What kind of users does tracktion target with the DAW?

[harvon]

The tracktion DAW is not yet a tool for all purposes and all users I think.

The users: Fresh new young people who haven't got the habit of other DAWs yet, hence the generous free DAW offer; Established tracktion DAW users.
The purposes: Not a score editor or composing tool; Not an audio editor either; Not a mastering tool; So is this DAW mainly a midi/audio recorder for home musicians?

EDIT!

My opinion was based on free versions of the DAW. When I looked what the latest payware has I saw: By W10 tracktion has indeed worked on those features that I mentioned so I believe the latest and full version is better than my opinions.

I feel I need to say too that there is nothing wrong targeting a DAW for home musicians and bands. A DAW is no less because of that.

[ShawnG]

iirc the original focus was making a low frills and easy to get to grips with DAW that was not as obtuse as the versions of Cubase and Logic available at the time. it was a world where there was no Garageband, mixcraft or related apps, and Reason/FL were midi sequencers only.

So, given that you answered your own question while posting it, not sure what more you're looking for? Is it a bad thing if it does not cater to all users and scenarios, or is it allowed to be focused on Home Recordists? Or do you feel unfulfilled if it does not aspire to be other than it is?

[Watchful]

This is a fascinating question, and I'm hopeful one that generates some good discussion.

I'm not sure that *any* DAW serves all purposes and all users. They all have tremendous weaknesses in some direction.

The question has two assumptions that I think are correct: (1) some DAWs definitely appeal to certain categories of musicians more than others, and (2) I don't know that Tracktion knows who is their largest body of users. This could be very helpful.

With T6, I think Tracktion was targeting the home musicians quite a bit.

T7, however, introduced a lot more MIDI functionality and integration for the composer.

I skipped W8, so can't really comment.

W9 introduced a boatload of audio editing features that, I suspect, appealed to a lot of people recording live music.

And W10 provided a lot of engineering and production tools that are useful to producers.

In other words, each release seems to carve out a number of features for one group more than another, with the eventual goal of appealing to a wider variety of users with each release.

On a cautionary note, I wouldn't recommend that Tracktion try too hard to appeal to all audiences. For the EDM folks, FL and Ableton are so solidly entrenched that Waveform will be more an irritation than an alternative. And high-end production folks are going to use ProTools no matter what, because that's what everyone else is using and you want to maintain file and project compatibility.

That said, Waveform 8 is a pretty serious product, and has consistently impressed reviewers with each subsequent release. I switched over with T6, and have found Waveform easy to use, able to handle some very tough jobs, and any time I have a problem with it, Dave, Brian, or Roland are quick to respond with a new feature, or if I have a question, folks on this forum here have consistently pointed me in the right direction.

I think the biggest problem people have with Waveform is that it *isn't* like other DAWs, and if you have a ton of experience with Cubase, or Reaper, or ProTools, or Ableton, you're going to have to seriously readjust (really, simplify) your thinking about how you set up a project.

Not sure about others here, but I'll offer this: I'm pretty old school, going back to patch bays, mixing consoles, and half-normal patching setups, etc. And I find that Waveform appeals to me with its input -> output/left-to-right logic far more than other DAWs. There are a bunch of ways to solve any particular problem, often creatively.

I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of regulars on this forum who use Waveform for very different purposes and ends, and I'd love to hear what they think. I suspect the folks at Tracktion would love to hear this as well.

[PierreG]

Thanks Watchful, for the eloquent take on how Waveform fits into the DAW-scape.

I've been using it since T1. I never got far with analog gear (tape and such), and I'd experimented with Logic in the short period it ran on the Windows platform, which was a miserable iteration of that program, at least how it ran on my lowly P-133 PC, which was high end at the time.

As with many Tracktion users, I was immediately impressed and deeply thankful for a single screen no frills interface that facilitated making music more than endless app learning curves. It also impressed me how well it integrated audio and midi on my single core dell laptop, and it was FREE! (or ridiculously cheap). Tracktion is the 1st app to succeed in allowing me to actually make music.

