I have a cool idea.

[odix]

I want to make a truly modular daw where you can choose your base elements.

You can load the playlist that xhrena designed - and pair it with the sampler tremor designed.

I like the mixer sojoto designed and laid out and love the piano roll X made. Or maybe I will use the piano roll dododo made.

If we could build a basic backend audio API that could route things why couldnt we build an open source community daw that doesnt have to be HARD CODED to decisions that might be regretted later on or design/backend choices within the community that lead to forks; essentially, every component would be a fork but talk to each other. Loopbe1 allows you to route stuff between programs, so this could start out as seperate programs but that just all talk to each other. - allowing you to consolidate everything into a window or two depending on monitors.

I hope im explaining it right.

What do you guys think ?

You would just need the basic elements to get the program up and running. VST host, midi editor, playlist or arranger, mixer, sampler, and whatever else im missing.

X playlist comes with the ability to stretch with zplane, or edit audio directly on the playlist, but Y playlist comes with blah blah blah.

Each piece would be entirely separate and developed separate yet would all talk to a core API which handles the DSP stuff. Kind of like a Reaktor or Pure but for a whole DAW experience.

[jens]

Very cool idea actually - at the very least theoretically!

[imrae]

This is kinda what people are doing with Linux. KXStudio provides "Claudia" which launches and patches together other programs in a saveable/reproducible way. I think it's based on Patchage which some people are still using directly. So you can have Ardour doing audio playback and mixing, other programs sequencing midi, other programs providing fx racks. It makes it easy to do things like insert Pure Data between your midi controller and the sequencer.

The trouble is that it makes doing simple things cumbersome. It's great to make complicated things possible, but it won't take off if you also make simple things hard. Even on Linux it looks like people prefer more integrated DAWs.

[whyterabbyt]

We almost have one of each of all of the main parts as plugins. Its a start I guess.

Bidule provides a modular framework, and there are a couple of alternatives to that. Loomer Architectect will hopefully a complete MIDI and automation sequencing option, but there are various alternatives, from Thesys to RaxNTrax. IL EDison gives you audio clip editing. Mixing is trivial in a modular host anyway.

What's still 'missing' in terms of the typical DAW is some sort of global timeline; in essence that's a very simple linear sequencer for basic triggering of audio/midi/automation clips, but clip launching a la Live isnt technically that far removed from that. There isnt really such a thing with the expected paradigm, though. Even a relatively basic multi-channel tape type-UI plugin would be nice, if it could seamlessly integrate with an audio editor.

Your big problem with a modular solution of that is shunting configuration data around, not audio or MIDI. Presets, settings, events etc. Especially if you want control surfaces and the like to work. When your subsystems are modular, you need to have protocols for those subsystems being able to define what they can and cant do right down to the controls they offer.

[odix]

Yes im guessing it all comes down to a core API to handle everything sort of like the linux kernel. Thanks foe the replies guhs checking out KxStudio along with the frameworks and everything else listed.

It could all be essentially routed to sometjing like ableton link which keeps midi in sync. I think this is a real possibility.