DAW software lags behind other creative software like 3D animation packages

[AdvancedFollower]

DAWs for example have stuck rigidly to the piano roll metaphor when composing, whereas in the aforementioned there are dozens of different but equally valid methods to create (model or animate) content.

I think the key difference is that music essentially consists of a handful of pitches (12 per octave, a handful of octaves realistically used in a song). A piano roll is perfectly adequate for inputting those pitches. Modelling and animating an object in a lifelike manner involves a *lot* more than a couple of dozen fixed integer values... You've got to model the skeleton/structure of the objects, joints, materials, the way the materials reflects light and so on and so forth.

[v1o]

There's a new point release of the Unreal Engine SDK. There are more new features in a single point release of Unreal than there are on the average full version DAW upgrade. And these point releases come quite regular almost every few months.

No one I know is happy with the slow pace of DAW development. Studio One 4 and Live 10 both upset long time users. Cubase users are never happy with new version upgrades.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog ... 3-released

Anyway of particular interest is the new integrated Wavetable synth. With the rapid pace of development it is not out of the question that future versions of the Unreal SDK will include more advanced audio features and even sequencing features to rival DAWs.

[pekbro]

A little late to the party but, to be fair the way the blender GUI is created as compared to well, pretty much any of the software mentioned is completely different. Blender is drawn completely in OpenGL, no widgets or tool kits etc. Changes to blenders UI are substantially more involved than say that of cinema 4D which uses standard windows widgets, or even Maya which is also using a GUI toolkit, I forget which (QT?).

Anyway, that's why blender is so different looking. Of course, I haven't been following lately, I assume this hasn't changed. Incidentally, gimp uses it's own toolkit, developed for it specifically and adopted by many other software packages, even going as far as basing entire linux distros on it.

Don't knock blender or the gimp, these are both great accomplishments in the world of open source software.

[whyterabbyt]

Sure you could get a bunch of preset setups and assemble them all together... and well you're not learning much.

So, pretty much the same as with the equivalent audio software and 'app' markets.

'Cept maybe more impressive.

[Elektronisch]

Most of the major DAWs have remained largely unchanged for the past ten years with no real innovation. I was reading up on the latest versions of Autodesk Maya and Blender. The amount of new features, functions and technological progress that has been made within just a couple of years is staggering. In terms of computer science these applications are really pushing bar of what is possible in software.

I know this might sound silly to some but when compared to the speed of innovation in the market for 3d animation software & renderers, music production software is in the stone age. DAWs for example have stuck rigidly to the piano roll metaphor when composing, whereas in the aforementioned there are dozens of different but equally valid methods to create (model or animate) content. They have also made huge progress in high quality procedurally generated content to speed up workflows. And almost everything is scriptable and customizable. Even freeware like Blender is a much more complex piece of software than Cubase or Logic; with an order of magnitude more tools, functions, macros, modules, settings, user customizable workflows etc etc. I'm also shocked that physics based interactions have not made their way into Audio yet - such as using real physics to model sound vibrations in different environments rather than the hacks commonly used in most delay based fx.

I know this might silly (or not) but you lack critical thinking. How on earh you compare MUSIC with Graphical art making is beyond me.

Really read again what you wrote, its sound so f stupid

[Elektronisch]

I personally fail to see the logic in comparing 3d graphics software with audio software.

Both are editors/arrangers on a timeline. They're pretty much identical.
I do 3D and video editing as well as music production and because of my DAW background it was easy to pick up video.

And thats where the similarities end. Music and 3d graphics as end result products are uncomparable.

[Elektronisch]

The software world needs to innovate at the same rate in order to stay competitive. You simply don't have that on the audio side.

You said it much better than I could. Development on the audio side is at a snails pace compared to what happening with graphics software. Maybe academic research in audio doesn't enough funding?

How? really how? how its not innovative enough? its music making software.

With Graphics its quite clear what your goal is and for that you need your tools to be innovative, especialy if your goal is to have photorealistic stuff

With music,well we have basicly everything, you can even write words and turn them in to song (that needs improvement). But in the end end products you are trying to get are just incomparable.

I only expect this nonsense from someone who doesnt really understand what music is, produces it as a profession or have a very small glimpse of understanding what music is and how its being produced.

[Elektronisch]

I observe significant improvement in DAWs in past years.

Still, the one major breakthrough was Orb Composer - which actually creates useful music out of thin air. Unfortunatelly, it's a novelty project from small team, full of bugs. Despite good concept and overall simplicity it's still far from one-click solution.

It is probably true that the money play big role in that - there's just not enough market to win that would justify investing into latest and greatest tech. A safe business model is to just sell an abundance of sample packs and extensions - just "more of the same".

