Any interest in an open source, tracker style, web based DAW?

[pgregory]

Hi everyone,

I hope I'm posting in the right place, I did look through the, many, forums and couldn't find anywhere that was obviously more appropriate, if there is somewhere else, please point me in the right direction.

I'm returning to an old project of mine with some renewed energy and focus and would love to get some thoughts from a community of EDM experts. The project is WeTracker, which is (or will be) a modern rethinking of the old tracker style DAW software of the 90's on Amiga and DOS. Think somewhere between FastTracker2 and ReNoise, with the difference that it's entirely browser based.

WeTracker takes advantage of the powerful WebAudio API implemented by most modern browsers for high performance, high quality audio playback. It started as a way to play FastTracker2 .xm files, and then decided to keep developing it into something that could author the same. It's since grown into something far more than that, not constrained by the FT2 origins, it includes lots of new features, and a lot more are in the plan.

• Unconstrained number of tracks, limited by the compute power of your system.
• Ability to add chained effects to each track.
• Multiple note and FX channels per track.
• Flexible and infinitely configurable user interface based on widgets.

Things that are currently under development include.

• Live recording to a pattern.
• MIDI input support.
• Saving UI customisations to your browser.

Thing is, I'm not a musician, not even close, I'm trying to learn as much as I can with Udemy and other courses on music theory, EDM techniques etc. However, I really don't know what needs to be done to make this a tool that would be actually useful and interesting to real musicians. I'm an accomplished software developer, so given some direction I can usually come up with something that meets people's needs. I just need to collaborate with someone who knows what's needed from a tool like this to guide it in the right direction, so I'm not just floating and implementing things that I think are cool from ReNoise, Reaper, Ableton etc.

If anyone here has any experience working with trackers, I'd be very interested to hear from them, what makes trackers great for you, what's a pain and could be better. How can I make a tool that enables you by giving you all you need, while keeping out of your way and not interrupting the creative flow?

Please take a look at https://www.wetracker.xyz/, documentation is WIP, should give some idea where to start but far from complete, and the live demo of the current status is at http://app.wetracker.xyz/, use with caution, it's changing rapidly and likely to break.

P

[crickey13]

Why browser-based though? Seems like an odd choice.

[pgregory]

A few reasons, firstly, I believe that browser based software is the future, cloud based applications are becoming more and more common, and web APIs are enabling more and more rich experiences. Most modern office suites are predominantly web based, Office365, Google Office Suite, etc.

Being browser based makes it more accessible, you don't have to download anything, if you have a browser and a network connection, it works, no installation, always running the latest version, no manual updating required. Fixes and updates can be turned around in very quick time. You can run the application and be creative when you're not even at your own machine, again, as long as you have a browser, no need to install software on someone else's machine in order to spend some time on your latest composition, just fire up the browser and go.

Cross platform, if you have a modern browser, it'll run, irrespective of which platform you're running, Windows, Linux, macOS, <something else>.

It also makes it easier to add advanced features that might be more challenging in a traditional desktop based application, such as collaboration and other network dependent features.

[Trensharo]

Being Browser-based is like running an instance of Waves OVox just loading up the DAW.

And I don't think there will be much interest in a tracker. Most people don't care about those. Its 2021 and the majority of people are learning on Linear DAWs.

Using a tracker feels like doing MIDI composition using a list editor.

[askoan]

I'm glad new trackers are being developped ; coming from the old Screamtracker inspired Impulse Tracker 2, i never get used to Renoise ; because of the way note stops are handled.
There are still people using trackers. And it's great to have such a number of options to try. One thing have not to be mainstream to be successful.
You could say, the vast majority of people don't even try to make music nor downoaded a daw once.

[pgregory]

Being Browser-based is like running an instance of Waves OVox just loading up the DAW.

Not quite sure I understand what you mean, can you explain a little more?

[crickey13]

A few reasons, firstly, I believe that browser based software is the future, cloud based applications are becoming more and more common, and web APIs are enabling more and more rich experiences. Most modern office suites are predominantly web based, Office365, Google Office Suite, etc.

Being browser based makes it more accessible, you don't have to download anything, if you have a browser and a network connection, it works, no installation, always running the latest version, no manual updating required. Fixes and updates can be turned around in very quick time. You can run the application and be creative when you're not even at your own machine, again, as long as you have a browser, no need to install software on someone else's machine in order to spend some time on your latest composition, just fire up the browser and go.

Cross platform, if you have a modern browser, it'll run, irrespective of which platform you're running, Windows, Linux, macOS, <something else>.

It also makes it easier to add advanced features that might be more challenging in a traditional desktop based application, such as collaboration and other network dependent features.

