2022 DAW Predictions

[machinesworking]

2022 is around the corner. What do you think about next year's possible releases? Any new DAW's coming out maybe? Curious to what Fender does with Studio One. FL Studio 21 is around the corner. What is MOTU up to with DP. Will Serato Studio grow? Behinger's new DAW etc. Logic 11 in the near future? Discuss.....

FL definitely are coming out with something. MOTU just released DP11 in July, but the way they work is to release a .0 version fix it up a bit then release a next set of features in an update, (Ableton does the same thing with Live), so that's IMO probably coming out January around NAMM time.

Ableton have an M1 native version of Live in beta that will probably be out in the next couple weeks. They finally have a key command/ menu item for full screen edit windows after 20 years, that has me on the beta since I've used it forever, and Jitter is appealing to me.

[sQeetz]

Logic 11 gets released for a $99 upgrade fee for existing 10.x users (I hope I'm wrong, though... )
Renoise 3.4 gets released! (how would I know? don't ask )

[pixel85]

- Cubase 12: barely anything new, just a few new plugins that are subpar in comparison to 3rd party plugins. But it will be hit because "no dungle mate!". I hope I'm wrong
- every DAW will become subscription only
- Live will get this new plugin format at the end of the year
- PT will get a new big update with a new major font as the main feature
- Orion will be captured by Kellogg and added to every cereal pack. Bones will become Kellogg's ambassador
- Every DAW will get full M1 compatibility, right after Apple will announce that in 2023 they will bring new Macs M2 that are not M1 compatible

[sQeetz]

- Orion will be captured by Kellogg and added to every cereal pack. Bones will become Kellogg's ambassador

I can picture the angry spoon holding hand in my inner minds eye

- Every DAW will get full M1 compatibility, right after Apple will announce that in 2023 they will bring new Macs M2 that are not M1 compatible

Can't wait for that!

[BONES]

The issue here at least with DAWs is that you're happy with the tech the way it is, I'm not disagreeing that it's important to work with what you have right now, but that's not the point of the thread, it was to speculate about future improvements. You set up a straw man and attacked it. Nobody mentioned struggling to finish a song or getting work done, you created that out of thin air.

My whole f**king point was that nobody seems interested in actually getting anything done. That's why I brought it up. A carpenter might be very proud of his tools but he will always be prouder of the things he builds with them. That doesn't happen around here. Quite the opposite, a lot of people seem embarrassed or ashamed of the things they do in their DAW. I find that exceedingly strange, don't you?

Same applies to synths, I'm a fan of Zebra, but no MPE there, I like Pigments, but it's got some holes here and there as well, Falcon is all in one, but is it the best at all of the synthesis types it does? of course not. Diva mimics old hardware very well, but that's all it does really. The list goes on.

This is another thing I find exceedingly strange - the way so many people look at their instruments outside of the context of what they are for, which is making music. e.g. I think Pigments is a great synth and I really enjoy using it. However, every time I try and use it in a song, it fails so it doesn't matter that it has MPE support or four different synth engines or a dozen different modelled filters or anything else. I'd compare it to a chef's knife - it could be the best knife ever made but if the edge is dull, and I think that's a good analogy for how Pigments sounds in a mix, then it's not a good knife.

You seem to rate synths by how many features they have, as though bolting on a million little extras can make up for poor fundamentals, but I just want instruments that make our songs sound better. Usually that means I go for completely different synths than most of you, because I am always focused on the songs and the albums I will use them to make. The instruments are just tools and even the biggest, fanciest multi-tool is no substitute for a tool-box full of specialised tools.

If you're doing a certain kind of work with a DAW, then there are DAWs that are faster or slower at doing that work, and what with Max/MSP in Live and the Grid in Bitwig, there's other reasons to gravitate towards one or the other.

