[HN Gopher] Zrythm: A highly automated and intuitive digital aud...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Zrythm: A highly automated and intuitive digital audio workstation
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 276 points
       Date   : 2021-12-05 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.zrythm.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.zrythm.org)
        
       | owlbynight wrote:
       | Just let me put FL Studio's piano roll into Ableton, please.
        
       | BoysenberryPi wrote:
       | I saw this a while ago and wanted to contribute so I found my way
       | to their source. Unfortunately, this was my first interaction
       | with SourceHut, the site they use as their central point of
       | development, and found it completely unintuitive. After 15
       | minutes of fumbling around I basically just said "I'll try it
       | again later" and never got back to it. This might just be because
       | this was my first encounter with the site.
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | Were you unable to find the git URL for cloning the repository?
         | 
         | Or was it non-coding contributions you were interested in?
        
         | maximedupre wrote:
         | I didn't even know about SourceHut. It seems like the weird
         | cousin of Github. But I'm also a Github fan boiiiii.
        
         | wrycoder wrote:
         | Assume you found the code by clicking on "tree"?
         | 
         | https://man.sr.ht/
        
         | zucker42 wrote:
         | You just use git-send-email[1] to send a patch to their mailing
         | list[2]. Project page is here[3].
         | 
         | [1] https://git-send-email.io/
         | 
         | [2] https://lists.sr.ht/~alextee/zrythm-devel
         | 
         | [3] https://sr.ht/~alextee/zrythm/
        
         | alextee wrote:
         | we keep a mirror there if you prefer to use github
         | (https://github.com/zrythm/zrythm) but we don't actually use
         | github for development
         | 
         | if you really want to use github pull requests instead of
         | sending patches feel free to do that and I'll still look at
         | them but we recommend patches via email because it's an open
         | and standard system
        
           | 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
           | Just wanted to say that I personally really appreciate the
           | setup, workflow and the way you are organized! It looks like
           | you are really caring about building upon open tech both in
           | development and communication. Actually made me very curious.
           | 
           | Same for the choice of dependencies and the documentation in
           | place, was surprised with how easy it was to compile myself.
           | Hadn't had the time to give the program itself a full try
           | yet, but I'm actually looking forward to do try some
           | recordings with it next week.
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | I do wish we had an open standard for things like issues,
           | pull requests, etc. that was a little more "featureful" than
           | plain email. At least platforms like Gitlab, Gitea, etc. are
           | self-hostable and open source, which is a start.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | mananaysiempre wrote:
             | ForgeFed[1] seems to be an attempt in that direction built
             | on top of ActivityPub[2], but (from my very brief
             | impression) seems to be stuck in something of a development
             | hell. I'm willing to believe it'll get done at some point,
             | but whether it'll get traction--or how a project of this
             | sort should even go about that in general--is anybody's
             | guess.
             | 
             | [1]: https://forgefed.peers.community/
             | 
             | [2]: https://activitypub.rocks/
        
       | 999900000999 wrote:
       | I understand why, but it's really hurting adoption of this
       | project to lock the installers behind a paywall. When I'm looking
       | to download something like this, I already have garage band and
       | logic. I'm not willing to really give you 15$ without any proof
       | this will work for me. However, if the installers were available
       | for free, I would have no trouble paying EUR5 or so on the honor
       | system. Assume it works for my computer and all that stuff
        
         | alextee wrote:
         | the "paywall" system has been proven to work by ardour and
         | zrythm to fund the project's development
         | 
         | >I'm not willing to really give you 15$ without any proof this
         | will work for me
         | 
         | if you want to try it out you can download the trial version at
         | no cost. all features are there besides saving/loading projects
         | (you can still export audio though)
        
           | 999900000999 wrote:
           | The problem here is it's competing against Audacity which is
           | free.
           | 
           | Then again audacity is selling user data. Even if I'm down to
           | pay 15$ then I can't share projects with anyone who doesn't
           | want to pay. Folks who , since it's proven, already use
           | Logic.
        
             | mixedCase wrote:
             | Audacity is not a DAW. This is competing with Ardour, if
             | you want to limit it to FOSS options.
        
         | kekebo wrote:
         | It appears you can compile the project yourself since it's open
         | source[0].
         | 
         | Besides that there's a free installer download option on the
         | website.
         | 
         | [0] https://git.sr.ht/~alextee/zrythm/tree/master/INSTALL.md
        
           | Severian wrote:
           | Note: you must also build the software yourself to get ASIO
           | support for Windows (which uses RtAudio). You'll be stuck
           | with an order of magnitude greater latency under WASAPI (or
           | worse under MME), assuming your device drivers are built to
           | use it.
           | 
           | https://docs.zrythm.org/md_doc_dev_windows_build.html
           | 
           | IANAL, but it looks like maybe the devs don't want to to
           | register the license with Steinberg and keep this free (as in
           | beer) licensing-wise?
           | 
           | This looks cool, but the barrier to entry to a bit steep
           | under Windows. I want to make noise, not spend time messing
           | around with building software.
        
             | 999900000999 wrote:
             | Thank you for proving my point.
             | 
             | Assuming this works I have no problem donating 15 or 30$. I
             | already know it's not going to work as Logic, so then it
             | turns into $15 just to sort of see what it is.
        
           | enumjorge wrote:
           | For the average user, $15 is probably a lower barrier of
           | entry than asking them to compile their own binaries.
        
             | rvense wrote:
             | I compile stuff for myself all the time and I bought the
             | installer. As far as this category of software goes, $15 is
             | cheap. (Although I think it was $5 when I got it.)
             | 
             | It didn't work very well a year and a half ago or whenever
             | it was, though. Maybe I should give it a look again.
        
         | jturpin wrote:
         | Yeah this is a turnoff for me. I get that I could compile it
         | myself but since the authors clearly don't want that, I'd
         | rather just put my money into tools I know will work.
        
       | maximedupre wrote:
       | So, I'm curious, what's the big thing about Zrythm?
       | 
       | Is it that you can automate much more params than on
       | Logic/Ableton?
       | 
       | The fact that it's open-source is pretty cool though.
        
         | odiroot wrote:
         | I haven't tried it myself but at least the piano roll seems
         | better than Bitwig's. And Bitwig is my current choice for
         | Linux.
        
       | adamgordonbell wrote:
       | What I want is a way to run VSTs from the command line. Often I
       | just have the same chain of VST with saved settings that I want
       | to run a file through and a DAW shouldn't be required. mrswatson
       | is the only thing close I have found but it doesn't seem to work
       | at all.
       | 
       | I'll admit my usecase is unique, just running certain Izotope
       | plugins over interview audio to clean them up but I really wish
       | command line composition and automation were possible.
       | 
       | https://github.com/teragonaudio/MrsWatson
        
         | wolfblood wrote:
         | have you seen the pedalboard project? Might get you the outcome
         | you're after if you want to dabble in python.
         | 
         | https://github.com/spotify/pedalboard
        
         | jdevera wrote:
         | Maybe you can cook something quickly with Spotify's Pedalboard:
         | https://github.com/spotify/pedalboard
        
         | TheRealPomax wrote:
         | What is "a file" in this case? Because VST don't have idea what
         | that is, so you're still going to be generating your projects
         | in _something_
         | 
         | That said, what you're describing sounds pretty close to using
         | cantabile in headless mode
         | (https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/guides/commandLineOptions),
         | where you just create a project with your desired VST chain,
         | and then take it from there.
        
         | spacechild1 wrote:
         | If you don't mind a little bit of high level programming, I
         | would recommend SuperCollider in NRT mode + the VSTPlugin
         | extension or Pure Data in batch mode + the [vstplugin~]
         | external. In both cases you'd generate the OSC command file
         | resp. write the Pd patch once and then invoke it from the
         | command line with any soundfile you want.
        
         | mxmilkiib wrote:
         | Check out https://github.com/falkTX/kuriborosu
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | Look at gstreamer.
        
         | alextee wrote:
         | this is on the radar, what you are asking for is similar to
         | lv2apply I guess
         | 
         | you can already run guile scripts via the command line so you
         | could run a few plugins and process audio if you wanted to
         | assuming all the necessary API is exposed but I haven't really
         | tried that yet
         | 
         | for now, I recommend kuriborosu as well
         | https://github.com/falkTX/kuriborosu/
        
         | hunter2_ wrote:
         | My first thought was to see if ffmpeg could do this.
         | Unfortunately it seems like not currently [0] but what caught
         | my eye is a mention that "the VST SDK has a linux command line
         | VST Host you can compile" which might be all you need.
         | 
         | [0] https://superuser.com/questions/1661505/naive-query-vst-
         | plug...
        
       | dandare wrote:
       | With a free software like this I am always wondering what is the
       | business model, how do they make money?
        
         | FractalHQ wrote:
         | Check out their download page- they offer premium subscriptions
         | for access to more plugins
        
           | tapland wrote:
           | And for the save/load functionality? I'll check the free
           | version out but that seems like a big hurdle of the free
           | version
        
       | schmorptron wrote:
       | Meta: I always really like HN Threads about DAWs, a lot of people
       | with a ton of knowledge and good recomendations tend to show up
       | :)
        
       | billfruit wrote:
       | Does it have a tracker-style interface? I think trackers are more
       | intuitive than the piano rolls many audio software have.
        
         | emsy wrote:
         | Trackers are just vertical piano rolls with all tracks visible
         | concurrently. Piano rolls are is better, I'd argue, when
         | working with audio clips and automation.
        
       | 0des wrote:
       | Always nice to see another SourceHut project :)
        
       | no_time wrote:
       | After taking a cursory glance at the sources, It's rather unique
       | in a way that it's GTK based yet looks nothing the average GTK
       | application. I wonder what made them pick GTK instead of QML or
       | even something unique like many DAWs do.
       | 
       | btw congrats to the team, I'm not musically gifted to give an
       | opinion on how usable it is, but the design looks very crisp and
       | more akin to something you see in closed source apps with an army
       | of designers behind them.
        
       | luckydata wrote:
       | I've been making music for a LOOOOONG time (mostly Logic and
       | Ableton user but I tried everything under the sun).
       | 
       | I looked at it for a minute and the only thing I could think was
       | "what a mess".
        
       | Mizza wrote:
       | Looks nice, particularly the piano roll.
       | 
       | Do any Free DAWs have Ableton-like VST "hiding"? I can't leave
       | Ableton because of how insane window management gets on complex
       | projects when 10 different VSTs are all fighting for screen
       | space. Even the screenshots for this app look chaotic from all of
       | the VSTs covering the screen at the same time.
        
         | maximedupre wrote:
         | > Even the screenshots for this app look chaotic from all of
         | the VSTs covering the screen at the same time.
         | 
         | That's one of the first things I noticed - how messy it looks.
         | Perhaps that's just because they tried to showcase all the
         | features in one single screenshot lol.
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | Due to your question, I just added this feature to Ardour.
         | There's now a user preference that if set will only allow one
         | plugin GUI window to be visible at a time. Lots of our users
         | would find that irritating, but you get the choice now.
         | 
         | https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/commit/c7b70c6318456b375ccb...
        
           | Mizza wrote:
           | That's awesome! I've had Ardour on my systems for years,
           | since the first Ubuntu Studio, thanks for all your work!
        
             | themodelplumber wrote:
             | Some Qs I've had about this recently in case you or someone
             | else could offer insights: Is it realistic to run Ardour
             | for music composition on regular Intel sound hardware these
             | days? Is it still pretty easy to migrate from Ubuntu to
             | (presumably realtime) Studio?
             | 
             | Thanks for any input; I'm interested in Ardour, Jack, etc.
             | but not "buy new sound card" interested, as LMMS on ALSA is
             | not too bad for what I do.
        
               | speed_spread wrote:
               | Ardour does not have significantly higher requirements
               | than other audio software and should work just fine with
               | any decent-ish machine. The audio interface is really up
               | to you, it's just a matter of sound quality. If onboard
               | audio suits you, then who are we to judge?
               | 
               | I myself used the onboard audio with an external mixer
               | for quite a while. I've since upgraded to a 24 track
               | FireWire rig assembled from cheap used hardware that no
               | longer ran on Mac or Windows because of obsolete drivers.
               | In-tree drivers is major advantage of Linux when it comes
               | to hardware support.
        
           | marcan_42 wrote:
           | And this is why I use Ardour. It just keeps getting better
           | and the devs are amazingly responsive! I'm really looking
           | forward to Ardour 7 :-)
        
       | mxmilkiib wrote:
       | #zrythm on libera IRC is a very active channel (as is #ardour,
       | #lad)
        
         | wrycoder wrote:
         | Distributed at Sourcehut under the GNU Affero license, with
         | branding reserved to unmodified copies. The business model is
         | interesting.
         | 
         | https://git.sr.ht/~alextee/zrythm
        
       | mhitza wrote:
       | Wanted to give it a try, unfortunately under Fedora 34 the alpha
       | AppImage segfaults when run via pw-jack (pipewire jack "bridge")
        
       | spacechild1 wrote:
       | > Fully JACK aware, including support for PipeWire, JACK
       | transport, ALSA, PulseAudio, WASAPI, Windows MME, CoreMidi and
       | CoreAudio.
       | 
       | No ASIO support?
        
       | chirau wrote:
       | So how do we pronounce this? I think the name is unnecessarily
       | complicated.
        
         | alextee wrote:
         | zee-rhythm
        
           | quitethelogic wrote:
           | I'll use it if you allow zed-rhythm as well
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kiddico wrote:
       | This is a bit off topic, but this is the first time I've actually
       | used sourcehut and I've got to say I love it. Nearly instant
       | account creation and sometimes I don't notice a page is already
       | loaded because I blinked when I clicked.
       | 
       | well done sircmpwn
        
       | udbhavs wrote:
       | There was a comment on the recent Blender 3.0 thread posted here
       | wondering why there isn't an equivalent program for audio. This
       | looks very polished and much more approachable compared to Ardour
       | or LMMS, and seems like a good candidate. But one feature I
       | really wish my dream "Blender for audio" had would be the
       | convenient device view that Ableton and Bitwig offer for working
       | quickly with effects. It's so much faster than the type of effect
       | chains offered by DAWs like FL and makes it fun to mess around
       | and experiment with effects-based synthesis. Looking at the
       | screenshots and videos it looks like Zrythm doesn't have this
       | feature, although I understand how tedious it would be to
       | implement because you would essentially have to write your own
       | effects or create wrappers around others to expose an interface
       | that can fit in a device view. Probably not high on the list of
       | priorities for a work in progress DAW
        
         | jbverschoor wrote:
         | The value proposition is different. Blender is (afaik) free for
         | your render farm.
         | 
         | In general modeling is a huge team.
         | 
         | Audio/composing is largely a solo activity. What good is "an
         | alternative" if you can get Logic Pro for a few hundred
        
         | alextee wrote:
         | that's on the radar but after v1. what you are describing is
         | probably similar to how the modulators look in the modulators
         | tab (see https://manual.zrythm.org/en/modulators/intro.html)
        
           | udbhavs wrote:
           | Yeah, and the modulators themselves are a very cool feature
           | too. Excited to see how Zrythm evolves, the UI looks great
           | and it could be a good starting point for beginners.
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | I would argue there are many more, and much more widely
         | differing, workflows for DAW use than there are for 3D (maybe
         | even 2D) graphics. There are somewhere in the range of 12-20
         | "significant" DAWs out there, with a very wide range of
         | workflows supported (not all of them by all the DAWs).
         | 
         | This doesn't include "generation environments" like VCV Rack,
         | Reaktor, Bespoke and many others that don't have any
         | traditional DAW features but are immensely powerful tools for
         | synthesis and compositional discovery and creation.
         | 
         | Depending on the uniqueness of your imagined or actual
         | workflow, there is probably a tool that comes close, but the
         | potential variations do imply that its not hard to come up with
         | a description for "what I really want in an audio tool" that
         | just doesn't exist (at least not without you doing significant
         | work yourself e.g. programming in PureData).
        
           | alextee wrote:
           | >This doesn't include "generation environments" like VCV
           | Rack, Reaktor, Bespoke and many others that don't have any
           | traditional DAW features but are immensely powerful tools for
           | synthesis and compositional discovery and creation.
           | 
           | that's on the radar as well
           | https://todo.sr.ht/~alextee/zrythm-feature/115
           | 
           | although you can already do this if you use the carla plugin.
           | that feature is about having a more native way to create your
           | own "patches" by connecting various modules/plugins in a
           | container plugin
        
           | dmead wrote:
           | are you the ardor guy?
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | yes. alextee is the zrythm guy.
        
           | TheRealPomax wrote:
           | Note that the same is true for 3d/2d, there are a good 20
           | significant applications all primed for doing "that thing
           | that you wish other tools did" better than any other tool.
           | 
           | If your application does 80% of all work 50% better than the
           | rest, and the last 20% at least just as bad as everyone else,
           | then even if there will be folks who want something that is
           | more specifically tailored to that one thing they really want
           | to do you still have an amazing product. That's certainly
           | Blender, and if someone wants to try to achieve the same in
           | DAW land, most folks who use DAWs will be watching that
           | development with excitement.
           | 
           | They may not switch primary DAW, but using different tools
           | sparks different creative flows, and in a few rare cases, you
           | stick with the new tool.
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | As the author of another FLOSS DAW, I'd disagree with your
             | closing sentence. The number of users of computer graphics
             | tools outnumbers the computer audio tools by at least 10:1
             | based on any metric I can find. Maybe I've grown immune to
             | the "excitement" or maybe my 21-year old project is just
             | shite, but I really don't think it works the same way.
        
               | TheRealPomax wrote:
               | If after 20 years you're no longer excited about a new
               | DAW, I'm sorry to hear that, but there are plenty of
               | folks who still get excited when something new comes out
               | that tries to address a gaping hole in the digital audio
               | space. You can be set in which DAW you use because you've
               | been using it for over a decade (even if you own all the
               | other ones because things go on sale so much, and
               | hardware comes with "cheap to upgrade to the full version
               | from" licenses for everything that it's nearly impossible
               | not to just own all the DAWs after a few years. Except
               | maybe Pro Tools), and still go "this looks... really
               | cool, actually. Let's see if it has magic".
               | 
               | (Although of course, if you _make_ a DAW your story is
               | vastly different from the end user experience. You are
               | not hoping to find that magic, you'll have already
               | determined what the magic is, and considered most ways to
               | try to implement it, and maybe even fell out of love with
               | it because of that)
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | I didn't mean to imply that I'm no longer excited by a
               | new DAW. We're in the middle of adding clip launching to
               | Ardour right now, and that alone is fairly exciting. What
               | I meant was that I don't really detect much excitement in
               | the world from the emergence of a new DAW, and what I do
               | see mostly comes from people who don't seem to actually
               | know very much about existing DAWs. There are way more
               | people talking about Blender 3.0 than anytime a new
               | version of any major DAW is released.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | gmueckl wrote:
               | If you asked me, Blender is just insanely good at
               | marketing itself. When it comes to software, having good
               | marketing and sales is always more important than the
               | quality of the product. The Blender team knows this and
               | is very aggressive when it comes to keeping their product
               | in the news. This worked in their favor even in the early
               | days when there still were a few other open source 3D
               | tools that had a chance of growing up to become seriously
               | useful. These projects were starved out by drawing
               | attention away from them. Twenty years later, that space
               | is dominated by Blender so forcefully that there is zero
               | room for an alternative, even as an underdog.
        
               | eointierney wrote:
               | Your 21 year old project is amazing and I'm grateful for
               | your efforts.
               | 
               | The slow development of DAWs and ther interfaces is
               | really interesting and I'd love to know your thoughts on
               | explorable UI/UX. You have a very hard job.
        
               | Shared404 wrote:
               | Just chiming in saying thanks for Ardour! I'm far from
               | skilled, but it's one of the few programs I always have
               | installed on at least one machine.
        
         | fb03 wrote:
         | I'm keeping an eye on Bespoke Synth for that.
         | 
         | Am a keen user of Renoise which is not free but it's really
         | good (if you enjoy trackers) and also very affordable.
         | 
         | In the meantime, hyped for how the foss audio world is shaping
         | up. We soon might not even a commercial daw at all anymore,
         | just like Blender is doing in the 3D world (I work with artists
         | in a studio and we switched almost our whole pipeline, sans
         | simulations, to Blender).
        
         | woldenron wrote:
         | I don't get how people can compare anything to Blender, which
         | gets many grants and funds from big corporations and would
         | still be shit without it.
        
           | udbhavs wrote:
           | Well for audio I think most of the tools are already out
           | there, it's just a matter of bundling them neatly into a nice
           | open source package that has a good UX and workflow.
        
         | SkyMarshal wrote:
         | Could such a feature be implemented as a Zrythm plugin?
        
       | delgaudm wrote:
       | Seems pretty cool, but looking at the screen capture on the front
       | page of that site makes me wonder, "intuitive for who?"
       | 
       | (But, I use Reaper, so who am I to talk)
        
         | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
         | My remarks on this "intuitive" thing (I'm the lead developer of
         | Ardour, another FOSS DAW):
         | 
         | https://discourse.ardour.org/t/reflections-on-intuitive/7833...
        
           | mhitza wrote:
           | Thanks for Ardour. I've been using it on an off for a couple
           | of years now (every time I get the itch to remix some pop
           | song that's stuck in my head).
           | 
           | I will say that I consider Ardour unintuitive, and reading
           | your post on the forums I think we have different takes on
           | the perspective used for this criteria. You seem to be making
           | the argument for users coming from other DAWs to Ardour,
           | whereas Ardour was for me was the first DAW I used. Thus
           | rather than comparing it to existing tools I always try to
           | find out how to do X, and often I have to Google for help
           | because what I expect to be possible is not
           | straightforward/"intuitive".
           | 
           | Let me give out two examples that tripped me up recently
           | 
           | 1) Wasn't able to easily reorder my tracks. I would have
           | found intuitive to be able to drag & drop tracks within the
           | main view. Instead I had to switch to the mixer view to
           | reorder them.
           | 
           | 2) I was playing around with a song that had around 20 stem
           | tracks. Grouped them out by voice, melody, percussion. But
           | once grouped I couldn't find an easy way to solo an
           | individual track within a group, as the solo button would
           | solo the entire group. For me a group specific set of
           | controls would be intuitive, whereas existing buttons
           | changing their behaviour is not. If I recall correctly I had
           | to click the group name in the main view for it to become
           | uncolored (disabled?) for individual controls to effect
           | individual tracks.
        
             | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
             | Re: 1: View > Show Editor Lists and then you can drag &
             | drop in precisely the same way as in the Mixer window.
             | 
             | Re: 2: the primary modifier key (Ctrl on Linux/Window, Cmd
             | on macOS) overrides group operations universally. So click
             | on a solo button for one member of a group, solo the whole
             | group; Primary-click ... solo just that member.
        
