Old DAWs - nostalgia thread

[synthgeek]

Also great was:

Seer Systems Reality (no real DAW)

I was just thinking about that the other day, I remember thinking it was awesome back then. I wonder how it would hold up to some modern stuff.

Buzz is quite fun. Was a bit hard to learn, but quite fun once I got the hang of it. Another cool program that's still around is OpenMPT. It took awhile for me to understand how to use it, but it's a lot of fun. Psycle, made by the late great Arguru, is sort of a combination between OpenMPT and Buzz.

OpenMPT is indeed pretty cool. ModPlug was my first experience with trackers. Like I said, I never really did learn how to use them well, but I downloaded and listened to a bunch of the music.

I did give Psycle a whirl once and liked it, for what it is. I don't mean that as an insult to Psycle at all, it just doesn't suit my methods these days.

I don't care much for Darkwave since I can't audit the plugins that easily when tweaking them - have to play the loop while doing so, and that can be kinda annoying. Darkwave seems to be more like the now-defunct Orion DAW.

I tried Darkwave once quite a while back, and had a similar impression. Not my thing either.

Nowadays you can get stuff that does lots more than Tuareg did and get it for nothing. Pretty mindblowing to realize how technology has changed and how many people care deeply about providing quality music software for nothing. But still, it's good to look back and greats like Bram Bos and Master-Zap, and see how a lot of us did it back then. Yup, we had Buzz back then too, but I was kinda frustrated by it because at first I couldn't make heads or tails of what to do. Psycle had a confusing interface as well, and so did OpenMPT. Tuareg just made more sense to me. Besides that, it was cheap. It was a good deal for a program back then.

It really is amazing what's out there nowadays.

Buzz did take some time to figure out. Lol, yeah, I remember quite a bit of frustrated head-scratching myself.

I do enjoy looking back, it's cool to know I'm not alone there.

Thing is, I also developed the habit of combing the internet for free and cheap software. I really love finding freeware and oddities. Can anyone relate to that?

I can totally relate.

[DollyNipples]

Also, a lot of people probably forgot Simmolator and ER-0, but I will never forget the quick support I got from the creator of those programs. They were causing some crashing problems, and I forget how bad they were, but it turned out they didn't play nicely with my zipdrive driver (remember zip-drives?) or with DVD drivers. He made a new version which worked wonders. Just wish that I had saved his programs more. I don't know if I even have them now on CD R/RW. A pity, since they were cool programs. Just didn't get the attention they deserved.

Been doing some experimenting lately with Stomper, loading in some wav files and using them for mixing and modulation. Pretty interesting results. Just trying to come up with some good unique-sounding drum samples so people don't recognize them so easily. I had created a trance track years ago and put it on YouTube, and someone immediately recognized the FL Studio drum samples that I used. I felt like I had shown a picture I had done in Photoshop where I'd used one of the leaf brushes for leaves instead of drawing them out freehand or making my own brush.

So I had been searching for drum-creation programs and hit a snag when I found that Drumsyn does NOT cooperate with a 64-bit environment. I don't know why it gives me that kind of grief, but I suspect that it might have to do with some kind of missing 32-bit tag. I try to save, and the program crashes. Gotta run it in an XP virtual machine. Weird.

I would love to get my hands on some good sound-generators that render to wav files without too much hassle.

[synthgeek]

I did manage to hang on to some stuff from back then, but those two aren't among them. I do remember using both of them though.

There really is nothing quite like Stomper even to this day for ultimate drum sound sculpting. When I was starting out, a lot of my sounds were made with Stomper, the way it integrated with LDB made it really cool for synth lines & stuff too. I gave up actually hoping a long time ago, but I always thought it would be cool if Zap did a Stomper VST.

Drumsyn was really cool too. I never used it as much as Stomper, but it had its own thing going on.

[DollyNipples]

I did manage to hang on to some stuff from back then, but those two aren't among them. I do remember using both of them though.

