Tracktion Software

jabe · Post by **jabe** » Sun May 13, 2018 8:14 pm

Only an 8/10, due to it not being a "generational leap" like last year's update. W9 is, however, described as "a unique, fantastic DAW at a great price". "Brilliant, innovative DAW" also appears.

scalawag · Post by **scalawag** » Mon May 14, 2018 12:19 am

8/10 is not that bad. And yes, Waveform is really great!!! I moved from Ableton to Waveform. Until now the only big issue is some plugins crashing it. Ableton is far more stable. But the workflow and the possibilities are really awesome! They really need to focus on bugs and crashes!!!!!

jochicago · Post by **jochicago** » Mon May 14, 2018 1:12 am

Yeah: bugs, crashes and performance capacity vs other DAWs. Otherwise a great DAW with tremendous potential. I think on a good sale, and once it emerges out of beta stage, Waveform is good competition against any DAW.

About Pricing
BTW, I bought Studio One at less than $200 as a crossgrade. I got a tremendous amount of value for that purchase, more plugins than W9, solid instruments, and for me a truly robust DAW that can handle about twice the processing load as W9 (plus better integration with plugin brands like Waves and IK).

This is just a personal opinion, but I think W9 has a price problem. W9 bills itself as the most affordable DAW. At the stated $259 it is only about 35% cheaper than Studio One. I think W9 is not at the same value level. On my PC, S1 is able to handle twice as many tracks and plugins, plus it is basically bug-less and 100% stable, and no issues with stuff like Waves plugins. Overall, that stuff so far is worth more than the current price difference, without even getting into S1 winning in plugins (for instance the IR guitar cabs and the Fat Channel XT) and overall feature set (like the mixer being rock-solid vs W9's still under development).

I still have W9 on my shopping list, but with a checklist of conditions to trigger the purchase (emerge out of Beta, correctly load my licensed plugins, improved performance, good sale day). I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like to see W9 be more competitive in price in order to continue to sell quickly and grow its community. IMO It has a way to go before it can compete with something like S1 at only a 35% difference in cost.

Also, as a software developer, my feeling is that Tracktion needs to add a couple of developers to the W9 team. I think S1 has the right balance and seems like Tracktion is using about half the amount of developers (I don't know the details so this is just my own guesstimate). DAW software is complex and Tracktion is aiming high with support for 3 environments (win, mac, linux). I feel the running bug list is too long and too stretched out in time. This projects needs more hands on deck.

I say all this with full support for Tracktion and the W9 team. I think they are building something good here, and I look forward to the future.

dRowAudio · Post by **dRowAudio** » Mon May 14, 2018 8:22 am

Where are you getting that W9 is only in beta? We have a current beta in testing (v9.1.9) but the first non beta release was back on 02/24/18 and the last full release, 9.1.1 was in 04/6/18.

We almost always do rounds of private then public betas when doing new releases and W9 is not different in this regard.

scalawag · Post by **scalawag** » Mon May 14, 2018 8:57 am

dRowAudio wrote:Where are you getting that W9 is only in beta? We have a current beta in testing (v9.1.9) but the first non beta release was back on 02/24/18 and the last full release, 9.1.1 was in 04/6/18.

We almost always do rounds of private then public betas when doing new releases and W9 is not different in this regard.

I think that what jochicago means is that there are long standing bugs that were never fixed, and so he consider W9 as always being in beta, until it is fully stable and optimized.

gavindi · Post by **gavindi** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:06 am

Trawling through this forum for long standing issues sounds like trying to find a piece of hay in a needle stack.

I'm curious to know what some of these bugs are....
Just so I can watch out for any gotchas.

