Waveform 14 released.

[jens]

Jens, come on, you shouldn't feel ripped off at all.
If you need or want the extras of the PRO version, then you pay them a single 1 hour of their work costs for it. They have to cover all their office, hardware and software tool licenses from this, and still need to feed their families for the full next year by what's left over. One single hour of work costs is what they ask you to cover.
And if someone cannot afford this then they still give to everyone the FREE version as a gift, so that everyone could continue to make music in the box.

I don't know what you mean - it's quite a simple concept: either the update is worth it for me or it isn't. Nothing else is relevant.


Oh, they have to feed their family? That is such a stupid&cringe argument, even though some developers aren't ashamed to use it sometimes (Luca from Audiority comes to mind)... why should feeding their families ever be my responsibility?

Plus, of course, it totally ignores my point that they might make more money if they wouldn't keep raising their prices.

(Plus: considering that I haven't finished a single song in Tracktion in about two decades, I'd say I was plenty supportive either way.)

[havran]

I'll probably upgrade when they do the next Sale . Love Tracktion/Waveform .

Fourth of July is coming up.

J/K -- it seems unlikely they would discount the upgrade even further so soon after the release, plus there might be a small riot involving the people who have already upgraded for $89.

In my case it would make more sense to start with the free version and buy one or two of the expansion packs for a total of $30 or $60, even though I'm eligible for an upgrade.

Similar to others, I already have licenses for most of what's included in the Pro version (leaving the new feature-sets aside).

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

I noticed the WF 14 email from Tracktion yesterday, and d/l the demo (currently a WF 13 Pro user).

First impressions: DAW loads really fast on my pretty new Win pc. Wasn't happy to see the transport controls locked to the bottom, and the properties panel is now part of the Actions panel.

Right after installation, my Arturia keyboard mk3 was loaded in Arturia midi devices, as well as my output device, and didn't have to scan for plugins- it was ready to go, right after installation.

Started a random project with about 6 instrument plugins, while learning how to bounce tracks in place, and other things like cursor behavior, etc. Took some hunting around/googling. Google often points to solutions that don't exist for WF 14 (or 13).

The Youlean loudness meter crashed the system once.

I saved and reopened the new project a few times. Initially, it opened really quickly- now, it takes a full 7-10 minutes. I went to WF 13, and it takes forever to open a project.

As for the $89 upgrade price- I already own Biotek 3. I think some consideration should be given to those that own the stuff they're bundling. The multichannel isn't something I gave much consideration to.

The new UI seems to make sense, but I wish the transport controls could be entirely hidden, or I had the option to have it to the right.

Not happy with the slow loading of projects- in the past 9 months I've spent more time than I can count troubleshooting WF 13 crashing from plugins (and Tracktion support never got back to me, other than, "sorry, wait for an update."

All that said, Tracktion/WF has been good for me, especially after trying numerous other DAWs. I started with T4 about 20 years ago, mostly with recording audio, but now, I'm into composing, and WF just feels better, as compared to Ableton, Luna, Cubase, and a few other DAWs I've tried.

[Maarid]

I opened the free version 14 and, no matter how I tried Notepad++ projects, new and old, I couldn't find any difference. What's the point of converting? Instead of a convenient settings block, especially for plugin settings, there's now something that doesn't scale well. Yes, the action window can be moved to a second screen, and there's no need to scale the transport, but now, instead of the long-familiar properties panel for everything, I'm stuck with almost every action, trying to figure out where I need to be on the action panel and how to achieve it. My impression is rather negative; it was poorly thought out, and now it's completely unthought. Well, it's a matter of taste.
I tinkered with the edit with one synthesizer and a MIDI clip to see how it works and behaves. I restarted it two days later, and it was frozen on the welcome screen, unresponsive. I closed the auto-opened project, rebuilt, restored, and reopened the settings file. I found and opened 13.5, and in the MIDI settings, I disabled the search for MIDI devices all the time because I found 250,000 MIDI devices with the same name in the settings file.
Odd/even rules? Microsoft's way?

[DaveL60]

Given how basic my use of Waveform is, I'm not seeing any compelling reason to upgrade from 13.5 Pro. The UI improvements would be pretty much the only thing and the promotional videos I've seen don't really give enough information for me to make a judgement about it. Maybe I'll try WF14 Free at some point so I can see for myself. I also can't see myself using the AI Assistant, but the Meet The Developers discussion video about it did give me an automation idea so I might have to finally take the dive into macros. Usually I ignore automation features because I'm lacking in ideas for what to do with them.

[DaveL60]

Right after installation, my Arturia keyboard mk3 was loaded in Arturia midi devices, as well as my output device, and didn't have to scan for plugins- it was ready to go, right after installation.

I have an Arturia KeyLab Essential mk3 that I'm using with WF13.5 but it's not on the official list of supported devices and I've not been able to get some of the KeyLab's buttons to correctly invoke the corresponding Waveform feature. Are the Arturia controllers officially supported in WF14? I'd been considering shopping for a supported controller but this could be added to a list of reasons to consider upgrading.

