2022 DAW Predictions

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Cubase 12. Drops eLicenser, introduces machine activation C/R.

Yes, I'm a prophet.

Cubase will also get a remote control API and a major overhaul of how third-party hardware controls plugins and DAW functions.

Reaper will implement a new take comping system and add thousands of smaller features.

Studio One 5.5 will be released in early spring.

[machinesworking]

Reaper will implement a new take comping system and add thousands of smaller features.

I have a good friend who loves Reaper as a recording studio DAW, except the comping, this would be great if it was true, because comping in Reaper is.... just bad.

[Freaqpeak]

I think the new cubase remote thingy will be half@ssed..and they will release 12.5 to "fix" it. but they will also remove other functionality in v12 and then re-introduce the again in 12.5 as "new".. it has been done so many times before :/

[dune_rave]

my prediction : steinbergs' new authorization model turns out to be a great disaster to the company. After that reaper buys cubase and name it rebase. fruity loops buys u-he, and includes all the stuff in its ecosystem. NI releases his own daw including izotope suff too. bitwig merges with ableton.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Reaper will implement a new take comping system and add thousands of smaller features.

I have a good friend who loves Reaper as a recording studio DAW, except the comping, this would be great if it was true, because comping in Reaper is.... just bad.

I would agree with that. I love Reaper. After getting over the initial learning curve and then finding the right little customizations and occasional script to make it work to my liking, it's my favorite overall DAW. I've used Studio One, Cubase, and Sonar heavily in the past - so I'm very familiar with others. But yeah, the current-state comping system is clunky with all the splits.

A new comping system is definitely in the works. Fingers crossed it can be made to be as efficient as some of the other DAWs out there with good systems (Studio One, Logic, Pro Tools w/ playlists).

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I think the new cubase remote thingy will be half@ssed..and they will release 12.5 to "fix" it. but they will also remove other functionality in v12 and then re-introduce the again in 12.5 as "new".. it has been done so many times before :/

I wouldn't be surprised if their new remote control system needs some improvements along the way. In fact, I'd expect that. But if Cubase scrapped their existing Remote Control and Quick Controls functionality, frankly, I'd think it's a good idea. It's appalling how bad Cubase is when it comes to integrating MIDI devices for controlling plugins and DAW functions. So ripping up the house down to the studs and starting over wouldn't be the worst idea in the world from my perspective.

That said, it sounds like the plan is to also release a Remote Control API, which based on what you see in Reaper with CSI (Control Surface Integrator), and Realearn2, and Klinke...could really open up some doors to third parties doing really cool stuff in Cubase. So I hope Steiny is smart about and allows third-parties to build "Cubase plugins" or some kind of "Cubase Extensions" that would allow for something like CSI to exist in Cubase.

[BONES]

Not really, it's not at all impossible to come up with my real name and my music etc. but I think my ramblings on music software online in forums shouldn't be attached to my music. IMO one thing that's really missing with music these days is any sense of wonder about the people who make it, it's all too transparent and personally I hate a connection to the people behind the music with the music, unless they're some true weirdo whose mental instability makes the story more interesting.

OTOH, I don't give a flying f**k about who makes it, only the music matters to me. e.g. My favourite band, Killing Joke, seems to have at least two complete c**ts in their line-up. So what? I don't have to put up with them when I listen to Revelations. My only interest in finding out who might be in a band I like is so I can look for other music they might have made outside that band. I'm never going to listen to an album just because the people who made it are nice people, it is completely irrelevant, and if someone like Katy Perry made a record I liked, I'd happily buy it. Good music is way too rare and precious to allow yourself to be swayed by shit like that.

If you bothered to read my posts you would know I'm a fan of old simple CPU light synths as well as complex all in one synths, because they cut through a mix etc.

It should have been perfectly clear that I wasn't talking about you, specifically, beyond specific things you may have said that illustrate a wider point. (You did list a bunch of complex synths.)

There's no "right" way to get from point A to B in music. I think you get confused by that or it just doesn't compute.

There are better ways and worse ways. It's a continuum but that's not to say that every different way of working makes sense or is equally valid. I'm confused that you might think otherwise. e.g. I see a lot of people treating every track/channel in a mix the same, which to me is just absurd. Most tracks shouldn't need much at all, especially synth parts where you can tailor the patch so much more effectively than trying to do it with insert/send effects. To put it more simply, a lot of people seem to feel they need to do everything they possibly can on every channel, rather than just doing what each channel needs.