Trancit · Post by **Trancit** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:18 am

jochicago wrote:
This is just a personal opinion, but I think W9 has a price problem. W9 bills itself as the most affordable DAW. At the stated $259 it is only about 35% cheaper than Studio One. I think W9 is not at the same value level. On my PC, S1 is able to handle twice as many tracks and plugins, plus it is basically bug-less and 100% stable, and no issues with stuff like Waves plugins. Overall, that stuff so far is worth more than the current price difference, without even getting into S1 winning in plugins (for instance the IR guitar cabs and the Fat Channel XT) and overall feature set (like the mixer being rock-solid vs W9's still under development).

If you compare them you have to see both sides of the medal...
While S1 is the better overall traditional DAW, it lacks of many useful features where Waveform excels...
- the pattern generator is absolutely unique in the DAW market
- Racks are much more powerful as S1´s multi ones
- Saving multiple tracks/clips in one file (only Bitwig can compete here)
- flexible freeze points
- sending tracks/plugins from and to everywhere (with multiple targets)
- Macro controls
- multiple browsers with synced preview/drag n drop
- precomputed clip FX including plugins
- insert midi plugins anywhere into the chain
- in the mixer of S1, outputs of multi out plugins always stay together... no chance to sort them different
- no peak value readout on seperate channels in S1 (never understood that)
- Autoslicing a loop from the playlist into Multisampler
- Drag n drop audio from the playlist to everywhere including VSTi
- Track/Preset/Plugin tagging
... plus much more

You can get all this funcionality for starting price of $109,- ... for this price you get Studio One artist, which neither includes Melodyne nor VST support...

So, there are some points for Waveform...

jochicago wrote:Also, as a software developer, my feeling is that Tracktion needs to add a couple of developers to the W9 team. I think S1 has the right balance and seems like Tracktion is using about half the amount of developers (I don't know the details so this is just my own guesstimate). DAW software is complex and Tracktion is aiming high with support for 3 environments (win, mac, linux). I feel the running bug list is too long and too stretched out in time. This projects needs more hands on deck.

...

They are one and a half developers for Waveform...
I guess Presonus got some more for working on S1

For this amount of working power I find it amazing what they came up with...
It would be very interesting to see, what they would be able to do with more developer power though...

Nevertheless I have to agree with you about the stability of W9 and pace of bugfixing...
Somehow it seems to be necessary for them business wise atm to spit out new features instead of making the programm more stable/respectfully finetune existing features...

That´s a pity but understandable to a certain amount... still hoping they do not forget the other side though... i.e. Racks do not compensate latency for more than one plugin or the Multisampler being halfbaken for not being able to edit multiple layers at the same time, which is in general the opposite of a "Multi" sampler

gavindi · Post by **gavindi** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:28 am

I haven't done much with racks yet so I'll take that as something to keep an eye on when I get around to using them.

As for the multi-sampler, geez it's only just made it debut! That's hardly long standing.... I bet those few niggles with it will be improved in W10.

I bought W8 but only toyed with it. It's was the multi-sampler in W9 that gave me the impetus to switch over from Renoise.

chico.co.uk · Post by **chico.co.uk** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:43 am

Have to admit, I reach for a massive fistful of salt, when a "software developer" describes *any* DAW as "basically bug-less and 100% stable".

jochicago · Post by **jochicago** » Mon May 14, 2018 8:49 pm

chico.co.uk wrote:Have to admit, I reach for a massive fistful of salt, when a "software developer" describes *any* DAW as "basically bug-less and 100% stable".

Lots of quotes and asterisks there, so I don't know "how to reply" *.

This is what I said:
This is just a personal opinion [...] On my PC, S1 is able to handle twice as many tracks and plugins, plus it is basically bug-less and 100% stable.

For clarity, I have tested T6, T7 and W9 for a few dozen hours and crashed it at least 10 times plus run into a couple dozen bugs and feature problems that make it feel unpolished. Many of those have been talked about on this forum (stability issues, CPU issues, unpolished mixer, plugin problems, export problems, track freezing, track folders).

