Story Tracktion Waveform

[nowgad]

Became interesting. Who can tell the story of Tracktion Waveform? There is very little information, practically none.
I think that no one dares to share their vision, experience, history of Waveform.

[jabe]

Most of it is on this forum somewhere, but the Wikipedia page (link below) summarises it well enough. It was written by Julian Storer and initially released in 2002, but was taken over by Mackie in 2003. They developed it for a while and then stopped. In 2013 it was reacquired by Mr S and has been developed since by the Tracktion Software Corporation. Some of us might be able to answer further questions about the history. Much of it is, as I said, somewhere in the low-number pages of this forum. Some of us (including me) get defensive against those that whinge about the state of things because we remember the days when Tracktion was effectively abandonware, and it came as a great relief for it to be resurrected. The TSC team has never had many staff, unlike bigger name DAWs that cost N times as much (I had Cubase before Tracktion and didn't like the endless menus) and can afford larger teams of developers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracktion_Waveform

[pough]

...released in 2002, but was taken over by Mackie in 2003...

Wait. The descent into hell happened that quickly? My memories are all skewed. Those pre-Mackie days must have been lived in slow motion.

[jabe]

...released in 2002, but was taken over by Mackie in 2003...

Wait. The descent into hell happened that quickly? My memories are all skewed. Those pre-Mackie days must have been lived in slow motion.

I thought it was longer, but assumed the Wiki account was true. Apolz!

[Watchful]

The original version, I understand, could fit on a floppy disk, so that it was probably the most portable DAW that ever was: you could run the whole thing on nearly any compatible computer and take it with you, storing your projects on a second disk.

Also, the original paradigm was that there would be no menus involved in production work: everything was either right there or a mouse-click popup window away, letting you never take your eyes off the screen. I mention this because a lot of the "quirks" that irritate non-Tracktion users originate from this idea: the weird workflow and layout isn't all that weird when you realize that Julian effectively created a recording studio workflow to operate in a single window. It's that last point that attracted me to Tracktion T6, back in the day: not that it operated (largely) in a single window, but that it was designed to emulate the logic of old-timey studio signal cabling (left-to-right workflow). That immediately clicked with me, which is more sensible than trying to create a top-down mixer emulation like other DAWs, since a lot of my work processes are dealing with sends, returns, aux feeds, inserts, and more. Waveform--and I think only Waveform--lets you tackle a problem in the old-fashioned analog way or a slick new digital way...or both at the same time. The more you know about old school recording tricks, the better Waveform looks; and the more you know about modern methods of audio production, the better Waveform looks. I love being able to blend the two approaches with no effort.

Here's a third bit of trivia for newcomers: from v1 to v7, the product was Tracktion--so the last product in this format was Tracktion T7. With the next version, it became rebranded as Waveform 8. I find it incredible that no one had trademarked the name "Waveform" previously, but great job to the Tracktion team for realizing "Hey, we can grab that!"

[Peter Widdicombe]

I kinda liked "tracktion" better though... try to search for "waveform settings" and see how much irrelevant stuff shows up !

[nowgad]

The original version

+++
That's it. For me, the strange workflow is all existing daws. While in Waveform everything is logical.
My transition from fl was completely painless and very quick.

[Watchful]

I kinda liked "tracktion" better though... try to search for "waveform settings" and see how much irrelevant stuff shows up !

You can still search for "tracktion settings!"

[operandx]

I still miss the bendy arrows.

[bk]

I still miss the bendy arrows.

Ah, yes. The bendy arrows. They are sorely missed.

I've been around since 1.x. What I really miss is reporting a bug on this very forum, and Jules releasing a fix the same or next day. It's hard to beat that customer service.

For my uses, the program was incredibly stable back then, but unfortunately, gets less and less stable the older it gets.

I still have W10, 11 and 12 installed, but I primarily use Reaper these days, and have for the last 8 years or so. I've slowly gotten used to the work flow, and frankly, I'm not sure it's ever crashed on me. I know, usually people either love or hate Reaper. I don't love it like I did the early Tracktion versions, but I understand it, and it lets me get done what I need to do with the least amount of futzing around.

[lmv]

It was written by Julian Storer and initially released in 2002

The original version, I understand, could fit on a floppy disk, so that it was probably the most portable DAW that ever was: you could run the whole thing on nearly any compatible computer and take it with you, storing your projects on a second disk.

I used floppies for the last time in 1999, and I never was the "early adopter" type. By 2002, floppies were pretty much obsolete. CDs had become the norm for most things and pen drives were becoming popular. The computer I bought in 2002 didn't even have a floppy drive, and I live in a "third world" country. I usually have a lot of respect for old technology, but floppies were really awful. I don't miss them at all.