... I pretty much think all DAWs I've used have cool features and interesting parts to them.

Whereas I pretty much don't care. I'd have kept up with Bitwig if I could have got anything done with it. For me, that's all that matters.

In the end I stick mainly with DP because f*ck using what everyone else uses when I don't have to

To me that is giving other people power over you. If Studio One had 99% marketshare or just 1%, it wouldn't affect my opinion of it one way or another.

IMO Windows is still a steaming mess, but hey you can open up Synth 1 on it in Cubase 5.5, great. I really hoped it had solved it's issues, but the fact that it can still get corrupted at the OS level is a no go for me.

In 28 years of use, nothing even remotely like that has ever happened to me. What I mostly like about Windows is that it always just works (and that it is easy to extract maximum performance from, especially for my work). Here in the office, since we moved to PC last year we see a lot less of IT because the PCs just work, where we needed all kinds of kludges to get the Macs working as well.

[machinesworking]

OTOH, I don't give a flying f**k about who makes it, only the music matters to me. e.g. My favourite band, Killing Joke, seems to have at least two complete c**ts in their line-up. So what? I don't have to put up with them when I listen to Revelations. My only interest in finding out who might be in a band I like is so I can look for other music they might have made outside that band. I'm never going to listen to an album just because the people who made it are nice people, it is completely irrelevant, and if someone like Katy Perry made a record I liked, I'd happily buy it. Good music is way too rare and precious to allow yourself to be swayed by shit like that.

Yeah I've heard that about Killing Joke as well, but they're a good example, that's about all I know about them, couldn't pick them out of a crowd if I wanted to. A friend of mine had a demo tape of the first album that I really really wish I could find again, it was more techno pop than post punk, was completely shocked by it, not what I expected at all.

It should have been perfectly clear that I wasn't talking about you, specifically, beyond specific things you may have said that illustrate a wider point. (You did list a bunch of complex synths.)

It's harder to get excited about simple low CPU synths, but I used the cheaper Waldorf PPG soft synth for years as a compliment to complex synths, you figure out quickly that thinner less "fuzzy" synths cut though a mix. <-- you can do this with any synth by not using every dammed feature but why waste CPU?

There's no "right" way to get from point A to B in music. I think you get confused by that or it just doesn't compute.

There are better ways and worse ways. It's a continuum but that's not to say that every different way of working makes sense or is equally valid. I'm confused that you might think otherwise. e.g. I see a lot of people treating every track/channel in a mix the same, which to me is just absurd. Most tracks shouldn't need much at all, especially synth parts where you can tailor the patch so much more effectively than trying to do it with insert/send effects. To put it more simply, a lot of people seem to feel they need to do everything they possibly can on every channel, rather than just doing what each channel needs.

Different discussion than the previous one, but yeah I've never gotten that, let the synth do the lifting, but then again it's all the same in the end, it just seems like a waste of resources to me.

... I pretty much think all DAWs I've used have cool features and interesting parts to them.

Whereas I pretty much don't care. I'd have kept up with Bitwig if I could have got anything done with it. For me, that's all that matters.

I could use any of them and be happy enough, I like Bitwig, but in the end I currently see no reason not to use DP and Live like I have for years now.

In the end I stick mainly with DP because f*ck using what everyone else uses when I don't have to

To me that is giving other people power over you. If Studio One had 99% marketshare or just 1%, it wouldn't affect my opinion of it one way or another.

Had a feeling you would go there, like I said I think all the DAWs I've tried have great features and I wouldn't cry if I was forced to use any of them, but I know DP very well, which is worth something. Plus I'm chauvinistic about it, I think some of it's features are vastly underrated, and it gets ignored so I'm defensive about it.

In 28 years of use, nothing even remotely like that has ever happened to me. What I mostly like about Windows is that it always just works (and that it is easy to extract maximum performance from, especially for my work). Here in the office, since we moved to PC last year we see a lot less of IT because the PCs just work, where we needed all kinds of kludges to get the Macs working as well.

Yeah, I've got IT friends that flatly have the exact opposite experience, they argued with me for years about Windows being better, then started working with Macs because they had to, and now will never look back. These are hardcore Unix coders, not graphics artists or MS Office jockeys.

