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I'm a software developer right now but I've worked with DAWs as a producer for more than 5 years. You can't even imagine how frustrating is working with Digital

I'm a software developer right now but I've worked with DAWs as a producer for more than 5 years. You can't even imagine how frustrating is working with Digital Audio Workstation. One messy plug-in and you can lose hours and hours of work. Preset management is a nightmare, there are so many things that they could do to go forward, but the Sequencer market is stall and hasn't moved in years. Imagine if they applied something similar to a git versioning system to music projects.... I don't even know if the VST interface can be used or if it's licensed somehow from Steinberg. Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... No plug-in or DAW has a CLI... I could go on for hours... I'm doing some digital audio processing for a startup idea and the only thing I've came up with is using sox trough a Python API.

xbpx 5y ago
Since you're a software dev you may have explored supercollider and other environments where you can employ great tools. I've been looking for a hybrid UI/UX + Audio programming environment that would combine the freedom of code with the visual cues of a DAW but haven't found the ideal fit. So far I've been rolling my own with cl-collider, a common lisp client for Supercollider which uses some lisp tricks (macros) to good effect.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... This is false. > Imagine if they applied something similar to a git versioning system to music projects. People have done this. Using git itself is a little problematic because it is very line-oriented and most project file formats for DAWs are not. Regarding plugins, I know that I'm not the only lead developer of a DAW who, if they possibly could, would refuse to support plugins entirely. The problem is that most users want more functionality than a DAW itself could feasibly provide (they also sometimes like to use the same functionality (plugin) in different DAWs or different workflows). There are things close to DAW functionality that have a CLI (such as ecasound). You can also run plugins from the command line by using standalone plugin hosts. You can use oscsend(1) to control plugins inside several different plugin hosts. It sounds to me as if you've worked with a relatively small number of DAWs on only Windows and macOS and are not really aware of the breadth or depth of the "field".
- dewert 5y ago
  > > Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... > This is false. This was my immediate thought as well. Not sure what level we're talking here, so sorry if I'm addressing the wrong part of the stack, but JACK on Linux has been a great experience for me in terms of latency and ease of use. I run into way more day-to-day problems on Windows. What feature specifically are you missing on Linux? Re: plugins, DAWs with VST sandboxing are great. I use Bitwig, and I've never lost work due to a plugin crash.
  - noahadavis 5y ago
    And now that we have PipeWire, getting low latency audio is extremely easy too.
    - lolcat_cowsay 5y ago
      JACK is also really easy to setup with PipeWire.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    PipeWire is love. PipeWire is life. Doing post on a documentary whilst using PipeWire. Linux for audio is finally there.
  - officeplant 5y ago
    >Re: plugins, DAWs with VST sandboxing are great. I use Bitwig, and I've never lost work due to a plugin crash. Exactly, the original thread reads as someone who hasn't touched a modern DAW from the last 8 years or so. Even Renoise has multicore support with sandboxed plugins so one of my ancient free shitty vsts doesn't bring down the whole system.
- wwweston 5y ago
  > This is false. Suffice it to say that it's non-obvious to me where to start to go about getting a stable and mobile (ie laptop) experience. I'd like nothing better than to receive a response that makes me feel sheepish for thinking that Linux is the problem, and if anyone can give out good pointers I'd imagine you can.
rudenoise 5y ago
Things to check: For audio on linux: https://pipewire.org/ https://pipewire.org/ For a more code oriented audio workflow (python lib to load VST and AU) https://github.com/spotify/pedalboard https://github.com/spotify/pedalboard
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Pipewire is a layer above most of the really important stuff. Pedalboard is also not a realtime audio environment (as was clarified by one of its developers here on the HN thread last week). In that sense it is extremely different from Bespoke (and nearly everything else).
- Lucasoato 5y ago
  I'll never thank you enough for linking pedalboard... That's exactly what I've always needed lol
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    It was posted here less than a week ago too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28458930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28458930
- pandakar 5y ago
  For you pythonheads, please check out Olivier's wonderful pyo https://github.com/belangeo/pyo https://github.com/belangeo/pyo
Minor49er 5y ago
> No plug-in or DAW has a CLI You might be interested in MrsWatson. Even though the development on it has been discontinued, there is still a lot of potential for its use: http://teragonaudio.com/MrsWatson http://teragonaudio.com/MrsWatson
grishka 5y ago
> One messy plug-in and you can lose hours and hours of work. What if you run each plugin in a separate process, or does IPC add too much overhead or not provide enough bandwidth for this to be feasible?
