DAWs should always be capturing our performances. why do we even have "record" button ?

[apoclypse]

The record button has one important function... it turns on the metronome.

This point is only really relevant when recording something from scratch though. In that case, the DAW could try to guess the tempo from what was recorded. Otherwise you could always hit play and enable the metronome independently of the recording state.

I was assuming that always recording meant whether transport was playing or not.

I think ideally it would work like Note where you just start tapping away and it will kick off the transport and guess the tempo and create a clip automatically when you stop playing because it should already be buffering that stuff in memory anyway. The slick thing about Note is that it shows it to you in a way that's usable immediately and gives you the option to add or discard whatever it's recording.

[maanga]

DAW is not a wife. Wife records all that was spoken by you and remembers for life.
Be happy that there is something called DAW that records only when told and that can be fully deleted.
Regards.

[AdvancedFollower]

Retrospective recording is a great feature but please don't remove the record button.

[whyterabbyt]

DAW is not a wife. Wife records all that was spoken by you and remembers for life.
Be happy that there is something called DAW that records only when told and that can be fully deleted.
Regards.

yay for driveby misogynistic analogies!

[jules99]

Always on recording for MIDI seems to be pretty common among DAWs with audio slowly catching up. It's probably harder to implement due to CPU demands and hard disk space. Imagine running a DAW session for six hours. Nonstop background recording would result in almost 6 GB of one or many files. Not too much, but still demanding for many slower machines.

Always on automation recording as it is done in Note by Ableton would be great. Turn a knob during playback, but a button to write said movement into automation.

[whyterabbyt]

Always on recording for MIDI seems to be pretty common among DAWs with audio slowly catching up. It's probably harder to implement due to CPU demands and hard disk space. Imagine running a DAW session for six hours. Nonstop background recording would result in almost 6 GB of one or many files. Not too much, but still demanding for many slower machines.

I dont think a lot of DAWs do 'always recording' retrospective MIDI though, do they? I thought it was generally 'always listening' on a rolling buffer. Ableton, for example, only records up to 16000 odd events, dropping the oldest 1000 as it needs to.

If one was to implement it for audio, the same would be expected, ideally providing the user with a choice of buffer time or space usage would be best option.
Thought, TBH, 6Gb of storage doesnt sound that much to me these days.

[mountainmaster]

I may well be an exception but I don't have a keyboard (or any other midi input) connected to my DAW. When I write music I draw the notes in the piano roll and add modulation, pitch bends etc. manually. So what would I have to record?

If people want this feature it is fine by me, as long as I can still turn it off.

[Dionysos]

If people want this feature it is fine by me, as long as I can still turn it off.

I don't think there'd be much to turn off if you don't even have any midi or audio inputs.

[apoclypse]

I may well be an exception but I don't have a keyboard (or any other midi input) connected to my DAW. When I write music I draw the notes in the piano roll and add modulation, pitch bends etc. manually. So what would I have to record?

If people want this feature it is fine by me, as long as I can still turn it off.

I mean you are probably not pressing the record button anyway in your workflows so there is nothing to turn off in your case.

[telecharge]

I may well be an exception but I don't have a keyboard (or any other midi input) connected to my DAW. When I write music I draw the notes in the piano roll and add modulation, pitch bends etc. manually. So what would I have to record?

If people want this feature it is fine by me, as long as I can still turn it off.

No feature will appeal to everyone. Maybe this one isn't for you.

I could see the value if you forget to record something and need to recapture it after you have made changes to your sequencer/piano roll.

Another use case could be when using randomization or probability with a sequencer and not recording everything as you're dialing it in.

[mountainmaster]

Another use case could be when using randomization or probability with a sequencer and not recording everything as you're dialing it in.

That is a good one. I often use randomization and then I end up recording many mixdowns from which I pick the best one. And yes, sometimes the mixdowns keep turning out less satisfactory than that magical first "take".

And then there was that time when I created a preset and an update of the synth made it sound totally different.

[flugel45]

Many DAWS do have the option, and that's great, but I certainly wouldn't want it as the default behavior.

I'm not sure why people are arguing for or against it (Other than this being KVR).

[brd]

Wouldn't that be terrible for performance?

[darkinners]

Wouldn't that be terrible for performance?

it will at the cost of CPU and disk performance but with modern day CPU power, I don't see the downside of it. modern CPU and SSD has a lot power overhead for processing audio.

[pixel85]

Wouldn't that be terrible for performance?

it will at the cost of CPU and disk performance but with modern day CPU power, I don't see the downside of it. modern CPU and SSD has a lot power overhead for processing audio.

Yeah but Read/Write even of SSDs is not unlimited and constant writing, several hours per day would wear them faster.