[talby]

According to the list given on their web site the Arturia KeyLab keyboards should be support, even in the FREE version.
https://www.tracktion.com/products/wave ... uy#compare
And I see it listed inside W14 PRO.

I never used a control surface but I saw the video in which they claim that it should also be possible to create your own controller profile. I see in the PRO version under SETTINGS - CONTROL SURFACES at the bottom of the right side pane the function "Create new custom control surface...".

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

I have an Arturia KeyLab Essential mk3 that I'm using with WF13.5 but it's not on the official list of supported devices and I've not been able to get some of the KeyLab's buttons to correctly invoke the corresponding Waveform feature. Are the Arturia controllers officially supported in WF14? I'd been considering shopping for a supported controller but this could be added to a list of reasons to consider upgrading.

Well, @talby answered, something I was never aware of.

I've had 2 Essentials, prior to the mk3. Ideally, this should fix 99% of your problems.

In the Arturia Midi Control Center, make sure the device protocol is set to "MCU"- Mackie Control Universal.

Then, in WF, Control Surfaces, select "midiin2 (something like that; I'm doing this from memory). In Midi Devices, select Arturia midi. Output is whatever you normally output to. In the menu of midi devices, select Arturia Keylab, OR, Mackie Control Universal.

In Midi Devices, select Midi Keylab 49 (however it's named).

If you select Arturia Keylab, for me, at least, the Master fader doesn't work well. But the mod wheel controlled the Master. Absolutely everything mapped to where it should work. This was true with 2 previous Essentials and the new mk3, until there was a firmware update a few months ago, and everything works for the mk3.

If you select Mackie Universal, The Master fader should work, but 2 things don't map properly- the Click and Loop buttons change something in the transport area of the DAW. Unless you got a firmware update, and ideally, things should work.

If, after all this,and you're still having problems, your .settings file may be corrupted. You can delete it, but be forewarned, you lose all your settings, presets, etc. It's as if you're starting totally fresh, so take note of all your settings. You can rename the .settings file to something like, waveform.settings to waveform.bak. If, after deleting the file, and your keyboard works, I wouldn't restore the .bak file. A new .settings file will be made. I know the frustration this can be. If not for a really helpful KVR member, I'd be on Ableton or some other DAW. But I really like WF. The tips I initially gave you, came from Arturia tech support, who are amazing (can't say that about Tracktion support unfortunately.

Good luck, hope this works for you, as it did for me (the initial tips). It's not the end of the world if you delete/rename the .settings file, but it's a pita customizing all your settings you did maybe once or twice.

I may have to do this as a possible fix, as to why my projects are taking 10 minutes to load.

[jens]

I also can't see myself using the AI Assistant

LLM are so tremendously helpful, I can't imagine being without them anymore. My assistant of choice is Google Gemini and it would probably be easier to list what I don't use it for...

(It improved my gardening skills tenfold for instance - it can analyze photos of the plants and tell you how they are doing and what they might need or what they suffer from - it can analyze the tiny labels on the back of fertilizer bottles and tell you which one is the best for a certain plant and why - it can tell you when is the best time to cut the top of which tomato plant (it depends - the bigger the fruits, the sooner, as they take longer to develop - now I know) and so forth - I could go on and on - I'm learning a lot. Good luck finding that sort of specific info just with a web-browser search - I certainly tried.)

So having that kind of power can really be a good-send when it comes to music-making - it can theoretically assist you in solving almost any kind of problem.

E.g.: tell you how to set up Voxengo Marquis or DC8C 3 in order to mimic this or that compressor. It can even help you fix your instruments or find the best specific strings.
It can look at analyzer screenshots and give you mastering advice. It can help you solve specific mixing problems (e.g. how to much better gel the mandoline with the solina when they play (variations of) the same melody). It can help you with tedious chord transposition stuff (where to best put the capo), it can calculate delay-times for you. All that stuff - nothing even remotely creative - but if you use it properly then chances are it'll improve your knowledge and skills.


But having said that: that's actually exactly why I'm not sure I want to have it directly inside my DAW. I don't want it to do things for me. I want advice - advice I can challenge and question; advice that will adjust itself depending on my further input. Giving me specific required Information aside, I don't want it to do a single thing for me. Or maybe I do? "make this a standard bass track" (colour, input, name, fx-chain, send levels); but that's maybe too strong a temptation to avoid starting to get lazy.

[ajawasthi]

It does feel snappier, but maybe that’s placebo because it’s prettier.

I started using t7 on a Linux laptop and loved the properties panel because it kept everything clean on a single screen. Getting rid of it might be fine, or maybe even better for desktop situations, but Ill miss it (and Linux support) and I hope they bring it back revamped in the future for the laptop users among us.

Shoutout to the devs for making AI optional and not shoving it down our throats.

Is there a changelog somewhere? I’m interested in looking up more technical changes and fixes as well