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Although we are still debating with some smart people about this (since actual measurements call it into question), this was our (Ardour dev team's) take on this question: https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html
  - grishka 5y ago
    The answer is "too much overhead" but the overhead isn't coming from where I assumed it would. I thought it could be too expensive to pass the required amount of data through the kernel (at least 48000 samples per track per second), but that's not the problem, it turns out it's the context switches. Huh. edit: I now also remembered that virtual memory is a thing and you can share a chunk of physical memory between processes to avoid the need to copy anything at all.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Context switches on Linux are a pretty heavy affair, this is the result of some choices in the distant past when the number of context switches per second was much higher than on most other platforms and so it was deemed to be 'good enough'. Unfortunately this rules out a lot of real time or near real time work, especially when the workload is divided over multiple user space processes.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        A citation is required for this claim. I know of no evidence that Linux context switching on x86/x86_64 is slower than any other OS, and some suggestions that it is faster (Linux does not save/restore FP state, which Windows (at least at one point) does). Linux is as capable or more capable of realtime work than any other general purpose OS, and the latency numbers from actual measurement are excellent (when using RT_PREEMPT etc). What are you referring to?
supernintendo 5y ago
> Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... ASIO, really? Sorry but you couldn’t pay me to go back to that broken piece of crap after switching to Linux and JACK2. I’m actually traumatized by that piece of software, thinking of moments where ASIO would just break and cause my Live session to collapse into a glitchy cacophony of latency-induced noise. I’ve seen this happen on several computers with different Windows installations and external audio hardware and the problem always ends up being ASIO. Some of the producers I knew swore off anything that wasn’t a Mac because of this exact problem. The problem with audio production on Linux in 2021 isn’t the audio protocol. It’s that most free and open source audio production software for Linux is dreadful to use. UX is actually very important for DAWs. I want to like Ardour but it’s a miserable piece of software to try to make music in. Feels like a chore to perform any action, kills my vibe, would not recommend. After trying really hard to become comfortable using it, I finally gave up and bought Bitwig. It’s a proprietary DAW and kinda expensive but I’ve been producing music with it for a couple of years and it’s a dream to use - sort of a spiritual successor to Ableton IMO. > No plug-in or DAW has a CLI… Most people who make music don’t care about this. I’m a software developer and musician who only uses Linux and I don’t care about this. In my opinion, Linux developers of free and open source creative software should spend less time building these features for other developers and focus more on making their software feel good to create with. If I feel bad trying to use your clunky-ass UI to make my art / music / whatever then I’m not going to hold myself back because it has a free software license. I’m going to find a piece of software that gets out of the way and lets me make what I want to make.
- sasaf5 5y ago
  JACK2? Sorry my ignorance, it's been a while I abandoned Linux audio for Ableton on Windows with a focusrite Scarlet. Did they solve that JACK/alsa problem? Without running a2j in the background?
  - lavabiopsy 5y ago
    Which problem are you referring to? a2jmidi should work fine as long as you have access to the device. But in any case that should not be necessary anymore if you use pipewire, which should be able to manage all the devices at once.
rhizome 5y ago
Sox was a significant player in a pipeline I wrote for a YouTube-y company 15 years ago. Worked well enough to (help) get the company acquired!
scns 5y ago
Try Bitwig, plugins will crash on their own there. It even runs on Linux.
tomduncalf 5y ago
> One messy plug-in and you can lose hours and hours of work If you’re meaning from crashes, Bitwig has configurable levels of process isolation for plugins - I guess the trade off is performance, I haven’t tested it out so can’t comment on how well it works.
obiefernandez 5y ago
My holy grail project sounds like something you and I could collaborate on someday. Essentially a way to represent a DAW project in plain text so it can be versioned in Git and easy to collaborate on. Happy to discuss anytime obiefernandez@gmail.com
sharklazer 5y ago
Been using DAWs for 20 years now. Of course they aren’t changing... what even should change? They work, and do what they’re supposed to. Most plugins these days are stable, and don’t crash. I haven’t had issues in like 10 years honestly. At least if you’re paying for them from groups who have a reputation. Git for a music project would be detrimental, going to be really honest. Linux can run things just fine. JACK has been a relatively stable audio platform. RT pre-emption can help. The only issue with Linux I see is software support. But with Apple making some less than stellar choices, I expect linux to become more important to the daw/digital recording ecosystem One fantastic one that does work well on linux (reaper) also has a scripting interface. Not a CLI but actually more useful.