But if you want a 1 click solution, thats not a creativity anymore. Simple 1 click solution right now is to just hire a ghost producer. But it wount be your creative work.

[Elektronisch]

Speaking as somebody who started his career in Computer Graphics research and is now overseeing an internationally recognized animation and game design program, this boost in development on the 3d production side is not completely unexpected. Real time graphics is still a very active academic research area. Computer graphics technology is still a hot computer engineering field. Just as an example, real time ray tracing on consumer level computers was completely unthinkable just a few years ago. Now it is more or less almost standard. The software world needs to innovate at the same rate in order to stay competitive. You simply don't have that on the audio side.

You said it much better than I could. Development on the audio side is at a snails pace compared to what happening with graphics software. Maybe academic research in audio doesn't enough funding?

What are you on about? When I was a kid your age and started in this journey, the recording studio, control room and effects where big bulky things that had to fit into a room that were about 10' x 15' or so. Today they all can fit into a glass plate that is about 1/4" x 10" and can be thrown into a backpack and that thing has more functionality than what was found in some recording studios in 90s. There has been lots of progress.

Maybe if you lived in a vacuum and only compared to antiquated workflows in the old 4-track recording studios. Then maybe you could say there is progress. But in other ways sound quality has taken a step back, there is still analogue equipment in many mastering studios with fidelity beyond what you get with VSTs.

But anyway my main point is that compared to 3d graphics software there is not much development in DAW software. Stuff like Maya and 3DS Max is leaps ahead of all the DAWs out there.

Yep, also space program by Space X is also much more advanced then Opel's. And when i compare that cow milking technology, its development is far behind compared to 3d graphics software.

[Elektronisch]

There's a new point release of the Unreal Engine SDK. There are more new features in a single point release of Unreal than there are on the average full version DAW upgrade. And these point releases come quite regular almost every few months.

No one I know is happy with the slow pace of DAW development. Studio One 4 and Live 10 both upset long time users. Cubase users are never happy with new version upgrades.

I wonder who do you know that arent happy with slow DAW development? friends who cant produce or are saying they produce but reality only hording stuff?

I know producers who have a solid careers and still use DAW versions that are behind by few years. And you know why? because its Music.

I really wonder, what kind of advancements you want in a DAW that you use to create a sequence that has to fit in a scale of 12 different tones...

[DJ Warmonger]

I observe significant improvement in DAWs in past years.

Still, the one major breakthrough was Orb Composer - which actually creates useful music out of thin air. Unfortunatelly, it's a novelty project from small team, full of bugs. Despite good concept and overall simplicity it's still far from one-click solution.

It is probably true that the money play big role in that - there's just not enough market to win that would justify investing into latest and greatest tech. A safe business model is to just sell an abundance of sample packs and extensions - just "more of the same".

But if you want a 1 click solution, thats not a creativity anymore. Simple 1 click solution right now is to just hire a ghost producer. But it wount be your creative work.

That's the thing. Business. You want to create for your personal satisfaction, while the business needs the efficient tools which will allow you to cut multi-million CGI budget by half.

There is no such pressure in music, as the movie can be scored by one single man in his studio.

[mgw38]

The software world needs to innovate at the same rate in order to stay competitive. You simply don't have that on the audio side.

You said it much better than I could. Development on the audio side is at a snails pace compared to what happening with graphics software. Maybe academic research in audio doesn't enough funding?

How? really how? how its not innovative enough? its music making software.

With Graphics its quite clear what your goal is and for that you need your tools to be innovative, especialy if your goal is to have photorealistic stuff

With music,well we have basicly everything, you can even write words and turn them in to song (that needs improvement). But in the end end products you are trying to get are just incomparable.

I only expect this nonsense from someone who doesnt really understand what music is, produces it as a profession or have a very small glimpse of understanding what music is and how its being produced.

That original quote was taken out of context a bit. My point was that on the 3d graphics side software developers need to innovate at the rate defined by the advances made on the consumer hardware side. And that part of the industry is still chasing certain unsolved challenges and thus innovating at a very high rate, especially when it comes to the delivery of real time graphics or more recently also in applications of AI.

Just take the rise of real time ray tracing. As soon as consumer hardware could deliver real time ray tracing, 3d environments needed to be designed at a much high level of detail than before. And there are really only two ways of doing that. Either you hire thousands of people who hand design every single object in a scene - which makes everything you do prohibitively expensive. Or you go for procedural design workflows instead. And thus any 3d software developer needs to figure out ways to add procedural capabilities to the design workflow of their software. Software developers in that space simply cannot not innovate if they want to survive.

