When DAWs were not a black hole

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Zeisner wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 2:24 pm
DrGonzo wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 5:21 am I always wanted to have an "Easy" mode in my DAWs. Just to clean out all the fluff.
You can have that easy mode as a plugin:

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Tobybear :clap: :love:
Neon City for u-he Repro - 80s pop & Synthwave soundbank
HARDWARE SAMPLER FANATIC - Akai S1100/S950/Z8 - Casio FZ20m - Emu Emax I - Ensoniq ASR10/EPS

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I'm still using that plugin to this day. This is how I record all my audio. Works like a charm, supports 32-bit float, can be fully controlled with VST automation and MIDI. And the most important - what you hear is what you get. No latency issues thanks to butchered delay compensation and no altered frequency responses, both typical for DAW bouncing.

Tobias is an amazing guy, he even wrote a MIDI velocity editor for me. For free. I miss the 2000s, the majority of the best plugins ever made were written back then.

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Zeisner wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 3:04 pm Tobias is an amazing guy, he even wrote a MIDI velocity editor for me. For free. I miss the 2000s, the majority of the best plugins ever made were written back then.
I miss that time as well. There was a different energy with people creating outrageous plugins and sonic ideas.
Neon City for u-he Repro - 80s pop & Synthwave soundbank
HARDWARE SAMPLER FANATIC - Akai S1100/S950/Z8 - Casio FZ20m - Emu Emax I - Ensoniq ASR10/EPS

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DrGonzo wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 2:58 am
Zeisner wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 3:04 pm Tobias is an amazing guy, he even wrote a MIDI velocity editor for me. For free. I miss the 2000s, the majority of the best plugins ever made were written back then.
I miss that time as well. There was a different energy with people creating outrageous plugins and sonic ideas.
:tu:
gadgets an gizmos..make noise~crystalawareness.bandcamp.com/ soundcloud.com/crystalawareness Restocked: 5/2026
if this post is edited -it was for punctuation, grammar, or to make it coherent (or make me seem coherent).

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What was 'Craved more than Brawndo' was back in 1999 running Rebirth inside Cubase 3.70 VST24... The big mistake then was Steinberg didn't account for Rewire being a prominent thing so Rewire registered on a machine actually used up mixer channels so after a certain amount there were none left for ANYTHING... This persisted into VST32-

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Then Steinberg had their 'Own Deal' The Steinberg Rebirth ONE, A trimmed-down version of Rebirth-

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Rebirth has to be most customized by wide user-base ever, much time-work went into making 'MODs', easy to see the efforts that went in this is just a few-

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DrGonzo wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 2:58 am There was a different energy with people creating outrageous plugins and sonic ideas.
This but also very useful basic tools like simple stereo balance or group muting. Nowadays it's all just the usual parametric EQs and compressors etc, you have to wait for the original developers of those old goodies to port them to 64-bit VST3 which often never happens.

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DrGonzo wrote: Sat Feb 07, 2026 2:58 am
Zeisner wrote: Fri Feb 06, 2026 3:04 pm Tobias is an amazing guy, he even wrote a MIDI velocity editor for me. For free. I miss the 2000s, the majority of the best plugins ever made were written back then.
I miss that time as well. There was a different energy with people creating outrageous plugins and sonic ideas.
I always felt midi plugins were overlooked, somehow.
- DirectX based MFX as in Sonar have a bunch, commercial and free

But Cubase I only found a handful, if it was "Franks midi plugins" or similar that had an installer to make them show up in Cubase.
- but Cubase have proper sends for midi as well

Otherwise no daws have specific midi plugins AFAIK.
- Reaper maybe

Otherwise it's on Piz Midi Plugins for VST out there, almost. I use extensively in Bluecat Audio Patchwork to load a bunch of synths and routing midi in various ways.
https://code.google.com/archive/p/pizmidi/downloads

I asked or tipped Waves why they do not make midi plugins as well, but guess no daws do that apart from Sonar and Cubase AFAIK.

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At uni (mid-late 2000s) our lecturer made us submit projects in the form of Sony Vegas project files (v7 I think it was). Vegas + Soundforge were great, actually, but I feel like that was the last light UI that didn't hurt to look at.

Nowadays my fave GUIs are the standard Renoise and Ardour one (although I tweak Ardour a bit so it has flat buttons, no gradient, more transparency especially in the grid lines department, and so on). I can't stand light themes in anything these days.

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Well, went on ebay looking for old Cubase, nothing right now but there were several original 3-disc sets for Reason 3 for 25 bucks, that's a better deal than I got years ago... Was looking for an authentic paper manual for Rebirth, there was one but I'm not paying 30 bucks just for a manual...

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eLawnMust wrote: Thu Feb 05, 2026 12:37 am Kids have it easy but adults don't... Back in the day a dad had 4-5 kids, nowadays a kid has 4-5 dads & good luck guessing genders on these kids some look like aliens...
Ok Boomer.

Describe your own obsolescence without saying those words, yes.
But arent you happier, today? Nazis are in western governments. This is success for folks like yourself, no?

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I wish the milkman would deliver my milk in the morning.

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waxtrax wrote: Tue Feb 10, 2026 11:02 pm I wish the milkman would deliver my milk in the morning.
This is so clever! Nobody ever thinks of that!

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The good thing Ableton Live is that it still looks very close to the first version since the GUI paradigm has been maintained, it just have been through different shades of white and grey.
dedication to flying

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All of those GUI examples are hideous! (Nostalgic and fun but hideous!)
But I do wish there was a DAW where you could turn off/disappear all the features you don't need. Maybe a modular type thing where you could drag and drop features..
Would be very hard to design though and it's impossible to please everyone...

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I started with Cubase 1.0 for the Atari. It worked flawlessly straight out of the box.

Then I moved over to Windows 3.1 and tried to get my brand new Cubase for Windows to work... :bang:

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