VirtualDAW

[twal]

I think the problem is the reverse, people think you have to turn it into that, but people instead start turning it into something complicated thinking that is what "gets it off the ground" imho.

[SamDi]

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.

So you actually want something like https://www.steinberg.net/vst-live/ or one of the other plugin hosts out there?

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

So even Orion was not a one-man.show? I thought so. But that's the point - if you have a team of experts, who know what they are doing it's achieveable. If you are a one-man-show and jack of all trades, master of none, it's pretty difficult and would need so long...2026 as it was said by the OP is pretty unrealistic.

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.

Might be, but you should have the whole undertaking in mind. You have a conflict triangle between
-creating a DAW with USP which is interesting for anybody
-getting it done in a reasonable time before interested customers run away
-having another fulltime-job for living or earning as soon as possbile money with it to dedicate as much time as possible.
I don't see that the OP has defined a scenario, where it looks somehow realistic and doable.

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.

-Workfloat is GOAT (beside Bitwig), best ratio between lean and clean GUI/workflow and capability
-Mixing depends on perspective, when you come from producer/music maker side it's pretty sufficient. If you come from mixing engineer, recording huge bands side, there are better solutions.
-Maybe you should update your drawers more often than each 24 years. As far as I remember 1.0 was really limited and even didn'd support MIDI or VST, was just audio clips, right?
-You don't need to use the clip launcher and if you don't it isn't in your way.
-I can not imagine a workflow, getting things faster done as with Live or Bitwig, except what another guy here mentioned, if you tailor Reaper. But as you recognized, you have the initial configuration effort to make it yours.

[crimsonwarlock]

I can not imagine a workflow, getting things faster done...

Workflow isn't always about how fast you can do something. It is mostly how easy it is to do something. Fast is not the same thing as easy.

[SamDi]

Workflow isn't always about how fast you can do something. It is mostly how easy it is to do something. Fast is not the same thing as easy.

Can you elaborate on this with an example? For me it's equivalent resp. the one results in theother.

[crimsonwarlock]

Can you elaborate on this with an example? For me it's equivalent resp. the one results in theother.

Easy: if you can use, say, 80% of an application without reading the manual.

Fast: after studying the manual and memorize all the cool shortcuts, you can do something quickly. This makes the specific action easy from now on, but it doesn't make the application easy. The next time you want to do something you didn't do so far, it is back to the manual to figure things out.

Many DAWs these days are bloated with tools, tricks and shortcuts for just about anything and everything, which makes them complex to use, instead of easy. Absolutely fast for many things, but certainly not easy.

[SamDi]

Easy: if you can use, say, 80% of an application without reading the manual.

Fast: after studying the manual and memorize all the cool shortcuts, you can do something quickly. This makes the specific action easy from now on, but it doesn't make the application easy. The next time you want to do something you didn't do so far, it is back to the manual to figure things out.

Many DAWs these days are bloated with tools, tricks and shortcuts for just about anything and everything, which makes them complex to use, instead of easy. Absolutely fast for many things, but certainly not easy.

I understand what you mean, but we have a different perspective of this. Easy doesn't mean for me that that things are self-explaining or you don't need to learn it.

Easy for me means, that effort to do it is low and thus it's fast. With this said, e.g. creating a new track in Reaper is more easy, than in other DAWs. Why? Because there is just one type and you just need to press CTRL-T.
Next difficult is Ableton or Bitwig, where you have to remember shortcuts for different track types. And most difficult with biggest effort is Cubase, where a dialog opens and you have to set up stuff and then after OK new track is created (maybe I oversimplified and after configuration you can insert new track type directly without dialog, don't know tbh)

But even when Reaper is the quickest and easiest that doesn't mean that you don't need to understand the concept of one track type does it all and probably need to read the manual for that.

[funky lime]

Many DAWs these days are bloated with tools, tricks and shortcuts for just about anything and everything, which makes them complex to use, instead of easy. Absolutely fast for many things, but certainly not easy.

a good piece of software will let you have it both ways.

Reaper, for instance... i've been using it for at least 15 years, and am a power-user of sorts. i get into the weeds with scripts and extensions and customization. for me, that's a major selling point. whenever i identify a pain point, i can generally find a way around it, and with each, my setup becomes more and more my own. lovely.

one friend of mine is a computer dummy, like will call me in a panic because he accidentally moved a folder on his computer and doesn't know how to find it again. he makes great music in Reaper just fine, because he can simply choose not to engage with the complexity. until yesterday, he didn't even know the actions list existed, let alone SWS or ReaPack extensions. but his songs sound great to me, using Reaper in a very simple manner straight out of the box with no customization whatsoever.

and even better, he's got room to grow into the complexity, one thing at a time, whenever he's ready... without having to switch programs and learn a whole new DAW.

[twal]

Options does not make things more complex. You don't have to use all options. I went to a friends not too long ago and had a fresh install of Reaper and could use it without customization. I didn't customize Reaper for a long time after using it. Merely learning a daw in and of itself can take some time, especially Reaper because it does no hand holding. If you want to sidechain, you have to learn how to do it not do two-clicks, but once you know it, you can save the setup in a track template or have it ready in a project template (it also keeps your understanding fresh).