To use a more business term, 3d graphics is still constantly being disrupted by new consumer hardware developments. Audio is not. Advances in audio hardware are less radical and more incremental. At least at the moment.

[v1o]

I really wonder, what kind of advancements you want in a DAW that you use to create a sequence that has to fit in a scale of 12 different tones...

The thing with new technology is that no one can predict the future. Anyone that claims to know where things are heading is a totally liar. A decade ago we didn't know Melodyne would invent their DNA technology. If you went back to the 90's and showed them DNA technology they would think it's sorcery. And even before that no one had envisioned social media, the new internet economy and the rise of online tech titans. Presently it looks like the Universal Basic Income is the next big thing, 5 years ago no one would have predicted that machines would over most forms of low skill physical labour.


With regards to DAWs I can only hazard a guess and say that processes that are either currently very difficult or time consuming are the next advancement. For example changing the lyrics to a song that you have already recorded using your DAW's audio editor. Or a content aware fill tool (like the one in Photoshop) inside your DAW. There are also many areas to be explored with VR and Machine Learning. In regard to synthesis technology we still have yet to get Physical modelling to point where it can for example emulate the style and articulations of a real violinist.

[Elektronisch]

I really wonder, what kind of advancements you want in a DAW that you use to create a sequence that has to fit in a scale of 12 different tones...

The thing with new technology is that no one can predict the future. Anyone that claims to know where things are heading is a totally liar. A decade ago we didn't know Melodyne would invent their DNA technology. If you went back to the 90's and showed them DNA technology they would think it's sorcery. And even before that no one had envisioned social media, the new internet economy and the rise of online tech titans. Presently it looks like the Universal Basic Income is the next big thing, 5 years ago no one would have predicted that machines would over most forms of low skill physical labour.


With regards to DAWs I can only hazard a guess and say that processes that are either currently very difficult or time consuming are the next advancement. For example changing the lyrics to a song that you have already recorded using your DAW's audio editor. Or a content aware fill tool (like the one in Photoshop) inside your DAW. There are also many areas to be explored with VR and Machine Learning. In regard to synthesis technology we still have yet to get Physical modelling to point where it can for example emulate the style and articulations of a real violinist.

I really dont think you understand the essence of music and its purpose and what it involves in makking

I agree about Physical modeling and something like melodyne, but people are working on it, its just the demand isnt such big.

Think this way, on a popular song that can be a hit can work just 1 person. FIrst it starts with an idea, creative process, maybe trial and error abit expermentation and its done. Budget can be starting from 0 aka being totaly free or the amount you spend on McDonalds meal to not starve up to few thousands (if you want to spend so much on loops, libraries and plugins)

CGi, movies are whole much more complex enviroment that involves tens, hundreds and thousands of people who have to rely on each other. Movie budget usualy is millions. So efficiency is important, because time = money. If someone is late with his CGI work, means you have to pay to someone else for waiting ect.

Even with your mentioned something like Physical modeling there are perfectly good alternative called sample library. People score with them.Using those libraries composers can become one man orchestra. Sure it would be amazing to have real virtual violinist, but hey lets be realistic how much would be the demand.

Even so melodynes DNA feature even tho its amazing, but its not a must or required, because not all popular music is vocal or real instrument based where you record and its done.

This discussion can be much longer, but i figured its not much worth expanding because the demands in these industries and the end product is like black and white. The only similarity is that they both are art, just differnt kind of.

[SparkySpark]

Elektronisch - I think you raise an important point, saying music is something else than graphics (I'm not sarcastic here).

However, it's also safe to say DAWs haven't evolved that much since a few years after VST was invented, say during the last fifteen years. We still have the piano roll, waveform views of audio (there should be much better ways to illustrate chunks of audio), the timeline, and so on.

Something I do feel has improved a lot though is the VST software UI paradigm. Moving away from Waves-y hardware front panels to front panels that both look smashing and are much better suited for their purposes is quite impressive. In my opinion, it even makes music software UIs frontrunners in the software industry.

An area I think could be much improved in DAWs is automatic audio treatment. ARA2 is an important key here, but I think we can go much further and almost entirely treat vocals as MIDI, plus sync audio to other takes (ie VocalAlign in Sonar).

Another area which for some REALLY strange reason hasn't been dealt with properly is tonal balance (bass vs treble). Ozone has its rather new Tonal Balance Control, but such an important feature should be integrated in every DAW. Why on earth should we need treated rooms and hi-cost monitors just to get a mix correctly balanced? It's baffling.

Apart from that... well, what can I say, I like the piano roll.