With this history in mind, I've never given up on it's promise, even during the bleak Mackie years and it's eventual demise, right on through Jules reclaiming it and breathing new life into it via the release of T4.

I'm not a great person to give context in that I've really only used Trackion / Waveform all these years. Been mighty tempted to switch to Reaper on a number of occasions, yet every temptation was met with dread when I'd start to relearn everything from scratch. Because I was too invested in T / W, and not eager enough to learn Reaper, I stuck it out for the rebirth, which I'm deeply grateful for having done!

Being that the Tracktion dev team is tiny, I'm impressed with how they've managed to forge forward in giving us great new features while also continually addressing long standing issues. W 10 is amazingly solid for me (still on an ancient Dell D630 laptop), and I'm getting more productive using it than ever. I use it to produce my band's recordings, which are track recording centric, with no midi or samples happening, as well as composing an expanding range of more hybrid projects that utilize midi, sampling, loops, real instruments, all of which I feel Waveform handles very well.

Cheers!

[fromwithin]

It's an audio workstation for people who want to make music. I don't see why you brought "home musicians" into the equation. What is it that a "professional" would need to do that a home musician wouldn't? I've been using Tracktion professionally for 20 years. It can do everything that I need to create music and in a much more sensible way than other DAWs. I'm constantly shocked at how bad every other DAW is in some area, with features missing that I've taken for granted in Tracktion/Waveform for years. Ableton is especially bad for this; for the past few major updates, they've touted some big new feature that I've been really shocked to learn wasn't there before. It still doesn't even have comping, for example.

Waveform really shouldn't be regarded as an outlier DAW. It really should be considered to be up there as one of the best available, but good marketing is an expensive endeavour.

[spoontechnique]

fromwithin posited the question "what does a professional need to do that a home musician wouldn't?" I think it's pretty clear.

A professional producer would probably be recording and editing multi-track drums, bass, guitar, and vocals on a regular basis. Your average home musician probably records one instrument and does vocals, then uses plugins for the rest. They probably don't do much editing and they're probably more concerned with songwriting than engineering. Features like the chord track and arranger would be more useful to a home musician and producer.

I do agree that Waveform doesn't have a clear focus or area where it excels. It doesn't have songwriting tools as robust as Cubase or Studio One. It doesn't have as much sample/midi bending and warping or live performance features as Live. It can't handle FOH duties like Digital Performer. It doesn't have the infinite flexibility of Reaper. It doesn't appeal to EDM and hip hop producers as readily as FL does. To me it seems to fill a jack-of-all-trades role, which I like.

[Steve Bolivar]

Looks like they're currently trying to attract "singer songwriter" types.
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=536444
I agree with what spoontechnique said. W10 doesn't do everything, but it does pretty much all of what a lot of people need.

[harvon]

Features like the chord track and arranger would be more useful to a home musician and producer.

Please allow me some curiosity: Chord track in what sense? We people could have differing ideas what that is; Like we have differing thoughts about the 'for what and whom of the DAW'.

I began to guess the DAW target because of the synth, sampler and effects packages recently made by tracktion. The release of T11 should happen soon and it could tell something about the direction tracktion is heading in.

[Stuttaton]

I think W10 is an excellent choice for a songwriter that needs to record demos of the songs.

[Paree]

I have been using Tracktion since T4 became free and currently using T7. I mainly produce bass music (DnB, Dubstep etc) i found that tracktion is an excellent DAW for that.
I like the way it handles midi and looping function. Since i have never used a mixer orientated DAW (tracktion is my first DAW after messing with FL studio demo for some months), i find its mixing approach to be very intuitive and quick. Once you know the keyboard shortcuts, everything is a breeze, also drag and drops are so great.
The rack is also an amazing feature that gets very little attention. I just save my mastering chain as a rack configuration and mastering gets done in 5-10 minutes with little to no tweaking.
That being said, i have been tracking the changes since W8 and it offers really great tools for any kind of music you want to making. I am really looking forward to W11 and i will be finally able to buy it since ill be earning from next year after graduation.

