Old DAWs - nostalgia thread

[CinningBao]

Maybe I lived in some weird isolated hippie commune but no-one ever mentions RAM Music Machine for the Spectrum. I did manage to revive one recently with an old collaborator but loading our archive of beats was problematic.

You'll never hear another demo track anything like this:


I moved onto Octamed a few years later, and Buzz Machines another few years later. Then I got Logic/Live 2002 and here we are in the future

[osiris]

I love that. Never heard of it. I found an old thing called a Coleco Music and Melody Maker. Make music on your analog TV

[Roman Empire]

I got a ZX-81 clone (Lambda 8300) in 1982 on which I could make monophonic music in the builtin BASIC programming language. A year or two later I moved on to C-64, that actually had a 3-voice sequencer which unfortunately I forgot the name of. We also hacked Rob Hubbards code and made music with his sounds, but that´s another story In about 87 I went to Amiga, where first using Soundtracker, then Octalyzer and finally DR T´s KCS, that I used for my midi-equipment. I then moved on to PC in 97, on which I´ve used Cubase ever since.

[MuTools]

Here is LUNA 8.4 PreRelease which was right before MuLab 1.0. I like how in LUNA the selected rack 'expands' in MuLab this feature went away

FYI: MuLab still has that 'auto expand rack' feature = the focused rack is expanded, all other racks are collapsed. A handy feature when there are many racks. If you want you can also switch to manual collapsing/expanding racks.

[eLawnMust]

Well, maybe it 'regained' this superpower later on down the line but testing MuLab version 1.0 it's not there & I think (but not sure) MuLab 2 & 4 are the same. But no sir version ONE for sure I just checked-

As you can see the rack is selected but size changes not no matter what-



However in LUNA no voodoo need be applied, a lite tap & it's open-

[MuTools]

I don't think the 'auto expand rack' feature has ever been removed. Maybe the auto expand rack feature has been switched off? Right-click the rack collapse/expand button to re-enable it.

[spigmu]

A Mac Plus and Master Tracks Pro was my happiest time. With a Jambox it synced to tape great and nothing since has been so fast for editing midi. I moved to Performer after they released a version that froze immediately on 2.5 Megs of RAM, which f'd up my life something horrible for the two weeks that it was a mystery, and on to DP for ages. If Reaper could do midi editing half as elegantly as MTP did 35 years ago I wouldn't feel like jumping out the window every time I have to do it.

Passport was a funny company. Maybe still is. I'd pay handsomely if I could run a current version of MTP on an M1 MBP.

[legendCNCD]

Aodix was very nice, I remember talking about some stuff in it with Arguru. I did one psytrance tune with it, but I have not found render of the track anywhere

[Winstontaneous]

Ross Bencina's AudioMulch really spoiled me in terms the MetaSurface, modular patching, and coming up with a live sampling/resampling workflow. I've replicated it in Live, Reaper, and Bitwig but still wish Mulch was actively developed.

[eLawnMust]

Here's SkaleTracker 0.81 beta which was the last one... What a 'FastTracker Cadillac'... Plan on doing a tune in this soon after finishing in AXS Tracker.




Very cool native use of AKAI & SF2, AKAI seems to sound a bit better. Also VST FX but a bit picky as Skale ReRezzes the GUIs & many plug cannot stand that so then crash. Any GUI-Less plugs good though so no lack of those...

VSTi can be used too but same issue, GUI-less VSTi fine & remembers slider positions but GUIed plugs that WILL work often no remembering of preset or position so you gotta write it down & reselect preset every time you open tune...

So really best limited use of VSTi, GOOD use of VST combined with AKAI or SF2 Instruments & you got a winner...

Has massive mixer kinda like Synapse Audio Orion very much a pleasure. Audio Sample Editor never got finished. Most other areas pretty good with many advanced features like realtime drawing of FX curves in vertical fashion...

Great sounding Tracker still valid today too bad the project was abandoned...

[eLawnMust]

Previously mentioned H8 Tracker-



Have uploaded my video of it. For ALL of You it will be the only tune to ever see or hear in it as the only other tune that is public is the demo tune that comes with the tracker. Has no WAV Render so had to record the sound card as it played so some crackling evident-

[eLawnMust]

As to former Noisetrekker/Protrekkr post-

Annotated Protrekkr...

