I pay the least attention to. I suspect that today or next week, something browser based might be the best choice, but I can't tell you what. Apologies.

Latency matters a lot. I can’t see a browser-based DAW ever being very compelling.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#123

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

pdntspa wrote: post #105

To be honest, I really like existing tools and workflows and I don't really want that to change. > Open a DAW from the year 2000 and it’s highly likely you’ll recognise the vast majority of the features — both functionally and visually — from any DAW you might use today. This assertion that "old is bad" really, really needs to die. Change for the sake of change is bad. I don't see why all these new innovations can't…

Having started music production only in the late 2010s, I was honestly shocked to see just how similar DAWs from even the 90s were to the current existing workflows. It feels like you could teleport a producer from a few decades ago into the modern day music software iteration and they would figure things out pretty quickly.

Of course things are far, far more convenient and faster nowadays, but the fundamental paradigms are mostly the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OaBkvwx7Hw

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#124

Post by gnulinux »

pdntspa wrote: post #105

To be honest, I really like existing tools and workflows and I don't really want that to change. > Open a DAW from the year 2000 and it’s highly likely you’ll recognise the vast majority of the features — both functionally and visually — from any DAW you might use today. This assertion that "old is bad" really, really needs to die. Change for the sake of change is bad. I don't see why all these new innovations can't…

Really??? Uh, it's probably my fault but as a hobbyist composer (day job software engineer) I can personally say that tools I use absolutely and utterly suck. They're immensely buggy. My workflow includes:

- LilyPond for writing the final notation

- MuseScore 4 for playing around, MuseScore 3 for playing MIDI

- REAPER as DAW, SFZ plugin for midi soundfonts

- Audacity for processing WAV files

- music21 python lib if I need to programmatically process MIDI (which I commonly do). My scripts using this lib.

- Kdenlive for video processing

- Most importantly: my piano Roland FP-30X

Now among these the only one I don't hate is FP-30X. That piano is fucking amazing, it sounds and feels great.

Kdenlive is also not terrible but I don't do a lot of video processing. Just basic notation videos for YouTube.

Everything else is incredibly, incredibly buggy. MuseScore 4 is thrash, almost every interaction I have with it exposes some bug. REAPER is usually fine but there are pretty annoying bugs when it comes to MIDI import/export that involves time signature change.

My workflow is so dogshit that last month I decided either I'll write my minimalist tiny notation/DAW tool or reconsider this hobby. So far haven't been able to do anything major but I'm confident I'll invest some time into developing my own tools in late 2023 or early 2024.

I'm glad people like their workflow. Unfortunately my own experience with Linux audio processing has been nothing other than encountering one bug after the other one.

EDIT: Whoops, don't know why I said Ardour. I never used it, I actually meant REAPER. Fixed now.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#125

Post by radlad »

gnulinux wrote: post #124
pdntspa wrote: post #105

To be honest, I really like existing tools and workflows and I don't really want that to change. > Open a DAW from the year 2000 and it’s highly likely you’ll recognise the vast majority of the features — both functionally and visually — from any DAW you might use today. This assertion that "old is bad" really, really needs to die. Change for the sake of change is bad. I don't see why all these new innovations can't…

Really??? Uh, it's probably my fault but as a hobbyist composer (day job software engineer) I can personally say that tools I use absolutely and utterly suck. They're immensely buggy. My workflow includes: - LilyPond for writing the final notation - MuseScore 4 for playing around, MuseScore 3 for playing MIDI - REAPER as DAW, SFZ plugin for midi soundfonts - Audacity for processing WAV files - music21 python lib if I…

> Unfortunately my own experience with Linux audio processing has been nothing other than encountering one bug after the other one.

You kind of buried the lede there...

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#127

Post by scarecrowbob »

pdntspa wrote: post #105

To be honest, I really like existing tools and workflows and I don't really want that to change. > Open a DAW from the year 2000 and it’s highly likely you’ll recognise the vast majority of the features — both functionally and visually — from any DAW you might use today. This assertion that "old is bad" really, really needs to die. Change for the sake of change is bad. I don't see why all these new innovations can't…

More or less, this.

I've worked in a lot of studios with 2" tape or, like Radar or an HD24. In all of those, the engineer had really great chops. Functionally, for most "traditional" (I do a lot of folk, jazz, and country) I just do what they did, and Logic is just a glorified tape machine + mixer + processing.

I am still mostly doing stuff in single takes until I like what I have and then maybe punching in a note or two here and there. It's a really fast way of working. And the old stuff I have is quite good: API/Neve front end, AKG/Schoeps mics, genelecs.... these are all things that have been around a long time, and I am not seeing any benefits there for anything- they are fast and easy to use well without a lot of tweaking.

Like, you could walk into any studio post 1980 and more or less find things will have a 1-1 correspondence to a modern DAW.

There is nothing wrong with those tools, and so I assume folks will keep using them.

However, I can see a couple of areas where I think that smarter tools might help. A big chunk of what I am doing already involves programmed drums, and a smarter "Drummer" in logic would be an improvement.

Also I (and a lot of other folks) aren't super stoked about harmonies sung by one person overdubbing a bunch of lines. I'd be interested in some workflow where I could, like, sing a harmony and it would change my voice in a credible sounding way.

But as far as workflow goes, I really don't need compositional tools- I could do most of my writing tasks with a pencil and notebook.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#128

Post by MrVandemar »

delgaudm wrote: post #110
paulryanrogers wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share your workflow? I've tried using Resolve and Audacity yet it all feels awkward and is painfully slow

I'd be happy too,it's mostly templates: project templates, individual fx presets, fx chain templates for corrections, sweetening and mastering, export/render prsets, filename templates, And lots of keystroke macros that help me speed up my work. Things like specific keystrokes for punch and roll, quick edits and ripple delete. It's an amalgamation of lots of small optimizations. Reaper is also really good at UI custo…

Any pointers on where to start with all that? I can grok Audacity (which is a handy but terribly basic program). When it came to Reaper, I found it very confusing, and never managed to do much with it. My needs are basically voice only.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#129

Post by RockRobotRock »

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”.

In the time it took you to Ctrl+F DAW you could have googled it.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#130

Post by RockRobotRock »

jrm4 wrote: post #106

Feels like "what is the future of the word processor" but with some weird expectation that you're expecting to see leaps and bounds. Look, FWIW, my favorite music making "stack" is - Fruityloops (as in, sure I'll use FL Studio but it was pretty much solid for me when it was called that) - Sony ACID. Still unbeatable to me for quickly layering/previewing multiple tracks of loops - Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition. Still m…

Of course, that's the hook they used to convince artists they need generative AI in their creative process.
Post reply on HN