Also, although T7 has limited support, i have found that the community here and the official support are very kind and quick to respond to problems you have. All in all, I’d say it’s a great DAW for anyone starting out and very powerful as well.

Another thing, Tracktion is also one of the only DAWs with complete cross platform support (including Linux) so you can switch your platform without worrying about breaking your flow (to a degree).

[exponent1]

The tracktion DAW is not yet a tool for all purposes and all users I think.

The users: Fresh new young people who haven't got the habit of other DAWs yet, hence the generous free DAW offer; Established tracktion DAW users.
The purposes: Not a score editor or composing tool; Not an audio editor either; Not a mastering tool; So is this DAW mainly a midi/audio recorder for home musicians?

W10 can very well hold its own for audio recording, editing, mixing, mastering, and overall production tasks. It's an excellent composing and sketching tool due to its MIDI tools, Groove Doctor was a much needed addition for audio quantization, Multi Sampler is an excellent tool, the Racks system is extremely powerful. It is, as of now, almost a complete DAW for full-blown audio production. Sure, it doesn't have a score editor, but then not many DAWs have it and I don't see a need for it since there are dedicated tools for that sort of workflow.

BTW, how long have you been producing and what other DAWs have you used? Not sure if you've really produced very complex tracks on it yet, but it's possible to do almost everything that other DAWs can do. I've been a Reaper user for more than a year and I recently got W10 and I'm quite impressed by its workflow and capabilities. If W10 was more stable and crash resilient, I would probably be switching from Reaper to W10.

[mcnelson]

Ableton is especially bad for this; for the past few major updates, they've touted some big new feature that I've been really shocked to learn wasn't there before. It still doesn't even have comping, for example.

True, it doesn't yet have comping; but recall, Tracktion didn't get a mixer until Waveform / v8.

Each DAW has strengths and weaknesses; it comes down to features and workflow: there's some things I do in Ableton that I simply couldn't in Waveform / Tracktion, and there are some things I do in Ableton that might be quicker to do in Tracktion. I pick the platform that suits the way I want to work.

[fde101]

Tracktion didn't get a mixer until Waveform / v8.

Sure it did... it is a modular mixer that is turned sideways from a traditional one, located along the right edge of the window right alongside the individual tracks.

When working in Waveform I still tend to prefer that for most purposes over the more "traditional" mixer which is detached from the track view. The "new" mixer I see more value in reconfiguring to maximize the size of the meters and throw them up on another screen, rather than actually mixing on it.

[HansP]

I agree to all the positive remarks here. I use T7, I am pretty old, but I definitely want the virtualized way of looking at sound production.
Racks are great. After some experience, I know how to get the timing right, with some plugins having unreported latency.
So far, there are a few ways of routing that do not work well with latency compensation. Most of that has been described in the corresponding threads.

Speeding up work:
some DAWs might support faster workflow, but if one does complex things, the rack presets sure are a time saver.
a lot of time can be saved with the right plugin chain. this will be a matter of invest.
there are analog emulations (I like the stuff by plugin alliance) that just get you to the point faster, or even you won't get that sound otherways. it does not depend on Tracktion.
I avoid the stock EQ, as for my mixes, TinyQ turned out much more transparent and powerful. This, besides the commercial analog channel strip EQs of course. the free blue Pultec is a bliss for drums.

I use nested bus constructions, and I put racks as effect "send" points anywhere in these stuctures.
I also do some "trackspacing" with the side chain of TDR Nova. works great, but uses a rack too.

No problem with a 100 tracks. I found some plugins with low CPU consumption, that can be used (TinyQ, ReaGate, bx_console_N with the compressor).
sometimes, a CPU hungry stem bus needs freezing. I know a trick to freeze a sub bus. just switch the output to default, temporarily. frozen, switch it back to its correct stem bus.

TL;DR
I do complex and big mixes, but little editing and no comping. music genres are more on the old-school side.

[chico.co.uk]

What kind of user does B&Q target with its screwdrivers?