There really is nothing quite like Stomper even to this day for ultimate drum sound sculpting. When I was starting out, a lot of my sounds were made with Stomper, the way it integrated with LDB made it really cool for synth lines & stuff too. I gave up actually hoping a long time ago, but I always thought it would be cool if Zap did a Stomper VST.

Drumsyn was really cool too. I never used it as much as Stomper, but it had its own thing going on.

I see. And yes, we DO need a Stomper VST. But we also need some good sample generators. Nowadays every single synth is a plugin. Nothing that we can use to just generate sample wav files.

And if anyone still has Simmolator or ER-0, or if the original programmer is still around, please share what you have and upload them to the Internet Archive. I can't even find a good link to them with the Wayback Machine. It's really sad. Those programs, wonky as they were, should be preserved. BOABassdrum too. It was kind of a one-note program but still, it was fun to use.

Also, I would love to see some new programs done in the style and spirit of the old wav-generating nonrealtime softsynths - synths like drumsyn, Stomper, Simsynth, Subbastard, Subsynth, etc. Those were some real cool oldies.

[xtp]

I still use my 2005 copy of Cubase SX3, 32bit on Win7 64bit, dongle's a bit banana shaped but runs well. Does everything I need. Never seen a good reason to upgrade to be honest—certainly value for money as far as a hobby tool goes.

[DollyNipples]

And let's not forget about d-lusion's Rubberduck. Very cool program for making 303 riffs.

[DollyNipples]

'Scuse me for the sorta-bump post, but SIMMOLATOR IS BACK! I just uploaded it to the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/simmolator. Found it on one of my CD RWs, and wow... it works! Works better in a Windows XP virtual machine, but I ain't complaining because you can say the same about Drumsyn. Funny how it was more or less right under my nose!

Has some neat options, including a bit-crusher for lo-fi sounds. Good companion for drum computers and oldschool samplers like Tuareg. Thought Simmolator was gone forever, but it lives again!

[ghettosynth]

And let's not forget about d-lusion's Rubberduck. Very cool program for making 303 riffs.

+1 for memories

[DollyNipples]

And let's not forget about d-lusion's Rubberduck. Very cool program for making 303 riffs.

+1 for memories

Yup, oldschool software is cool! And I like the FL Studio Mobile because it seems to be what Tuareg would be like if Bram Bos were to make an updated tablet version. And I am VERY happy to have found the little lost program - Simmolator. Thought it was lost forever but it lives again!

[Monsum]

Cakewalk Sonar 6 Producer was a 64 bit DAW which still works fine in Windows 10.
It introduced among others the AudioSnap audio timing/manipulation.
It also included Roland V-Vocal VariPhrase, Session Drummer 2, Perfect Space Convolution Reverb, Lexicon Pantheon Reverb.

[Dark Lights]

I remember I bought my first boxed DAW - Cakewak Sonar Home studio and didn't have automation

[arkmabat]

Any love for Temper? Wonderful layout.

[Examigan]

No audio tracks were possible so it wasn't an actual DAW, but Master Tracks Pro was the first program I used with my Atari ST:
http://atari-music.fddvoron.name/mtpro.htm
Link is from Tim Conrardy's old website (RIP)

[pascual]

I'm still playing around with Tuareg 1.5 (Free & FAT), Tuareg 2, Tunafish, Moonfish, and Hammerhead. Nice little sampler programs. I don't like the portamento option in Tu2 as much as the 'rubber note' in Tuareg FAT. Also, I like the old sample generators like freeware Simsynth, Drumsynth, Subsynth, Subbastard, Stomper, and TS-404.

This is how I started as well. Bram bos was the man!

[syntonica]

I started out on an Apple ][ clone and had to write my own programs in Pascal, later Modula II. The first real sequencer was Opcode Vision, I still have a StudioVision T-shirt I got on the music fair in Franfurt...
Those first tools had been Midi only, the first DAW was StudioVision, later I had a Digidesign 8-Track and then long time no DAW, just Max/MSP...

My first was Dr T's TigerCub. (below)

By the time I had moved to Mac and discovered Studio Vision Pro, it had already been Gibsonated.

A great pity because some of the features were so brilliantly ahead of anything else at the time.