VirtualDAW

[VirtualDAW]

No, I meant beginner music producers. Not professionals, sorry for the confusion.

the only DAW out of several dozens that doesn't even support such a basic function as recording some vocals

I already said several times here, that USB-microphone audio input will be available at some point. However, many EDM, Trance, Techno tracks use vocal samples. If you create a remix (e.g. for a contest) you get vocal stems.

And by the time more and more features will be added to the DAW. This project (as its now) is a starting point. Obviously all base implementations I mentioned in my initial post are sufficient for the main functionality in a DAW, since no additional features (except analog physical audio devices) were mentioned here yet. Anything else may be added later, if there is a final product and high demand for it. From the beginning I said, that the time horizon is "2026 or later", which is about one year from now.

[lfm]

Have a look at CAKEWALK NEXT


The most rudimentary I can think of and resembles what I read in OP.
- but demo is just over a year old, not sure about state now

The thinking is the same as far as I can tell. But it runs on Mac and Windows.

They worked pretty much 5 years on this so far, and it was 3 years ago the announced it, as I recall under the term "soon".
- making a daw is a massive undertaking

https://www.cakewalk.com/

All about using usb mikes later and stuff means you have not looked at what latencies are using those kind of drivers and record stuff with Windows ordinary soundcards.

To learn your way around some keyboard stuff is really what you have to learn if not into programming note by note. And that is really a killjoy to sit and enter notes like that. Fun to do some beats maybe as a start but that fades quickly.


To have maximum fun as starter musician I think Band in a Box is there to guide with various styles and find you way. Band in a Box is really a way to get something nice sounding quickly and you accomplished something.

Then expand on that and go to Cakewalk Next. When you got something that sounds better than BIAB you quite a bit on your way and want to play melodies and some basic stuff with a keyboard.

And you realize how to arrange and what different parts are doing.


No need to invent the wheel again, really. Learning and progress is what gives satisfaction.

[SamDi]

Have a look at CAKEWALK NEXT

Wow, that looks actually pretty good. I ask myself, why all DAWs make the audio clips rectanglish with sharp corners, so that it is pretty difficult to distinguish different clips, when it‘s crowded. Even Bitwig has changed from that cutted corner view to full rectangles. Why???

[SamDi]

Have a look at CAKEWALK NEXT

Wow, that looks actually pretty good. I ask myself, why all DAWs make the audio clips rectanglish with sharp corners, so that it is pretty difficult to distinguish different clips, when it‘s crowded. Even Bitwig has changed from that cutted corner view to full rectangles. Why???

Obviously all base implementations I mentioned in my initial post are sufficient for the main functionality in a DAW, since no additional features (except analog physical audio devices) were mentioned here yet.

Even if it would be sufficient for a main functionality of a DAW, it‘s by far not sufficient to make your DAW interesting for anyone, not for beginners and not for anyone else. That‘s what people try to tell you in this thread. You can grab now this hint and and elaborate on your idea or you can stubbornly ignore all these voices. We are turning to walk in circles, so I won‘t repeat this anymore to not bother you too hard.

[lfm]

Have a look at CAKEWALK NEXT

Wow, that looks actually pretty good. I ask myself, why all DAWs make the audio clips rectanglish with sharp corners, so that it is pretty difficult to distinguish different clips, when it‘s crowded. Even Bitwig has changed from that cutted corner view to full rectangles. Why???

I don't remember if any daws allow coloring each clip differently, could be a way if you look for that maybe.

But as you say, rounded corner is useful for that purpose.

[SamDi]

Have a look at CAKEWALK NEXT

Wow, that looks actually pretty good. I ask myself, why all DAWs make the audio clips rectanglish with sharp corners, so that it is pretty difficult to distinguish different clips, when it‘s crowded. Even Bitwig has changed from that cutted corner view to full rectangles. Why???

I don't remember if any daws allow coloring each clip differently, could be a way if you look for that maybe.

But as you say, rounded corner is useful for that purpose.

Yes, that all DAWs do allow. But you‘d have to do it manually and it would look pretty messy. No, same color for the clips ln rhe same track bur clear seperstor would be the way. The GUI of this Cakewalk Next mockup looks awesome clean and tidy.

[VOODOO U]

Still isn't a full-fledged DAW today, but for the most music making people it "delivers".

I'm scratching my head with this one. How is Live not a full-fledged DAW???

Because Live is more dedicated to music creation and producing especially for EDM or other pattern based music. So it's good to work with MIDI-Patterns and audio clips and arrange them and create tracks.

This has been discussed before. There are those, myself included, who have and do use Live for film scoring, recording bands in all genres of music along with electronica and that's with or without utilizing the session view.

On the other side all the functions you need for recording audio into tracks, edit audio, manage huge projects with many tracks and finally mix all the tracks are relatively minimalistic compared to a "full-fledged" DAW. E.g. you can't even switch the time bar to show minutes and seconds, you have just one marker type, you can not hide tracks or search them (when you have dozens or hundreds of them). No one working with big audio projects would consider Live as the program of choice.

Yeah it may not be the program of choice but it can be done. If there are inconveniences, it doesn't prevent one from utilizing Live to accomplish work that can also be done with other "full-fledged" DAWs. I've done projects that had approx 80 tracks messing around with film scoring.