Fair enough, but I'm not sure whether it will work out in the case of music production where quite a few people work on offline machines, myself included.

The old-school nature of trackers might also clash with the whole cloud-based/web-based approach. Personally, I hate the cloud-based stuff and the corporate environment does not necessarily have to reflect the reality of the situation in the rest of the field, but maybe that's just me.

That being said, I understand the benefits of such an approach and wish you success even though it's not going to be my thing, maybe others will like it though.

[tor.helge.skei]

web based? no thanks..

[pgregory]

web based? no thanks..

What if exactly the same thing was packaged up as a local installable application for those that don't like web applications?

[tor.helge.skei]

web based? no thanks..

What if exactly the same thing was packaged up as a local installable application for those that don't like web applications?

me personally?
i use redux (vst plugin) and milky tracker quite regularly, but i'm not really looking around for yet another tracker..
(but the web part is what puts me off completely)..

- th

[wasi]

I'm down for any tracker. I doubt anything browser based will be my goto tool but i had fun just now fooling around a bit and I'm impressed how close to a full-blown app it is. Well done!

[THE INTRANCER]

Web based trackers already exist.

Bassoon Tracker being one.

https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/

[stargate]

Cool project, kudos for creating it. But I have to echo what everybody else said about browsers, the overhead and issues of doing anything hardcore in a browser is significant, it is not a proven (or optimal) platform for audio work, even if there are advantages to using it. Plus, it can cost you a lot of money to run the back-end if your project does take off.

Developing a DAW (or tracker) is a thankless task with almost no chance of achieving mainstream success (especially for independent developers), because frankly your average user is using what their musical hero uses, because if it's good enough for the hero, it's good enough for the user, and there is no reason to try anything else.

My advice is to decide either that:
1. You are doing this for yourself, because it is what you want do, building the tracker of your dreams, the way you want to build it, at which point carry on and do not ask others what you should be building, or
2. You want to make it "a thing", and achieve mainstream success, then write a regular desktop DAW that closely mimics the big 4-5, and add a gimmick or 2, then pay Tiesto a lot of money to say that he uses it

[pgregory]

I'm down for any tracker. I doubt anything browser based will be my goto tool but i had fun just now fooling around a bit and I'm impressed how close to a full-blown app it is. Well done!

Thanks for taking the time to take a look, appreciate it. In reality, there's little reason why a browser based audio application couldn't achieve full-blown app parity, modern browser API's, including MIDI and audio, are very powerful and very well designed and implemented. It's no different to building a desktop based application and taking advantage of off-the-shelf audio libraries such a FMod or OpenAL for audio processing.

Having said that, I do understand why there is some resistance, browser based applications are a new thing, and new things always encounter resistance, sometimes that resistance results in the new thing failing, sometimes not, only time will tell.

[pgregory]

Cool project, kudos for creating it. But I have to echo what everybody else said about browsers, the overhead and issues of doing anything hardcore in a browser is significant, it is not a proven (or optimal) platform for audio work, even if there are advantages to using it. Plus, it can cost you a lot of money to run the back-end if your project does take off.

Thanks, appreciate the feedback. I agree, the browser is not a proven platform for audio work, however, if nobody ever creates anything to test that theory, it'll never be proven, chicken and egg. I'd be keen to understand a little more about your not optimal statement though, I'd like to understand what makes it not optimal. As for back end, as it stands there are no real backend costs, the app runs entirely locally in the user's browser, the only backend services are storage and delivery of the application to the end user, which is minimal, and not likely to incur huge costs unless it achieves millions of users, which given the tracker basis, is not likely to happen.

My advice is to decide either that:
1. You are doing this for yourself, because it is what you want do, building the tracker of your dreams, the way you want to build it, at which point carry on and do not ask others what you should be building, or
2. You want to make it "a thing", and achieve mainstream success, then write a regular desktop DAW that closely mimics the big 4-5, and add a gimmick or 2, then pay Tiesto a lot of money to say that he uses it

Thanks for the advice, good points both. I'm not a musician, I'm a software architect, so point 1 really doesn't apply to me, I don't have the chops to actually use the software to create anything, so I won't be creating the tracker of my dreams.

On your second point, I get what you're saying, and understand why that is a common way for developers to approach creating something, I prefer an alternative approach, innovating and testing. If everyone does the same thing all the time, with only minor tweaks, progress is at best slow, we only see shifts in the landscape when folks take a chance on something different, IMHO. It'll probably mean that anything I create won't get mainstream acceptance without lots of marketing and investment, but I'm happy just innovating and trying new ideas to see what sticks, and what doesn't.