How much does speed matter, though? If you're not working to deadlines, you can take as long as you need to take. Personally, I tend to work very slowly, e.g. I know about three keyboard shortcuts in Studio One because I prefer to do everything the long way. Being immersed in the process like that gives me a better perspective and more time to think about what I'm doing and how to achieve the best result. I do want the process to be simple, streamlined and straightforward, not because that makes anything faster, but because it makes it easier to go back and make deep, fundamental changes at any point. e.g. If you have an instrument with half-a-dozen insert effects on it and you decide you want to try a different instrument, for whatever reason, anything you try is likely to just sound the same because of all the effects, so you end up having to replace or re-do 7 things instead of just 1. That makes you far less likely to experiment beyond a certain point, you are far more likely to leave it and convince yourself it's good enough. I'm not like that at all. We've got songs we've been performing for 25 years that I still try out new sounds on during rehearsal. If it makes the song better, we'll change it on the spot. If it doesn't, it's no big deal, no big waste of time or effort.

We want every song to sound as good as it can possibly sound, even if it doesn't quite match the album version people might be familiar with. In fact, that's something I find really annoying about a lot of electronic acts I go and see live - their live show sounds way too much like the album, as though they've just muted the vocal channels from the album mix (which is very often exactly what they are doing live). We prefer our live shows to be a bit more organic, to show some evolution from the way we sounded 25 years ago.

Sorry to go off on yet another tangent but this is the stuff I worry about, the aspects of music that are important to me, not which f**king DAW I use to get it done. I'm using Studio One right now but if my bandmate said tomorrow that he'd rather we moved back to Cubase, it wouldn't worry me in the slightest. Hell, if he wanted to go back to Orion or for both of us to buy FL Studio, I'd be OK with that, too. It simply isn't that important to me. (I would draw the line at anything that involved buying a Mac, though, I do have some standards.)

[machinesworking]

My whole f**king point was that nobody seems interested in actually getting anything done. That's why I brought it up. A carpenter might be very proud of his tools but he will always be prouder of the things he builds with them. That doesn't happen around here. Quite the opposite, a lot of people seem embarrassed or ashamed of the things they do in their DAW. I find that exceedingly strange, don't you?

Not really, it's not at all impossible to come up with my real name and my music etc. but I think my ramblings on music software online in forums shouldn't be attached to my music. IMO one thing that's really missing with music these days is any sense of wonder about the people who make it, it's all too transparent and personally I hate a connection to the people behind the music with the music, unless they're some true weirdo whose mental instability makes the story more interesting.

Basically give me Kraftwerk over Dwight Yoakam.

This is another thing I find exceedingly strange - the way so many people look at their instruments outside of the context of what they are for, which is making music. e.g. I think Pigments is a great synth and I really enjoy using it. However, every time I try and use it in a song, it fails so it doesn't matter that it has MPE support or four different synth engines or a dozen different modelled filters or anything else. I'd compare it to a chef's knife - it could be the best knife ever made but if the edge is dull, and I think that's a good analogy for how Pigments sounds in a mix, then it's not a good knife.

It's IMO really dependent on the music you make, Pigments fits in well here. Also there's a thing where people gravitate towards complex sounds on heavily modulatable synths like Pigments, and those sounds never sound good in a mix with lots going on. Zebra for me maybe because I've used it forever

You seem to rate synths by how many features they have, as though bolting on a million little extras can make up for poor fundamentals, but I just want instruments that make our songs sound better. Usually that means I go for completely different synths than most of you, because I am always focused on the songs and the albums I will use them to make. The instruments are just tools and even the biggest, fanciest multi-tool is no substitute for a tool-box full of specialised tools.

Straw men are fun I guess. IMO some simple synths are always a bonus because most sounds don't need to be complex in most songs. It really struck me when I picked up Hybrid 3 how many pop songs that synth was used on, because it's wide sounding but thin, meaning drums and bass stand out compared to some synth that takes up the whole spectrum. If you bothered to read my posts you would know I'm a fan of old simple CPU light synths as well as complex all in one synths, because they cut through a mix etc.