xbpx 5y ago

Since you're a software dev you may have explored supercollider and other environments where you can employ great tools. I've been looking for a hybrid UI/UX + Audio programming environment that would combine the freedom of code with the visual cues of a DAW but haven't found the ideal fit. So far I've been rolling my own with cl-collider, a common lisp client for Supercollider which uses some lisp tricks (macros) to good effect.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... This is false. > Imagine if they applied something similar to a git versioning system to music projects. People have done this. Using git itself is a little problematic because it is very line-oriented and most project file formats for DAWs are not. Regarding plugins, I know that I'm not the only lead developer of a DAW who, if they possibly could, would refuse to support plugins entirely. The problem is that most users want more functionality than a DAW itself could feasibly provide (they also sometimes like to use the same functionality (plugin) in different DAWs or different workflows). There are things close to DAW functionality that have a CLI (such as ecasound). You can also run plugins from the command line by using standalone plugin hosts. You can use oscsend(1) to control plugins inside several different plugin hosts. It sounds to me as if you've worked with a relatively small number of DAWs on only Windows and macOS and are not really aware of the breadth or depth of the "field".

dewert 5y ago
> > Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... > This is false. This was my immediate thought as well. Not sure what level we're talking here, so sorry if I'm addressing the wrong part of the stack, but JACK on Linux has been a great experience for me in terms of latency and ease of use. I run into way more day-to-day problems on Windows. What feature specifically are you missing on Linux? Re: plugins, DAWs with VST sandboxing are great. I use Bitwig, and I've never lost work due to a plugin crash.
- noahadavis 5y ago
  And now that we have PipeWire, getting low latency audio is extremely easy too.
  - lolcat_cowsay 5y ago
    JACK is also really easy to setup with PipeWire.
- hammyhavoc 5y ago
  PipeWire is love. PipeWire is life. Doing post on a documentary whilst using PipeWire. Linux for audio is finally there.
- officeplant 5y ago
  >Re: plugins, DAWs with VST sandboxing are great. I use Bitwig, and I've never lost work due to a plugin crash. Exactly, the original thread reads as someone who hasn't touched a modern DAW from the last 8 years or so. Even Renoise has multicore support with sandboxed plugins so one of my ancient free shitty vsts doesn't bring down the whole system.
wwweston 5y ago
> This is false. Suffice it to say that it's non-obvious to me where to start to go about getting a stable and mobile (ie laptop) experience. I'd like nothing better than to receive a response that makes me feel sheepish for thinking that Linux is the problem, and if anyone can give out good pointers I'd imagine you can.

rudenoise 5y ago

Things to check: For audio on linux: https://pipewire.org/ https://pipewire.org/ For a more code oriented audio workflow (python lib to load VST and AU) https://github.com/spotify/pedalboard https://github.com/spotify/pedalboard

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Pipewire is a layer above most of the really important stuff. Pedalboard is also not a realtime audio environment (as was clarified by one of its developers here on the HN thread last week). In that sense it is extremely different from Bespoke (and nearly everything else).
Lucasoato 5y ago
I'll never thank you enough for linking pedalboard... That's exactly what I've always needed lol
- gregsadetsky 5y ago
  It was posted here less than a week ago too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28458930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28458930
pandakar 5y ago
For you pythonheads, please check out Olivier's wonderful pyo https://github.com/belangeo/pyo https://github.com/belangeo/pyo

Minor49er 5y ago

> No plug-in or DAW has a CLI You might be interested in MrsWatson. Even though the development on it has been discontinued, there is still a lot of potential for its use: http://teragonaudio.com/MrsWatson http://teragonaudio.com/MrsWatson

grishka 5y ago

> One messy plug-in and you can lose hours and hours of work. What if you run each plugin in a separate process, or does IPC add too much overhead or not provide enough bandwidth for this to be feasible?

