Stargate DAW

[Tj Shredder]

I do like the concept. A Kiss DAW. Just support SFZ as instrument nothing else…
Why not.
It won’t compete with any commercial DAW, but will teach the contributor programming a big project. Kudos and good luck…

[jens]

Very very promising! Great concept!

[pbognar]

This is interesting. Is there an overall roadmap for the project? Are suggestions being solicited?

[synthgeek]

I saw the other thread looking for sample content too, and I really like the idea behind this.

[Karbon L. Forms]

Couldn't get a peep out of it.

[stargate]

Thank you all for the kind words. I will respond to all of the questions, but it will take me a few posts to do it.

To those who are skeptical of my bold claims: I get it. You've been over-promised and under-delivered to by anonymous developers before. I attached a short demo my buddy made of the Stargate DAW built-in FM1 synthesizer making some grungy DnB/Dubstep kind of music (apologies for the zip file, KVR does not accept .ogg file uploads). He is not a professional musician (yet), but it's a good example of what a skilled tradesman can do with Stargate DAW and it's built-in plugins.

His project takes ~5% CPU on any modern CPU, or like 30% on old/weak CPUs like a 10-15 year old laptop or a Raspberry Pi4. If you still don't believe me, the only thing I can tell you is to try it for yourself. No money or "Stargate DAW account" required to download it. I encourage you to throw it on the oldest computer you have, and then don't go easy on it. I was jamming out on a 2010 Core2Duo Macbook Air last night, it worked fine.

[stargate]

This is interesting. Is there an overall roadmap for the project? Are suggestions being solicited?

Sure, we are always open to feedback good, bad or neutral. There is a roadmap but it's not documented anywhere. Happy to discuss it.

This is the basic development model:
1. Major version: Anything and everything can change, one major version will not open project files from another major version, but all major versions can all be installed in parallel on the same computer. Major versions are supported for as long as possible, then when they are no longer supported we will create a "Stargate DAW OS" Linux distro image for that major version that you can use in any VM hypervisor to open your projects now, or 30 years from now.
2. After the release of a major version, we will avoid disruptive changes that might fundamentally change the workflow, break projects made in earlier versions, or change their sound, but we may queue these changes up for the next major release. New plugins can still be added during this time. The current idea is a 1 or 2 year cadence on major releases, but that may change.

Having said that, we are currently in the early part of the 2nd stage. This is the current focus:
1. Stability. It works fine on all 5 of my computers, but as a lot of people start downloading it, issues will be discovered. Given that we support pretty much every reasonable OS and CPU, there are a lot of configurations to support. Stability improvements are being prioritized over everything else right now.
2. Once stability and hardware/OS support are fully in order, I will start tackling usability and workflow feature requests, but only if they are low risk and not too disruptive. The rest will be considered and queued up for Stargate DAW v2.
3. Once the DAW is stable and polished, I plan to open the floodgates of new plugins. I would argue that the current plugins are already an unrivalled sound to CPU proposition, but I want to prove that I can make Serum/NI/Izotope level plugins at a fraction of the CPU cost. Maybe I will succeed, maybe I will fall a little short, maybe my plugins will be technically superior but I'll still get roasted for them unless a designer jumps in to help with the UIs. Either way, it should be quite a show.

After this, I will spend maybe 6-12 months developing Staragate DAW v2. I have some highly ambitious plans to do things that have never been done before. Keeping with the same strong pattern-based workflow, but really elevating it to another level. Not willing to discuss the exact plans in detail because:
1. The plans might change
2. I might decide to do something less ambitious for v2 and punt some of it to v3, depending on what is happening at that time
3. There is no reason to publicly post the exact details and give others a multi-year head start on implementing it first, same as pretty much all DAW vendors operate.

[stargate]

I saw the other thread looking for sample content too, and I really like the idea behind this.

Thanks, means a lot coming from you

I've been on-and-off of KVR for almost 20 years, spanning quite a few user accounts. I remember when you first wrote the "free Windows software studio" article, I found it inspirational and quite useful. At the same time, I felt that the free stuff of the 2000-2012 era did not live up to the best commercial offerings (maybe it's a little different now), and wanted to do something about it. Then couple that with the nightmare that is managing hardware dongles, licenses, the impossibility of changing computers and still keeping your projects intact, the fact that I have never felt that any DAW was ideal for electronic music production (honorable mention to Ableton and FL Studio)... because of all of these things, here we are right now talking about Stargate DAW.

[stargate]

Couldn't get a peep out of it.

Did you press the "Test" button on the hardware dialog when you configured your audio device? Did it make any sound?

Feel free to chat on our Discord about this:
https://discord.gg/7mP5psUN7D

Should be able to solve it quickly, or at least get enough info to fix it, if it is a bug

[synthgeek]

I saw the other thread looking for sample content too, and I really like the idea behind this.

Thanks, means a lot coming from you

Thanks so much, that's so nice to hear.

Cheers!