[SamDi]

This has been discussed before. There are those, myself included, who have and do use Live for film scoring, recording bands in all genres of music along with electronica and that's with or without utilizing the session view.

...

Yeah it may not be the program of choice but it can be done. If there are inconveniences, it doesn't prevent one from utilizing Live to accomplish work that can also be done with other "full-fledged" DAWs. I've done projects that had approx 80 tracks messing around with film scoring.

I did never state that with Live it wouldn't be possible to accomplish almost everything.
Yeah you can use it for big band recording, film scoring and huge multichannel projects. But that's not what it is intended for and that reflects in the many standard features missing, e.g.normalizing audio clips as best example.

[VOODOO U]

I did never state that with Live it wouldn't be possible to accomplish almost everything.
Yeah you can use it for big band recording, film scoring and huge multichannel projects. But that's not what it is intended for and that reflects in the many standard features missing, e.g.normalizing audio clips as best example.

Why would you normalise audio clips? To be a bit old skool, when recording to 2" tape, there was no normalising. In the digital domain wouldn't that just make the overall mix more dense and thus sound too "narrow" (lack of space/breathing room)?
If a track needs to be made more prominent, use EQ and compression with consideration to the other tracks.
Normalising, well, you're just raising the volume of each sound to it's highest peak and that doesn't equal a good mix. Basically you're just back to square one where things need to be leveled out but now it's more loud and causing more mud.
Maybe I'm wrong but I'm ok with that. I'm all ears and willing to.learn.

[SamDi]

Why would you normalise audio clips? To be a bit old skool, when recording to 2" tape, there was no normalising. In the digital domain wouldn't that just make the overall mix more dense and thus sound too "narrow" (lack of space/breathing room)?
If a track needs to be made more prominent, use EQ and compression with consideration to the other tracks.
Normalising, well, you're just raising the volume of each sound to it's highest peak and that doesn't equal a good mix. Basically you're just back to square one where things need to be leveled out but now it's more loud and causing more mud.
Maybe I'm wrong but I'm ok with that. I'm all ears and willing to.learn.

This was just an example. Of course we could walk through each single standard feature not-existent in Live and discuss, why you actually don't need it. ATE Ableton is just not intended as an all-purpose DAW and that it is what it is. Obviously you don't agree with this statement, though you can often read it in DAW comparisons and reviews, it's not just my words.

[BONES]

Yes, because even the simplest DAW imaginable is a very complex program compared to other software.

That's the problem - there are no simple hosts, they are all far too complicated. I don't need a full-fledged DAW, I really just need a sequencer that can host plugins and playback audio files. All the other schizz is completely optional if the workflow is good.

Alone the GUI with needing to design each widget yourself isn't easy.

I did that multiple times for Orion, it's not hard if you know what you're doing.

As a single person you can easily spend years to implement all this, even if you work on it full-time.

So what? These things take time but you don't have to do it all at once. As long as the foundation is solid, the project can grow over time. But if you don't get the basics right, it will never amount to anything.

BTW, I wonder, why you didn't jump on the Ableton Live wagon, when switching the DAW. Until before 2 or 3 versions it was one of the simplest-to-use DAWs on the market by beeing capable doing the most important things for music makers.

Because the workflow isn't great and a lot of people complain about it's value for things like mixing. I tried Ableton Live at version 1.0. It did nothing for me then and I see nothing in it now that would improve it for me. And it's always had the clip launcher,, so it was never really basic at all.

[VirtualDAW]

Yes, because even the simplest DAW imaginable is a very complex program compared to other software.

That's the problem - there are no simple hosts, they are all far too complicated. I don't need a full-fledged DAW, I really just need a sequencer that can host plugins and playback audio files.

Alone the GUI with needing to design each widget yourself isn't easy.

I did that multiple times for Orion, it's not hard if you know what you're doing.

As a single person you can easily spend years to implement all this, even if you work on it full-time.

So what?

Exactly. I totally agree.

[twal]

Normalising, well, you're just raising the volume of each sound to it's highest peak and that doesn't equal a good mix. Basically you're just back to square one where things need to be leveled out but now it's more loud and causing more mud.
Maybe I'm wrong but I'm ok with that. I'm all ears and willing to.learn.

I have a custom action string where I take several samples at the same time, replace them with random samples, chop them, rearrange them, reverse them, then glue them. The product left can be something of an abomination with a wide variety of transients- this is where I have used Normalization but no other occurrences...

[twal]

That's the problem - there are no simple hosts, they are all far too complicated. I don't need a full-fledged DAW, I really just need a sequencer that can host plugins and playback audio files. All the other schizz is completely optional if the workflow is good.

This is the reason why I recommend Reaper to you. Not for all the things it can do (even though I have mentioned some of those things) but because at its basic level it is the simplest daw to interact with using bare bones setup with no need to use any bells and whistles.

[BONES]

Except you have to turn it into that. Studio One is much closer to perfect for me, I think. The only thing I can't ignore is the browser but I can easily show and hide it so it's never really in the way. If it didn't crash 10 times a day, when I try to close certain songs, I wouldn't even be looking for another host.

I was using Studio One Artist for 18 months or so and never once came across a missing feature. It had absolutely everything I needed. In fact, if the free version had had VST support, it would probably have been perfectly usable, too. I'm back on Pro now because it's the same install, you don't save any drive-space with Artist, so it makes no difference, really, and I own both licenses.