How much does speed matter, though? If you're not working to deadlines, you can take as long as you need to take. Personally, I tend to work very slowly, e.g. I know about three keyboard shortcuts in Studio One because I prefer to do everything the long way. Being immersed in the process like that gives me a better perspective and more time to think about what I'm doing and how to achieve the best result. I do want the process to be simple, streamlined and straightforward, not because that makes anything faster, but because it makes it easier to go back and make deep, fundamental changes at any point. e.g. If you have an instrument with half-a-dozen insert effects on it and you decide you want to try a different instrument, for whatever reason, anything you try is likely to just sound the same because of all the effects, so you end up having to replace or re-do 7 things instead of just 1. That makes you far less likely to experiment beyond a certain point, you are far more likely to leave it and convince yourself it's good enough. I'm not like that at all. We've got songs we've been performing for 25 years that I still try out new sounds on during rehearsal. If it makes the song better, we'll change it on the spot. If it doesn't, it's no big deal, no big waste of time or effort.

to use old arcade games, you're a PacMan player, I liked Defender. There's no "right" way to get from point A to B in music. I think you get confused by that or it just doesn't compute.

Sorry to go off on yet another tangent but this is the stuff I worry about, the aspects of music that are important to me, not which f**king DAW I use to get it done. I'm using Studio One right now but if my bandmate said tomorrow that he'd rather we moved back to Cubase, it wouldn't worry me in the slightest. Hell, if he wanted to go back to Orion or for both of us to buy FL Studio, I'd be OK with that, too. It simply isn't that important to me.

I hear you there. I get bored easily and usually use DP and Live depending on the mood, but the one terrible thing for me about looking around for an MPW DAW was that I pretty much think all DAWs I've used have cool features and interesting parts to them. Makes sense since they're all making money and still in business. In the end I stick mainly with DP because f*ck using what everyone else uses when I don't have to, and I like the Chunks concept.

(I would draw the line at anything that involved buying a Mac, though, I do have some standards.)

We all have out crosses to bear. IMO Windows is still a steaming mess, but hey you can open up Synth 1 on it in Cubase 5.5, great. I really hoped it had solved it's issues, but the fact that it can still get corrupted at the OS level is a no go for me. Start another thread if you want to discuss Mac VS PC though, too many threads derailed by that pointless argument.

[Hink]

I'm a fan of Zebra,

gawd I'm old, my first thought was great band

[pdxindy]

Logic 11 gets released for a $99 upgrade fee for existing 10.x users (I hope I'm wrong, though... )
Renoise 3.4 gets released! (how would I know? don't ask )

No no... Apple will release Logic 11 with some cool new stuff for free... but the new features will only work on M1 macs...

[machinesworking]

Logic 11 gets released for a $99 upgrade fee for existing 10.x users (I hope I'm wrong, though... )
Renoise 3.4 gets released! (how would I know? don't ask )

No no... Apple will release Logic 11 with some cool new stuff for free... but the new features will only work on M1 macs...

Yeah there's a simple reason for the fact that Apple doesn't charge upgrade fees for Logic, the Apple store isn't set up for upgrades. So Logic will probably be free upgrades for life, but unnecessarily strict hardware and OS limitations that offset that nicely for Apple.

[machinesworking]

I'm a fan of Zebra,

gawd I'm old, my first thought was great band

Well if it's any consolation in the plug in world Zebra is for old timers too!

[Hink]

true

[paterpeter]

Somebody will come up with "AI something". It will either be impressive and useless or a fancy term for something very simple that has been done before.

[machinesworking]

Somebody will come up with "AI something". It will either be impressive and useless or a fancy term for something very simple that has been done before.

It will most definitely be the reason x great new feature in Logic doesn't work on Intel Macs.

[sQeetz]

Yeah there's a simple reason for the fact that Apple doesn't charge upgrade fees for Logic, the Apple store isn't set up for upgrades.

That's true. Haven't thought of that.

[fese]

- Cubase 12: barely anything new, just a few new plugins that are subpar in comparison to 3rd party plugins. But it will be hit because "no dungle mate!". I hope I'm wrong
- every DAW will become subscription only
- Live will get this new plugin format at the end of the year
- PT will get a new big update with a new major font as the main feature
- Orion will be captured by Kellogg and added to every cereal pack. Bones will become Kellogg's ambassador
- Every DAW will get full M1 compatibility, right after Apple will announce that in 2023 they will bring new Macs M2 that are not M1 compatible

That sounds frighteningly realistic….