Why don't more people use Tracktion Waveform?

[apoclypse]

I haven't had the chance to play with Waveform but I was watching some videos on the product and it seems to have a lot of cool features and ideas. Why isn't the DAW used more?

[NAD]

Honestly I think they were just late to the game in an over-saturated market. There were already plenty of great options before they came on the scene so I reckon many were already happy with the DAW they were using.

Also some (like me) might still have a bad taste in their mouth from the previous incarnation of Tracktion being abandoned.

[telecharge]

Why isn't the DAW used more?

See your signature.

Seriously though, it became too costly for me to update once they started charging more.

[pdxindy]

I haven't had the chance to play with Waveform but I was watching some videos on the product and it seems to have a lot of cool features and ideas. Why isn't the DAW used more?

I used to use it... but on Mac, it was always unstable since like v2. Because it was cheap, I kept upgrading, would try it out, it would crash a few times in the first hour, then I would drop it until the next version came out. Maybe 3 versions ago I stopped trying cause the upgrade costs went up too much for me to keep upgrading and never using it due to stability issues.

[antic604]

Honestly I think they were just late to the game in an over-saturated market. There were already plenty of great options before they came on the scene so I reckon many were already happy with the DAW they were using.

They're at v11. Didn't Studio One or Bitwig appear much later and somehow managed to be more succesful?

[jonljacobi]

I bought v10. In the end, I just found the interface somewhat inefficient. It also crashed a lot on macOS.

[syntonica]

I liked Tracktion, but it was buggy. I could never get automation to bounce correctly. It would work for a second or two and then completely cut out. I tried Waveform and I no longer cared at all for the interface. It was just too weird and fussy with all the focus being on the right-hand side of the screen and fifty zillion tiny pointy blocks. There's just too much going on in that small space now. I rarely had crashing on macOS, but I mostly used a couple toy projects that I used to compare DAWs.

On the plus side, it has the best freezing of any DAW I've found where you basically place markers in the effect chain as to where the freeze is to occur!. Working with MIDI was quite nice once you got the hang of the piano roll. IIRC, you could also build reusable effect chains. It's been awhile since I got that deeply into it.

[apoclypse]

Honestly I think they were just late to the game in an over-saturated market. There were already plenty of great options before they came on the scene so I reckon many were already happy with the DAW they were using.

They're at v11. Didn't Studio One or Bitwig appear much later and somehow managed to be more succesful?

Yep. That's why I find it interesting. They've been around for a while yet they never had the traction (pun intended) that newer DAWs seemed to have gathered. I've never used it but on paper it looks like has some pretty cool things going on. We still use technologies developed by their developers like JUCE and their upcoming plugin format SOUL seems pretty cool so they have technical chops, it's just odd that even Reaper gets mentioned more. Waveform is just as crossplatfom as Bitwig so you would at least think the Linux crowd would talk about it more as well.

[syntonica]

Oh, forgot to mention that it got stalled in Mackie-land for some time which probably prevented a wider acceptance.

[Blaster]

The UI doesn't really work for me and it was quite unstable a few versions ago.

I do like the featureset though. I think that if you like the UI and if it is stable for you, it's probably one of the best DAWs on offer.

[ralfrobert]

Just one word ... unstable.

[chk071]

Hated the GUI. Passed.

[bk]

I like Waveform 11 for smaller projects. It's been pretty stable for me. My problem with it is with large projects like a live show recorded in multitrack, it gets bogged down trying to redraw the waveforms. If you try to play a section that the waveforms hasn't rendered yet, it will stutter and glitch. And it might take 20-30 minutes to visually render all the waveforms.

These projects are maybe 28 tracks, and 2-3hours long, so they are huge projects, but Reaper handles them like a champ.

[fese]

a) how do you know Tracktion isn’t “used more”?? How do you quantify that?
b) a shiny YouTube video is something different than using the software in real life projects, where you might hit limitations or workflow issues
c) personally I guess is that most people don’t really like switching DAWs unless really necessary, because it involves a lot of unproductive time learning new workflows. That leaves new users starting out, and there competition is high.

[antic604]

Honestly I think they were just late to the game in an over-saturated market. There were already plenty of great options before they came on the scene so I reckon many were already happy with the DAW they were using.

They're at v11. Didn't Studio One or Bitwig appear much later and somehow managed to be more succesful?

Other than that, I really dislike the GUI - huge single-colour, flat surfaces vs. small, anonymous rows & columns of buttons all look confused and very unprofessional: