4 ms·

in the age of 500MB apps (thanks to electron); it is refreshing to see a sub-50MB app again.

by AbuAssar 23d ago

mystifyingpoi 23d ago
Reaper install is 13 megs. I have no idea how is this possible today.
- butlike 23d ago
  Because they're good
- perching_aix 23d ago
  can just swap electron for tauri for example
  - ihujonigyin 23d ago
    Or you know… build a proper app.
    - perching_aix 23d ago
      yeah, that's what i'm saying
- PurpleRamen 23d ago
  Probably no big external dependencies or any assets. It looks like something full of handwritten code, down to the self-rendered UI-elements. Also it's written in C/C++ and assembler, so there is no unnecessary bloat shipped out-of-the-box.
- peatmoss 23d ago
  And it's good. It also seems to have the most flexible plugin system of any DAW that has decent level of usage.
Mashimo 23d ago
Now that I look at it, why is the arm64 that much smaller then x86_64? 36 vs 47MB
- tosti 23d ago
  Just an educated guess, but perhaps there are optional dependencies missing in the arm64 version. Some programs are still broken or perform badly on arm64.
- jlundberg 23d ago
  I think it has to do with arm64 not supporting plugins and thus not shipping with any.
LinguaBrowse 23d ago
[dead]
dmix 23d ago
On MacOS is went from 189mb->128mb for v3->v4 which is nice
marttt 22d ago
How big are the project files these days? In the .aup3 format all source material was rendered into one big pile, so with lots of "raw tape" (e.g. for a radio show) the session files became huge. It was annoying to transport an 1.5 GB session file between two machines even via network. Reaper and Pro Tools (and many other DAWs), in contrast, had the source material in one folder and the session file essentially just documented the edits. These small session files could be exported even via email. The .aup3 format was one of the reasons why I decided to ditch Audacity3 for radio editing back in the day. And, it used to lag heavily when I had a project with several hundred cuts done via "ripple editing". All this was years ago, though. I concluded that Audacity v1.2.6 was the high point of this software and, indeed, tried to go back into using that one for a while (in 2019 or 2021 or so)! It was fast enough, very simple, young, raw, robust, but it still had its early 2000s open source enthusiasm charm. :) As a blast from the past, here's a 2002 publication by the original authors of Audacity on the original file format: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/papers/RBD-papers%20renamed/A%20Fast%20Data%20Structure%20for%20Disk-Based%20Audio%20Editing.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/papers/RBD-papers%20renamed/A%20...

in the age of 500MB apps (thanks to electron); it is refreshing to see a sub-50MB app again.

mystifyingpoi 23d ago

Reaper install is 13 megs. I have no idea how is this possible today.

butlike 23d ago
Because they're good
perching_aix 23d ago
can just swap electron for tauri for example
- ihujonigyin 23d ago
  Or you know… build a proper app.
  - perching_aix 23d ago
    yeah, that's what i'm saying
PurpleRamen 23d ago
Probably no big external dependencies or any assets. It looks like something full of handwritten code, down to the self-rendered UI-elements. Also it's written in C/C++ and assembler, so there is no unnecessary bloat shipped out-of-the-box.
peatmoss 23d ago
And it's good. It also seems to have the most flexible plugin system of any DAW that has decent level of usage.

Mashimo 23d ago

Now that I look at it, why is the arm64 that much smaller then x86_64? 36 vs 47MB

tosti 23d ago
Just an educated guess, but perhaps there are optional dependencies missing in the arm64 version. Some programs are still broken or perform badly on arm64.
jlundberg 23d ago
I think it has to do with arm64 not supporting plugins and thus not shipping with any.

LinguaBrowse 23d ago

[dead]

dmix 23d ago

On MacOS is went from 189mb->128mb for v3->v4 which is nice

marttt 22d ago

How big are the project files these days? In the .aup3 format all source material was rendered into one big pile, so with lots of "raw tape" (e.g. for a radio show) the session files became huge. It was annoying to transport an 1.5 GB session file between two machines even via network. Reaper and Pro Tools (and many other DAWs), in contrast, had the source material in one folder and the session file essentially just documented the edits. These small session files could be exported even via email. The .aup3 format was one of the reasons why I decided to ditch Audacity3 for radio editing back in the day. And, it used to lag heavily when I had a project with several hundred cuts done via "ripple editing". All this was years ago, though. I concluded that Audacity v1.2.6 was the high point of this software and, indeed, tried to go back into using that one for a while (in 2019 or 2021 or so)! It was fast enough, very simple, young, raw, robust, but it still had its early 2000s open source enthusiasm charm. :) As a blast from the past, here's a 2002 publication by the original authors of Audacity on the original file format: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/papers/RBD-papers%20renamed/A%20Fast%20Data%20Structure%20for%20Disk-Based%20Audio%20Editing.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/papers/RBD-papers%20renamed/A%20...