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Although we are still debating with some smart people about this (since actual measurements call it into question), this was our (Ardour dev team's) take on this question: https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html https://ardour.org/plugins-in-process.html
- grishka 5y ago
  The answer is "too much overhead" but the overhead isn't coming from where I assumed it would. I thought it could be too expensive to pass the required amount of data through the kernel (at least 48000 samples per track per second), but that's not the problem, it turns out it's the context switches. Huh. edit: I now also remembered that virtual memory is a thing and you can share a chunk of physical memory between processes to avoid the need to copy anything at all.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Context switches on Linux are a pretty heavy affair, this is the result of some choices in the distant past when the number of context switches per second was much higher than on most other platforms and so it was deemed to be 'good enough'. Unfortunately this rules out a lot of real time or near real time work, especially when the workload is divided over multiple user space processes.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      A citation is required for this claim. I know of no evidence that Linux context switching on x86/x86_64 is slower than any other OS, and some suggestions that it is faster (Linux does not save/restore FP state, which Windows (at least at one point) does). Linux is as capable or more capable of realtime work than any other general purpose OS, and the latency numbers from actual measurement are excellent (when using RT_PREEMPT etc). What are you referring to?

supernintendo 5y ago

> Also consider that there are no good audio drivers for Linux (like Asio for example) so you're almost forced to stay in windows or Mac... ASIO, really? Sorry but you couldn’t pay me to go back to that broken piece of crap after switching to Linux and JACK2. I’m actually traumatized by that piece of software, thinking of moments where ASIO would just break and cause my Live session to collapse into a glitchy cacophony of latency-induced noise. I’ve seen this happen on several computers with different Windows installations and external audio hardware and the problem always ends up being ASIO. Some of the producers I knew swore off anything that wasn’t a Mac because of this exact problem. The problem with audio production on Linux in 2021 isn’t the audio protocol. It’s that most free and open source audio production software for Linux is dreadful to use. UX is actually very important for DAWs. I want to like Ardour but it’s a miserable piece of software to try to make music in. Feels like a chore to perform any action, kills my vibe, would not recommend. After trying really hard to become comfortable using it, I finally gave up and bought Bitwig. It’s a proprietary DAW and kinda expensive but I’ve been producing music with it for a couple of years and it’s a dream to use - sort of a spiritual successor to Ableton IMO. > No plug-in or DAW has a CLI… Most people who make music don’t care about this. I’m a software developer and musician who only uses Linux and I don’t care about this. In my opinion, Linux developers of free and open source creative software should spend less time building these features for other developers and focus more on making their software feel good to create with. If I feel bad trying to use your clunky-ass UI to make my art / music / whatever then I’m not going to hold myself back because it has a free software license. I’m going to find a piece of software that gets out of the way and lets me make what I want to make.

sasaf5 5y ago
JACK2? Sorry my ignorance, it's been a while I abandoned Linux audio for Ableton on Windows with a focusrite Scarlet. Did they solve that JACK/alsa problem? Without running a2j in the background?
- lavabiopsy 5y ago
  Which problem are you referring to? a2jmidi should work fine as long as you have access to the device. But in any case that should not be necessary anymore if you use pipewire, which should be able to manage all the devices at once.

rhizome 5y ago

Sox was a significant player in a pipeline I wrote for a YouTube-y company 15 years ago. Worked well enough to (help) get the company acquired!

scns 5y ago

Try Bitwig, plugins will crash on their own there. It even runs on Linux.

tomduncalf 5y ago

> One messy plug-in and you can lose hours and hours of work If you’re meaning from crashes, Bitwig has configurable levels of process isolation for plugins - I guess the trade off is performance, I haven’t tested it out so can’t comment on how well it works.

obiefernandez 5y ago

My holy grail project sounds like something you and I could collaborate on someday. Essentially a way to represent a DAW project in plain text so it can be versioned in Git and easy to collaborate on. Happy to discuss anytime obiefernandez@gmail.com

sharklazer 5y ago

Been using DAWs for 20 years now. Of course they aren’t changing... what even should change? They work, and do what they’re supposed to. Most plugins these days are stable, and don’t crash. I haven’t had issues in like 10 years honestly. At least if you’re paying for them from groups who have a reputation. Git for a music project would be detrimental, going to be really honest. Linux can run things just fine. JACK has been a relatively stable audio platform. RT pre-emption can help. The only issue with Linux I see is software support. But with Apple making some less than stellar choices, I expect linux to become more important to the daw/digital recording ecosystem One fantastic one that does work well on linux (reaper) also has a scripting interface. Not a CLI but actually more useful.