[eLawnMust]

ChibiTracker pretty cool & conforms to IT (Impulse Tracker) specs for all the raw power of the IT format (plus a few more). Seems like 2008 was the actual last binary though there was more recent code update on github.

Certainly one on my list to make a tune in (eventually). It can open XM, MOD & S3M as well. Even if you don't make a tune it's good just to listen to IT modules in & way better to navigate in than SchismTracker.




Came with 3 different skins actually all 3 are pretty good-





Here's Ronan Fed messing around in ChibiTracker-





Nice Tracker & the IT format gives extra omph & feature set which is what people crave....

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.gi ... ibiTracker

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=27385

[eLawnMust]

Early versions of Arguru's Freebase Tracker could use VSTi & VST such as 0.002 version here-




However version 1.0 was NOT a Tracker but had piano roll & you could even draw in curves for pitch bend & modulation-

[lightsfadelow]

Love DAW nostalgia. I am old enough to have lived through almost the whole cycle of consumer-accessible digital music production...

From my first MIDI sequencer on a Mac SE in my childhood bedroom. No such thing as a DAW back then. And no VSTis. I'm honestly not sure what it was, but I think it was MOTU Performer.

And I paired it with an Ensoniq EPS

And a Tascam Porta 05

I had some wonky MIDI interface and a device that let me stripe MIDI timecode to one track of the Porta 05 to sync everything together and I'd use the remaining 3 tracks (sometimes bouncing multiple tines) for audio.

Mac + Performer + EPS + 4-track was the first real game-changer for me
and after that it was just evolution over the next decade.

I saved up all of my summer job money to buy a first generation ADAT. Which was insane, but for all of college, and even several years after, that's all that was realistic.


I pooled resources with another student that had a 16 channel mixer and a 2-track DAT (don't recall which models). because you needed one to create a mix down as the ADAT didn't have that capability.

I eventually added a Yamaha 01v with an ADAT card, which was awesome because I could automate the mix and the faders would fly around synced with my sequencer.

and an EX5


At some point around that time, I bought a used Yamaha TX81z, which gave me some of the iconic DX7 sounds in a multitimbral instrument.


I had some gargantuan PowerMac 7100. But I was still using a MIDI sequencer, and it still may have been Performer... but I just don't recall.


It wasn't until Sonic Foundry ACID, that it seemed really possible to ditch the ADAT.


ACID 1.0 was the second game-changer in my music creation life. It was so elegant and simple. And over time it added capabilities like offline and realtime effects.

It was a shame that it didn't support VSTis or MIDI in a timely manner. And even more of a shame that it was bought by Sony, who really didn't do a great job evolving it.

I went from there to a PC and early versions of Cakewalk Pro Audio. But honestly, Cakewalk was so clunky and remained clunky as I upgraded to Sonar, etc.


When I switched to a PC, I was still trying to leverage my EX5 and TX81z as synths because soft synths still sucked. So while I was able to retire the ADAT, I kept the 01v and connected them all via a little boutique audio card called the Sonorus Studi/o which had 2 ADAT inputs and 2 ADAT outputs (as well as a SPDIF)


Sadly, Sonorus went out of business and I bought an M-Audio Profire 2626... which was also discontinued.

I think the moral of the story, is don't buy any audio interface I buy. (I'm currently using the MOTU M4 because I am done paying a lot for an audio interface.)

I started using Cubase 7 in what would now be considered the current era. This was the last big game-changer for me as it actually worked well and combined MIDI and Audio in a way that Cakewalk never did right. It was also the era when I could buy soft synths/samplers that were good, and I invested in several that I use today (such as Omnisphere, Trillian, Kontakt) and some that are no longer relevant (Stylus RMX, the rest of Komplete, everything from FXpansion, the abandoned iZotope instruments).


Today I'm on the latest version of Logic and I'm back on a Mac. The game changer there is Apple Silicon, but Logic isn't game changing relative to versions of Cubase Pro from a decade ago... which is kind of sad.

I'm still using the Yamaha EX5 as a controller, but everything is ITB now. I no longer have any of the old Macs, the audio interfaces, the TX81z, etc. but my old Cubase PC sits on a shelf "just in case"... although I have all the old Cubase projects in the cloud... I think.