I have tested Studio One 3.5 for a couple dozen hours and I haven't crashed it once, nor found anything that felt like a bug or a feature problem. In fact, when using S1 it is hard to even run into things I'd like the software to handle in a different way. I was thinking about it for this post, and there's maybe 2 things I wish S1 did differently but only as a matter of personal preference (like the way it shows projects on the welcome screen, and how it calls mastering projects "projects" and record/mixing projects are "songs").

Your experience may vary. I did not test on other machines. ON MY PC AND FOR MY USE, S1 has been bugless and rock solid. Tracktion DAW shows issues fairly regularly and can handle half the load before the audio starts crackling.

jochicago · Post by **jochicago** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:10 pm

Trancit wrote: You can get all this functionality for starting price of $109

I agree with your overall point that Tracktion software has unique features and a good starting price. That's why I'm still lingering around here

A lot of the features and interface decisions are very interesting. Outside of your list of unique features, I like how the DAW flows when I'm working on projects. As speedy as S1 is, I feel Tracktion is faster for throwing in a plugin or setting up a midi track next to an audio track, it just feels more flexible while also easier and faster. I'm splitting hairs, probably talking about savings of fractions of a second, but when you are in "artistic mode" feeling in command of the interface goes a long way in not having to think DAW and just "do" while making/recording music.

I wouldn't be here but for T6 free. can't argue with that price. It drew me in and opened up the DAW world for me. T7 came free with a hardware purchase, so again, Tracktion is making DAW accessible for me and so many others and it does not get more affordable than those 2 options.

I concentrated my feedback on the full-package price because I think that's the one that needs attention. When you buy the Pro version of these DAWs you get a bundle so you can start making music, including pro-level plugins, decent virtual instruments, and some samples to get you started. I think (my personal opinion) that S1 does a much better job competing at that level (the pro bundle in the $250-$400 range).

I think this matters because Tracktion needs to sell W9 to finance itself (I wouldn't imagine T7 hardware licenses add up to enough). I'm sure plenty of people buy at the $109 level, but it seems to me anyone that's serious about trying to make music need to consider the pro bundle for the plugins and instruments, and those that do and also compare to S1 might come to the same conclusion I did.

HansP · Post by **HansP** » Wed May 16, 2018 12:57 am

let me add that racks can work as cost savers, with some audio knowledge one can wire up a couple of free or cheap plugins, for a result that comes quite close to a desired expensive complex plugin of a famous brand.
e.g. something like a multiband transient designer, or a simplified trackspacer, or a maxbass. also, you'll have probably even more control options.

tovokas · Post by **tovokas** » Wed May 16, 2018 10:57 am

I own and enjoy Studio One, but v3.5 is astonishingly unstable on my 2017 iMac. (Simple things like the ‘wrong’ version of Melodyne causing boom-to-desktop crashes at program launch, and 3rd party plugins from Waves and Plugin Alliance crashing routinely, etc). Waveform, while not bullet-proof, is far more stable on my machine. Obviously this is system dependent, but at least in my experience, a large development team has been no guarantee of smooth sailing.

I still believe Waveform is a great value. If you don’t need BioTek, the +Pack at $159 is more than fair for those just getting on board, and in my case I’m happy to toss in my $59 to insure Waveform continues to move forward. Studio One does come with a fantastic selection of plug-ins (the Fat Channel keeps getting better and better!) but like many, I rarely use them since I have so many other excellent 3rd party options. (Of late I’m almost convinced I can get by with the Scheps Omni Channel for almost all my basic processing...).

jochicago · Post by **jochicago** » Wed May 16, 2018 5:30 pm

Thanks for posting your S1 stability issues on Mac.

I suspect some of my stability problems with Tracktion might have something to do with my Ryzen 7 architecture. It can get pretty tedious chasing stability on all the platform and processor combinations, and like I said Tracktion aims high by also supporting Linux. It can't be easy to optimize for all these operating systems and processors.

Tracktion Software

KVR Audio

Waveform 9 reviewed in latest Computer Music mag (#257, July 2018 issue)