I vaguely remember the framework Ohm Force was built around was sold to another company or something, and it was used for other things than audio work. Does anyone know what happened?
Anyways, it's been many years now and new DAWs came to be. I think Bitwig is actually the one DAW that could work great with collaboration, since you don't need so much extra plugins. Ohm Studio didn't have enough tools to be used instead of a "real" DAW and didnt have VST plugin support either AFAIR?
There are tons of ways to collaborate online, I know groups of musicians that records, jams and rehearses over the Internet. They just meet for live performances.
In their case no MIDI sync needed or production editing, only Input from one instrument from each member of the group, that records both locally on disk and then also sends the streams to the others. And it works great. Of course people need low latency Internet, but apperently they do. Almost everyone here has fiber connection and very low latency between ISPs.
After a sessions all musicians can then take the recordings with full quality, into a single DAW for some mixing. The streams between member does not need to be full quality, only the recordings.
For computer-based music like electronica, you need MIDI sync functionality. There are a few tools to get it to work, but no DAW has built-in support.
Just like Office has realtime multiuser support, this would be highly possible with production as well. Latency of 20 ms is no problem during production/mixing.
There many different ways of online-collaborations..... just some thoughts.
What happened to Ohm Studio or the tech behind it? Where's the real collab DAWs?
-
- KVRAF
- 25014 posts since 12 Jul, 2003 from West Caprazumia
-
- KVRist
- 151 posts since 29 Jun, 2010 from NYC
Not directly related to Ohm Studio, but I know of a heavy investment into browser-based DAW development. I'm not allowed to give specifics, but it is a collaboration-first effort using a mix of Web Assembly, a variant of SocketIO and some other proprietary methods. Their proof of concept is impressive and offers interesting ways to handle audio and midi in a realtime environment with users in various parts of the globe. I think licensing challenges will arise from this and sometimes halts the progress. If you can collaborate in my session and use the VST plugins straight from my computer through your browser (and vice versa), some devs may take issue to it. Moreover, there will be ways for anyone to buildout their own instruments and fx that conform to some specification. The project is in alpha and I'm hoping to get in beta. That's all I will say for now.
I think the browser DAW will succeed because development may be a lot more flexible when UI components are just web frameworks instead of traditionally compiled components. There will be compiled DSP for sure, but in a decoupled manner.. This means feature changes and functionality can be tested and deployed much faster. I'm not a code guru (yet), but I medidate often on the direction of software trends, and there's more innovation than we can keep up with these days.
Anyway, the concept is at least a decade old, but browsers have evolved tremendously in recent years, and it won't be surprising if more audio and video apps to move in that direction. IT nerds like myself are already managing headless servers with various media and ai tools via web apps.
A public project exists for browser-based production, but does not prioritize collaboration: https://opendaw.org/
I think the browser DAW will succeed because development may be a lot more flexible when UI components are just web frameworks instead of traditionally compiled components. There will be compiled DSP for sure, but in a decoupled manner.. This means feature changes and functionality can be tested and deployed much faster. I'm not a code guru (yet), but I medidate often on the direction of software trends, and there's more innovation than we can keep up with these days.
Anyway, the concept is at least a decade old, but browsers have evolved tremendously in recent years, and it won't be surprising if more audio and video apps to move in that direction. IT nerds like myself are already managing headless servers with various media and ai tools via web apps.
A public project exists for browser-based production, but does not prioritize collaboration: https://opendaw.org/
Laptop Win11 Home 16" Asus ProArt i7-12700H 64GB RAM RTX 3060
Desktop Win11 Pro Aorus X570s Pro AX AMD 5900x 128GB Ram RTX 3060
Desktop Win11 Pro Aorus X570s Pro AX AMD 5900x 128GB Ram RTX 3060
-
- KVRist
- 117 posts since 6 Nov, 2017
Funny how there's usually so little interest in these ideas, I'd really like to meet with friends this way from time to time. I was convinced that Bitwig would come out with something like that during Covid...
The few times I tried Ohm Studio were fun. We just joined a project, agreed on a loop section of 8 or 16 bars and then everyone could record into it and edit stuff. That was very close to an online jam session without latency/timing problems, it's just that the contributions of others would appear a cycle after they played it. I think we also used VST but everyone had to have them installed of course.
Endlesss Studio was very similar to that but mainly optimised for iOS devices and a bit too "gamified" for me. I'm not sure if the servers are even running anymore.
The few times I tried Ohm Studio were fun. We just joined a project, agreed on a loop section of 8 or 16 bars and then everyone could record into it and edit stuff. That was very close to an online jam session without latency/timing problems, it's just that the contributions of others would appear a cycle after they played it. I think we also used VST but everyone had to have them installed of course.
Endlesss Studio was very similar to that but mainly optimised for iOS devices and a bit too "gamified" for me. I'm not sure if the servers are even running anymore.
Very interesting!JBlongz wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2025 3:14 pm Not directly related to Ohm Studio, but I know of a heavy investment into browser-based DAW development. I'm not allowed to give specifics, but it is a collaboration-first effort using a mix of Web Assembly, a variant of SocketIO and some other proprietary methods. Their proof of concept is impressive and offers interesting ways to handle audio and midi in a realtime environment with users in various parts of the globe. I think licensing challenges will arise from this and sometimes halts the progress. If you can collaborate in my session and use the VST plugins straight from my computer through your browser (and vice versa), some devs may take issue to it. Moreover, there will be ways for anyone to buildout their own instruments and fx that conform to some specification. The project is in alpha and I'm hoping to get in beta. That's all I will say for now.
I think the browser DAW will succeed because development may be a lot more flexible when UI components are just web frameworks instead of traditionally compiled components. There will be compiled DSP for sure, but in a decoupled manner.. This means feature changes and functionality can be tested and deployed much faster. I'm not a code guru (yet), but I medidate often on the direction of software trends, and there's more innovation than we can keep up with these days.
Anyway, the concept is at least a decade old, but browsers have evolved tremendously in recent years, and it won't be surprising if more audio and video apps to move in that direction. IT nerds like myself are already managing headless servers with various media and ai tools via web apps.
A public project exists for browser-based production, but does not prioritize collaboration: https://opendaw.org/