I recently dealt with my rooomates laptop and it was a total nightmare, she does nothing weird with it, less than 10% full drive, it just experienced an OS level corruption for zero reason, reporting it's disk as 99% full in Task Manager and running 20x at least slower than it should, freezing etc. Nothing came up in all the reports on this bug online, not on Microsofts forums, not on various sites etc. I performed a dozen cleaning, optimizing, virus scan routines, etc. etc. The only conclusion was that it had to be the OS or the drive, and the OS wasn't able to complete a complete scan on the drive. We replaced the drive and reinstalled Windows 11, upon testing the old boot drive, there was nothing wrong with it. Obviously this doesn't happen to everyone, but if you look up "disk 100% full" reports, this isn't uncommon either, and there is no rational reason for this, it's an OS level error.

I'm remise to give in to your report though, mostly the only way you can mess up Mac OS is to either be completely computer illiterate or intentionally try to screw it up. Online people do all these things they learned from Windows 95 or OS 9. I've never once had to reinstall OS X.

I don't hate Windows though, it's solid in most ways, but IMO the fact it can operate on any type of machine, and open up applications from 20 years ago has consequences. I've got a test Mac Pro body from Apple here a friend who worked there gave me, I plan on making a Windows machine out of it.

This conversation is played out over and over and over again. You will alway hate Macs, so it's pretty much worthless talking to you about it, all it does is turn threads into long diatribes between you and people who prefer Mac OS. In the bigger picture it's absolutely necessary that both exist, capitalism doesn't allow for monopolies that go unchallenged. Or if you want to see Windows truly suck, then watch Mac OS die completely, and visa versa.

[THE INTRANCER]

BONES becomes the CEO of Presonus.

[jules99]

Native immersive/3D audio will arrive in Bitwig, Live and possibly FL. There are workarounds with third-party plugins right now, but in these DAWs you can still only route stereo signals.

Immersive audio will also arrive in Spotify. Since most consumers listen with headphones, binaural workflows with the Dolby Atmos suite will become much more common. Mastering Atmos material will become a hot topic.

NI will surprise-update one or two of their existing products, pleasing some, angering many, just like always.

Apple will either add a new MPE-ready instrument to Logic or acquire yet another beloved plugin developer from the instrument realm and include their products into Logic exclusively.

Spectrasonics will release more expansions and well-polished point updates. They also seem ripe for a subscription service.

[legendCNCD]

Live getting real mixer instead of unusable clip section - one can hope

[fairlyclose]

In 28 years of use, nothing even remotely like that has ever happened to me. What I mostly like about Windows is that it always just works (and that it is easy to extract maximum performance from, especially for my work). Here in the office, since we moved to PC last year we see a lot less of IT because the PCs just work, where we needed all kinds of kludges to get the Macs working as well.

similar experience for me both personally and at a lab with a hundred or more macs (that ended up going back). Of course i know people who have had great experiences with Macs as well. I think there is a bias on the net where Mac users post how perfect their systems are and keep quiet when they aren't, whereas Windows users only post to complain about how crap their system is running.
If Windows was as terrible as people claim then they wouldnt have sold a squillion copies for decades. Like I have seen people still talk about blue screen of death which died a death long ago, so there is a lot of confirmation bias and flat out lying that goes on.
(for lies, I sat next to a tech telling a researcher that, using Matlab, only Macs did video, that you couldnt make video on a PC - which was a lie of course, but the techs used to get rewards from Apple according to how much business Apple did with the lab)

[audiojunkie]

DAW prediction: CLAP supported DAWs and Plugins will start to rapidly appears and steadily gain the attention of everyone--especially Steinberg, to Steinberg's dismay.

[pdxindy]

DAW prediction: CLAP supported DAWs and Plugins will start to rapidly appears and steadily gain the attention of everyone--especially Steinberg, to Steinberg's dismay.

That would be sweet... mostly though, I care about Bitwig CLAP support... and of course u-he

[audiojunkie]

DAW prediction: CLAP supported DAWs and Plugins will start to rapidly appears and steadily gain the attention of everyone--especially Steinberg, to Steinberg's dismay.

That would be sweet... mostly though, I care about Bitwig CLAP support... and of course u-he

If it were to go big, everyone would benefit. I'm hesitant to predict how things will go at this point--LV2 has been an open source standard for years, and it has never caught on outside of the Linux realm. I guess there's a lot to be said about the timing of revolutions, and Steinberg's killing of the VST2SDK and the forcing of the VST3SDK makes the timing (in this case) a bit more interesting.