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What Is the Future of the DAW?

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Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#151

Post by tonyarkles »

barkingcat wrote: post #33

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 processi…

> GPU's currently cannot work with sound data in the processing chain

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/on-demand/session/gtcspring22-s...

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

What kind of "scale out" are you referring to here if not "to have more plugins or instruments"?

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#152

Post by somat »

dist-epoch wrote: post #65
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't undersell kids. If they get interested in something they can learn it scary quick.

But having said that, sometimes the thing that grabs the interest is recording your voice in the windows built in recorder then playing it back backwards. Try audicity?

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#153

Post by girthbrooks »

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…

I'm right there with you. I once tried managing ableton projects via git. Was a dream from a simplicity standpoint but was not effective in the long run. I don't remember why it didn't end up working well but I abandoned it shortly after trying it the first time. Something like this in modern DAWs would be incredible.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#154

Post by ta988 »

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…

There is bitwig that is much more comparable to Live in term of features.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#155

Post by jrm4 »

tomduncalf wrote: post #113
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…

> I don't know why Audacity remains so popular, it's way clunkier than the above Presumably because it’s free, but I’m with you on the clunkiness. The UI looks very dated. I can recommend OcenAudio, which is free though not open source, and for me offers just the right level of functionality in a clean user interface. It’s very similar to how I remember the old versions of Cool Edit pre-Pro, which I thought were amaz…

Yup, was going to mention it, though it was crashy for me last time I used it.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#156

Post by jrm4 »

MrVandemar wrote: post #133
tomduncalf wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why Audacity remains so popular, it's way clunkier than the above Presumably because it’s free, but I’m with you on the clunkiness. The UI looks very dated. I can recommend OcenAudio, which is free though not open source, and for me offers just the right level of functionality in a clean user interface. It’s very similar to how I remember the old versions of Cool Edit pre-Pro, which I thought were amaz…

> The UI looks very dated. If the UI is clunky to use, that's something that needs to be fixed. If the UI works okay, but only looks dated, that's ... fine and there's every good reason to leave it as it is . Why? Because altering the look of the UI is strongly coupled with altering the usability of the UI. This leads to regressions in usability, making the product "look better" but "work worse". Leave things alone.…

Yeah, I didn't just mean in looks though; e.g. Audition and Ocenaudio behave more like, e.g. a normal text box or other "editing space in a computer." Cutting/Pasting/Trimming etc are easier and more intuitive, with fewer clicks and less thinking about tracks and such.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#157

Post by extrn »

I’ve been working on a next gen DAW for a few years and this article misses all of my priorities. AI will encourage mindless replication; instead modern tooling should be analytical, precise, deliberate, flexible, and have layered complexity.

My priorities are more in line with turning music production into an integrated and interactive development environment using modern design principles. Sub-modular capability, A/B testing, git integration, non-local collaboration, scientific visualization, notebook style experimentation, integrated synth build / play, web embedded optional interface, social sharing & tutorials, polyglot open source interface (primarily Rust), programmable behavior / macros, higher order signal dependency optimization, algorithmic mastering, targeted oversampling, creative process reusability, etc. You can solve the plugin issue by just synchronizing the output audio by the user that has it installed.

Quality music production is an opague art and everything is way more daunting than it needs to be. Most producers just mess around until it sounds good and that gets people stuck in a local maximum of clarity. If it takes too long to experiment then you won’t get through the effort of trial for understanding. I have spent 15 years building tools as a research quant dev and also a dj (Extrn). There is a huge unaddressed gap in the audio space and huge barriers to entry in accessibility and cognitive burden.

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#158

Post by ta988 »

schemescape wrote: post #75
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?

Related question: any suggestions on what to try next after LMMS? I was planning to try Reaper or FL Studio. My biggest complaints with LMMS are: doesn’t support VST3, can’t see notes for multiple tracks at the same time (although I saw a “ghost notes” patch someone was working on for this scenario).

On Linux, try Ardour (Free) and Bitwig (between $99 and $399-ish but they have a 30day trial)

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#159

Post by dredmorbius »

delgaudm wrote: post #131
MrVandemar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, of course! But, this will be a thing that I hope doesn't get flagged. I have a totally free course for configuring reaper for VO at academy.boothjunkie.com. it goes through all my initial optimizations for reaper. If you're comfortable with your VST setup, this will go a long way in getting you started, and you can incorporate your VO chain. If you want to take this out of HN and talk more specifically, my webs…

NB: occasional self-promotion, particularly in context and with an appropriate resource is more than fine on HN. The fact that the course is free should count for something as well:

It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Re: What Is the Future of the DAW?

#160

Post by paulmd »

girthbrooks wrote: post #153
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…

I'm right there with you. I once tried managing ableton projects via git. Was a dream from a simplicity standpoint but was not effective in the long run. I don't remember why it didn't end up working well but I abandoned it shortly after trying it the first time. Something like this in modern DAWs would be incredible.

if files are getting managed by blobs, git doesn't really scale well with that since it stores diffs.

`bup` notionally does this a lot better, or git-lfs.

https://github.com/bup/bup

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bup/bup/main/DESIGN

https://git-lfs.com/

git really needs textual representation for any kind of meaningful commit, and binaries totally break that.

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