The reason why Reaper does it like this, is to keep flexibility as the key. With most other daws, a pre-setup method will bypass all of the methods that it would initially necessitate in order to follow a string of capabilities another way if you so chose- that's why Reaper takes more steps in some ways, in order to allow flexibility and a SYSTEM (I hope this makes sense) of routing, for example (Probably why Deadmau5 finds Reaper to be the ultimate learning for daws). Without this intention in mind you wouldn't be able to create these massive mixing projects..

Customization or bare bones system steps scares people away because it takes extra steps. But, taking some extra time at the start of learning Reaper pays off ultimately. One thing that saves time is being able to open and close what I want simultaneously with a Custom action...

Here I have a custom action that toggles the mixer, minimizes all other tracks, creates a track, brings it to the top of the track order, makes it a random color, sets it armed for recording, allows me to rename it, inserts a set set of FX, closes the FX and then opens the FX panel. Did it take a 30 min- to an hour to create this? Yes, and I enjoyed it. You may not enjoy it. You make think that 30 min. of music making was more important to you. That is your ideal. Sometimes not making music and customizing instead sounds enjoyable. It doesn't take away from music making for me, that should be obvious why if you think about it- both are enjoyable (And, making a custom action like this may save you much more than 30 min. in time if it is good for your workflow).

Reaper to me is not more negatively complex, it's more sophisticated than most daws because it follows a straightforward path instead of creating shorcuts for you which allows for more of a building block approach. This does not bloat Reaper, bloat comes from added crap that slows you down, not optionality...

REAPER pic 10.jpg

[twal]

BTW I think easier, complex, and fast are constructs adapted by the user. I get it that something may be objectively faster to do or easier, but these concepts are more subject than they are objective to me, because doing something you find more applicable to your own nature is what matters (who cares if you save 2 seconds doing it one way over the other). Fun factor is most important, that's why people choose one daw over the other (a lot of the time). A hard set of rules that the developer comes up with is way less interesting to me than a DIY setup with Reaper, as I can find strange and creative ways of doing things for myself- like literally doing anything with a Track.. The reason why Reaper is fun to promote, is because it can serve as a bare bones setup I think people really need instead of the opposite- can do X, Y, X out the box...

[VOODOO U]

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...

Ah ok. I can see where here it would make sense to normalize.

[twal]

Also, more simply, a low recorded vocal. Or a soft resample
.

[crimsonwarlock]

we have a different perspective of this.

Yep

[BONES]

So even Orion was not a one-man.show?

Yes, it was. I made skins for it for my own use, because I didn't like the default skin, it was too inefficient. Rich did everything himself, including making his first VSTis and for a lot of that time he wasn't on it full-time, either. Marcin only got involved towards the end, after DUNE was released.

-creating a DAW with USP which is interesting for anybody

The problem with that is you end up making just another DAW, like al the other DAWs out there. What you want is an application that is interesting for YOU, that solves problems you have with other DAWs.

As far as I remember (Live) 1.0 was really limited and even didn'd support MIDI or VST, was just audio clips, right?

It was about where Fruityloops and Orion were at back then, too. Everything got better, they just got better in different ways, for different kinds of users.

-You don't need to use the clip launcher and if you don't it isn't in your way.

So why use a DAW that has one, especially one that is built around it, like Live? I used Bitwig for a while and that was its problem - it was not being developed for the way I work and it was obvious that a lot of improvements I would have liked to see would never happen. If only 1 in 10 new features is useful to me, where is the value in that product?

I can not imagine a workflow, getting things faster done as with Live or Bitwig

That sounds like a limitation of your imagination to me. And it's not about being faster, it is about being efficient, keeping things simple. I don't work quickly at all but I'll guarantee there are far fewer steps in my workflow than yours.

[SamDi]

we have a different perspective of this.

Yep

But what I thought after my post: nevertheless it very often turns out that things where the approach is intuitive to do is often also the faster one.

Of course maybe not, when you compare extreme cases, where a pro uses his extremly customized DAW with all his workflow optimized in templates and presets against a more lighter DAW, which is intuitive to use.

I have more things in mind like Ableton vs. Cubase (because I use both), where many things in Ableton are so much easier und so much faster to do as in Cubase. And it's not because Cubase is more complex and would justify a more complex workflow. They just somehow find ways to make things complicated, which could be way easier to implement.

[SamDi]

The problem with that is you end up making just another DAW, like al the other DAWs out there. What you want is an application that is interesting for YOU, that solves problems you have with other DAWs.

But that's the thing with the OP. He doesn't solve any problem he really had with other DAWs. The basic idea is to make a DAW, where the core feature is to have no audio and MIDI input to make it affordable for beginners and that idea is - shitty. If he would have said, it should be extremely light-weight and fast and easy and intuitive to use, I still wouldn't think it's a special thing, but at least it would make more sense and go in a direction to "solve a problem with other DAWs".

So why use a DAW that has one, especially one that is built around it, like Live? I used Bitwig for a while and that was its problem - it was not being developed for the way I work and it was obvious that a lot of improvements I would have liked to see would never happen. If only 1 in 10 new features is useful to me, where is the value in that product?

I guess then nowhere, in this case.

That sounds like a limitation of your imagination to me. And it's not about being faster, it is about being efficient, keeping things simple. I don't work quickly at all but I'll guarantee there are far fewer steps in my workflow than yours.

What's the difference between beeing more efficient vs. beeing faster for solving a problem? The less effort you need and the faster you are, the more efficient you are.