KVR Audio

jens · Post by **jens** » Tue Jul 04, 2023 11:38 am

I guess in hindsight I didn't pay close enough attention to the development. The last version I upgraded to was 9 five years ago, but I had not been using Tracktion for like a decade or so
and was only upgrading to support development at that point. But then they kept raising the fee
and I wasn't willing to keep paying money like that for basically nothing (fro my point of view /useage).

I kept looking into new versions (watching product presentations and occassionally demoing with little enthusiasm) but am on the record for how dreadful - outright ruined - I thought the interface had become.

But now with the currect sale I demoed 12.5 again (which I had already installed earlier on my machine) and to my suprise they ended up managing to bring new greatness to it.

Now they have fully overcome the daft one-window paradigm (sorry, Jules, but it's really just a really stupid idea from the get-go - and that's a fact) and even went beyond other DAWs as the timeline itself can open as its own window (greatly increasing the available screen estate for arrangement duties).

The GUI is very flexible and can be made astoundingly sleek, pretty and efficient.

The audio-comping system is the best I've ever encountered in any DAW. How did I miss that?

The Track-snapshots feature is really fantastic.

The different ways to present and organize the avalailable plugins is certainly class-leading.

I'm still very much at the stage of finding everything out but the whole application is full of great ideas and feels - overall (there's the slight strange inconsistency and what not here and there) - really well thought out.

Hooray - Tracktion is dead, long live Waveform.

gentleclockdivider · Post by **gentleclockdivider** » Tue Jul 04, 2023 12:59 pm

I tried tracktion from version 1 up untill it was called waveform .
It was a crashfest gallore , did it improve ?

jens · Post by **jens** » Tue Jul 04, 2023 1:24 pm

I can't really answer that yet (due to lack of experience), but it seems like it... I had one crash so far with 12.5 and that one was audio-driver related and (kind of at least) a bit my own mistake.

However: it then restarted automatically and came back to where it was before the crash in a instant or two... and that was certainly an unrivalled experience.

emasters · Post by **emasters** » Tue Jul 04, 2023 7:05 pm

gentleclockdivider wrote: Tue Jul 04, 2023 12:59 pm I tried tracktion from version 1 up untill it was called waveform .
It was a crashfest gallore , did it improve ?

Similar here -- always liked the approach and implementation with Waveform. But the one thing it needed to do well and didn't, was reliably hosting plugins (so many crashes all the time). Would also be curious if on Mac OS, it's stable now in terms of hosting plugins?

musicproducerdee · Post by **musicproducerdee** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 10:51 am

Nice. They offer a 90 day trial too. I might check it out.

I'm also waiting for Sonar (Cake/Bandlab) re-introduction.

Have been trying new DAWs lately

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 1:31 pm

It has still some weird stuff going, but it seems damn nigh to being the perfect DAW for me personally.

Here's some of the problems I encountered so far:

- if the mixer is undocked and you then open a plugin window from within it,
that window gets opened behind it without there even being a possibility to bring it to the front.

It seems obvious to me that they only ever tested this with the mixer residing on a secondary screen
(with the plugin opening on the main-screen.
But I use a single screen and instead undock the mixer simply in order to maximize it .
(which can't be done while it is docked - then there's still a lot of screen-estate pointlessly wasted
on stuff I have zero use of seeing while mixing stuff - still the old nonsensical single-window paradigm.)

- there's some crucial shortcuts/actions missing, for instance:
- - record-arm selected track(s)
- - show/hide takes
- - load layout #1... (-n)

- showing/hiding takes in the track-editor will also affect the arragement panel (i.e. the main timeline too.)
Also the maximized track-editor window isn't properly restored the next time it's being opened

These are some minor things that negatively affect the otherwise great workflow
(which should be relatively easy to fix I would assume).

In regards to crashing it still seems to be rather stable to me, but then again I haven't work on
a bigger/more complete project yet. But they claim to have completely rewritten the engine for V12
- also making it more efficent - so a significant improvement in that regard should come as no surprise.

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 6:55 pm

I like it. I'd be tempted, if it weren't for knowing Live so well. But the crash fest seems largely gone.

Ou_Tis · Post by **Ou_Tis** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:55 pm

Looks like there's no upgrade path from Waveform 10 to Waveform 12?...

Only seeing upgrade from Waveform 11 for $99 or buy Waveform 12 outright for $150 (40% off sale active).

Ou_Tis · Post by **Ou_Tis** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:59 pm

Ou_Tis wrote: Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:55 pm Looks like there's no upgrade path from Waveform 10 to Waveform 12?...

Only seeing upgrade from Waveform 11 for $99 or buy Waveform 12 outright for $150 (40% off sale active).

But last BF they had this upgrade sale:

"I have Waveform 10 or earlier
BUY - $74.50 "

Could email their support of course....

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:38 pm

Ou_Tis wrote: Wed Jul 05, 2023 7:55 pm Looks like there's no upgrade path from Waveform 10 to Waveform 12?...

yeah, quite annoying... but over JRR I got it for $79.57 which I found certainly good enough, assuming I am going to really use it this time around... (would I know they'd soonish fix the few
niggles I've encountered (or might still encounter within the next couple of days) in fact I'd be willing to pay twice that amount... )

original flipper · Post by **original flipper** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:54 pm

Hi

I always found the midi editing a bit 'wonky' - perhaps I might give it a try.

I wonder if you still have to jump through hoops to 'wire up' a VSTI to a track?

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 9:49 pm

original flipper wrote: Wed Jul 05, 2023 8:54 pm I wonder if you still have to jump through hoops to 'wire up' a VSTI to a track?

hm.. do you possibly confuse Waveform with Studio One?

In Waveform it couldn't be easier - it's basically the same as putting FX plugins on a track (and just like Reaper Waveform doesn't differentiate between audio and MIDI tracks) - and it has been like that for twenty years (fwiw I joined KVR in 2003 in order to participate in the Tracktion-forum, so I earnestly mean full 20years.)

pough · Post by **pough** » Wed Jul 05, 2023 9:58 pm

Maybe referring to multi-out VSTis, which require a Rack. That has become easier in the latest release but it's still more work than in most DAWs.

jens · Post by **jens** » Thu Jul 06, 2023 2:22 am

Oh, I see - I just tried it (personally I have no need for that) and the way it did it makes zero sense to me... totally weird.

jens · Post by **jens** » Thu Jul 06, 2023 2:35 am

Oh, it seems you can't hide tracks just in the arrangement panel, but not in the mixer (or vice versa) *ouch*
(which is exactly what you would need for properly dealing with multi-out plugins... )

Tracktion Waveform - now astonishingly great / Edit: I wish!