               | mhitza wrote:
               | 1) That's definitely useful info, I was not actively
               | aware of the Editor List. If it shows up on the first
               | Ardour startup I probably closed it out just to have more
               | room available in the default setup.
               | 
               | 2) Also wasn't aware of the "primary modifier key". What
               | I noticed from giving it a quick try on my project is
               | that when holding down Ctrl cannot solo a single track in
               | the Show Editor Lists -> Tracks & Busses window (clicks
               | are prevented). Nor does it allow me to adjust individual
               | volume sliders per track within a group. But seems to
               | work for all the other track controls.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | Re 2: the editor list "Tracks&Busses" tab uses a GTK
               | TreeView for displaying status and offering controls.
               | 
               | GTK's treeviews don't make it very easy (understatement!)
               | to make cells in the treeview detect keyboard modifiers.
               | When you click on the green/gray box in the solo column,
               | mostly what we know is that you clicked, we don't tend to
               | get modifier info. I was referring to tbe buttons in
               | track headers/mixer strip, but you're right it should be
               | consistent/universal. I'll see what I can do.
               | 
               | Regarding faders not being group-overridden by the
               | Primary modifier ... yes, that's true. Ctrl-drag on the
               | fader provides finer-grain control. However, there's a
               | reason for this difference. In general, we recommend that
               | people use VCA's for group gain control and disable
               | shared gain control in a group. It gives you a much more
               | flexible working style, and is a feature typically found
               | only on extremely expensive mixing consoles. Ardour
               | offers both SSL and Harrison style VCAs (i.e.
               | heirarchical/stacked or parallel), depending solely on
               | how you set things up.
        
           | rvense wrote:
           | I don't like the word at all when describing interfaces. It's
           | an overly broad term that in my experience doesn't tend to
           | lead to very good conversations about what's good or bad.
           | Case in point, we recently did a complete UI make-over at
           | $JOB and the bossman keeps referring to it as the new 'more
           | intuitive UI'. We moved a few buttons around and changed some
           | font sizes, but the most visible change is the completely new
           | colour palette. So yeah.
           | 
           | I'd also argue that nobody is born with an intuition to work
           | a DAW or any other piece of software, and in that sense I
           | think it's just a misleading term.
           | 
           | I think there are much better words to use to talk about
           | whether a UI is successful or not: "Familiar" is a good word,
           | because then you can ask "familiar to whom" and have a good
           | conversation about what kind of users you have, their
           | backgrounds, how much work you expect them to put into
           | learning your software, etc. "Internally consistent" is
           | another thing you can talk about and to some extent quantify.
           | Being "discoverable" is another thing where you can talk
           | about the balances between having everything right in front
           | of you and a complete information overload. And of course,
           | you can't really get around whether or not a UI is
           | attractive, displaying good colour sense and being visually
           | balanced and such. While you can certainly make pretty things
           | that are impossible to understand, I would tend to argue that
           | there is a bare minimum of prettiness needed to make
           | something that's friendly and engaging.
           | 
           | (PS: Thank you very much for Ardour, it is a remarkable piece
           | of software.)
        
             | semi-extrinsic wrote:
             | "The only intuitive interface is the nipple, everything
             | after that has to be learned."
             | 
             | And even that's not universal, it's quite normal for
             | newborns to struggle with feeding.
        
           | rectang wrote:
           | My instinctive reaction to any software product advertised as
           | "Intuitive", "Simple", or "Fast", is full-on Generation X
           | "what utter bullshit" skepticism.
           | 
           | A greenfield software project in an inherently complex domain
           | may be intuitive, simple, and fast at first, but claiming it
           | will stay that way is like advertising a rock you throw into
           | the air as "Flying".
        
         | dvtrn wrote:
         | > (But, I use Reaper, so who am I to talk)
         | 
         | Reaper is a fantastic DAW, at a great price point IMO. I've had
         | a side hustle for a while now editing podcasts and doing voice
         | overs for a couple of corporate clients (my former job being
         | one of them) and Reaper is the chefs knife in my kitchen of
         | sound
        
           | squarefoot wrote:
           | I'm also a Reaper user. The Windows version is so snappy that
           | it runs perfectly under WINE and, as a Linux user, I didn't
           | feel the lack of a native version before it existed. And I
           | still use it; unfortunately something happened on my 6+ years
           | old installed machine and I'm not able anymore to run Linux
           | VST hosts under native software; all attempt to use linvst
           | now fail, etc, so I'll be soon building a new machine
           | dedicated only to music.
           | 
           | Anyway, one feature I'd like to be addressed in DAWs is
           | pattern based drum programming, just like we did with old
           | drum machines in the 80s, but on steroids. I wouldn't use it
           | for electronic music however; I'd like to quickly create
           | patterns with an UI that for example let me show them like
           | boxes on a flowchart (double clicking for editing), then
           | drag, move, connect, copy them, apply variations, different
           | time signatures, etc. The mouse interface would allow
           | extremely quick creation and managing of a rhythm track, but
           | unfortunately all we got is piano/drum tracks that are good
           | for fine editing but IMO aren't the best tool when composing.
           | They surely allow selecting areas then copying, moving etc,
           | but in most DAWs the interface is so much crammed with
           | objects that can be dragged and dropped that mistakes are a
           | regular thing. We lack something in between that helps
           | organizing drum tracks areas as patterns, then treat them as
           | such.
        
           | delgaudm wrote:
           | I couldn't agree more, Reaper is awesome and totally worth
           | the learning curve. I'm a voice actor by trade and I consider
           | Reaper my "IDE of choice".
        
         | throwvirtever wrote:
         | "Intuitive for who" is a good question, and I hope the answer
         | is "intuitive to the new/occasional user".
         | 
         | I've used a number of different DAWs, and the main challenge is
         | that if I haven't made any music for several months, I don't
         | _really_ remember all the various maneuvers that a daily user
         | would have in muscle memory. I end up having to re-learn
         | everything, and experience extra special frustration along the
         | lines of  "I know there was a trick to moving this thing to
         | that place, but I can't remember what it is".
         | 
         | Almost every time, it's hard to argue that the way the DAW does
         | it "doesn't make sense"; it generally does make sense. But a
         | lot of the time the maneuver is so different than the things
         | one does in a non-DAW for basic clicking, editing, and dragging
         | things around, that it gets frustrating having to re-learn it
         | over and over again.
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | I don't know exactly what kind of software is better suited for
       | FLOSS. I'm a bit sad that there are no AAA FLOSS games. Open
       | source libraries have been in common use for games for long time,
       | there are a few somewhat adequate engines and Godot is a major
       | promise for changing the landscape.
       | 
       | Now, consider linux, gcc, llvm, apache, the rest of the gnu
       | project... these are technical projects. It looks like "technical
       | people" are willing to improve the tools they use and that drives
       | FLOSS technical/system software to continually evolve through the
       | years.
       | 
       | Regarding artistic software... well they are definitely technical
       | and advanced, but an artist is much less willing or knowledgeable
       | to make any contribution. But, when the right sauce finally mixes
       | in, we get Blender.
       | 
       | So, I think there is hope for the DAW market. If proprietary
       | options don't take care to make good offers, they will be eaten
       | just the same way the traditional proprietary UNIX world was.
       | MacOS survives, but the market the survive into is very
       | different.
        
         | egypturnash wrote:
         | _I 'm a bit sad that there are no AAA FLOSS games_
         | 
         | AAA games are typically the result of a small army of artists,
         | working overlong hours for a year or three. Go read the credits
         | of one all the way through sometime, and compare to the credits
         | of a summer tentpole action/effects film.
         | 
         | Do you have any proposals for ways to get this many people to
         | work for that long for free? Or for a way to fund them and
         | release the full source for the executables _and_ the assets
         | for free?
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | I said nothing about the assets. Actually I really think this
           | is a path for good FLOSS AAA games: paid assets. Not even
           | Stallman is opposed to that:
           | https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.en.html the part
           | that says "Game art is a different issue, because it isn't
           | software."
        
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