by raggi on 2/9/25, 6:31 AM with 131 comments
by PaulDavisThe1st on 2/11/25, 3:06 PM
It is therefore quite curious to see people get all excited about a DAW on another "platform" where at least 90% of the plugins in the world are not available, and in all likelihood are even less likely to ever become available than they are on Linux.
There's certainly a role for a tool like this in education and for people who so far have no realized that they really need to have Pigments or fabfilter for their project. And yes, people do exaggerate the extent to which a specific plugin is needed. Nevertheless, the lack of ability to run essentially any of the existing 3rd party plugins would, were it a native DAW, be viewed as completely crippling.
The webaudio modules "standard" offers some hope here, and I suspect that within 2-5 years, plugin toolkits like JUCE will allow you to build not just as "windows/VST3" or "Linux/LV2" or "macOS/AudioUnit" formats, but also "wasm/webaudiomodule" (or something like it). However, given how easy the various Linux options already are with JUCE, and how few plugin developers choose to use them, I have to wonder if the massively larger size of a "browser platform market" would be enough to get them to add another platform.
by dmje on 2/11/25, 1:34 PM
But... like other commenters - there it stops, and I'm just not quite sure why.
The audience is probably me. I'm an avid Ableton user - I pay a bloody fortune for it, I upgrade it every year, I am happy to support their development because it's an insanely - insanely - good piece of software that does everything I need it to do. I'm also now completely embedded in the clip view, so going back to a linear view just isn't a possibility for me.
More to the point though - this clearly isn't aimed at people who know nothing about what they're doing. It's very non-amateur and clearly very, very powerful. But at the same time it isn't aimed at me, either - as someone who does know what they're doing, I'm thinking "um, VSTs?" or "clip view?" or "live performance / latency issues?" or whatever.
So... who is the audience? Maybe there is a middle ground of people who don't have the means to fork out for a good desktop DAW. Maybe teenagers who are wanting to learn the principles without the spend. Maybe because it'd be very cool for collaborating? I just don't know.
Nonetheless, it's an insane demonstration of what can be done in a browser these days and for that I massively doff my cap - amazing work!
by p0w3n3d on 2/11/25, 12:15 PM
by Polarity on 2/11/25, 12:52 PM
That’s why I really like the idea of building a DAW in the browser, it has huge potential for all kinds of users, especially in education, whether for kids, older people, or just anyone who wants to make music on the go, no matter what device they’re using.
I see a lot of promise in this project and fully support André, who has already contributed to developing great audio tools.
by inatreecrown2 on 2/11/25, 11:55 AM
edit: I like the idea of the "Discoverable Toys" and can see how this could develop into something new. But why not just concentrate on that and bring it to other DAWs in form of a plugin, instead of writing a whole new DAW in the browser?
by akx on 2/11/25, 11:49 AM
by gravitronic on 2/11/25, 1:56 PM
It is an audio/video/midi plugin standard for the web and it is rather mature.
During covid I worked on a collaborative browser-based DAW, https://sequencer.party. I definitely bit off more than I could chew, but you can wire up plugin chains at least.
I would strongly suggest you consider adding webaudiomodule support and instantly get ~50 plugins supported in the DAW. I also packaged up a bunch of them ready for consumption here: https://github.com/boourns/wam-community
by raggi on 2/9/25, 6:42 AM
by turnsout on 2/11/25, 5:19 PM
"Extended methods in iterators" sounds like a developer-experience quality of life feature that could be easily avoided.
Still, I'm happy to see that this seems to work in Firefox, so it's not Chrome-only.
by handity on 2/11/25, 10:50 AM
But it makes me question why "the browser" is apparently still the inevitable platform of the future.
In order for a PWA to be normal and usable, it must be available offline, open in a window without browser chrome, have similar performance to a native application, be launchable via a shortcut on the host OS, and respond to the mouse and keybaord shortcuts the way you'd expect. I think I've just described... an Electron app?
It's cool that this kind of thing can run in a web browser. With no install hurdle, it's much easier to convince people to try it out, and it's cross platform. Beyond that I can't really think of any advantages to having it run in the browser.
If what's lacking is an easy way to try software, I can't help but imagine lots of ways this could be addressed that would be much more pleasant to use than loading PWAs. Right now I can't seriously see myself enjoying using a PWA for work.
I say this having recently finished several large design projects in Figma, which is apparently a gold standard success story for browser based apps. Despite the years of development and herculean engineering efforts, I can still feel the browser jank. I begrudgingly open the thing in chrome, as it completely chokes in Firefox. It still chokes on moderately sized canvases, moving things is slow and laggy compared to native apps, keyboard shortcuts sometimes don't work or keys get stuck in a weird pressed or unpressed state, loading is slow, elements pop-in over tens of seconds.
I know I'm an old man yelling at clouds at this point, I'm just disappointed that we seem to be going backwards in performance and usability of software.
by archimedesIIX on 2/13/25, 5:41 PM
At Open Music Networks (OMN), we’re taking a different approach. We’re building a simple, more accessible DAW that lives in your browser and integrates with our new music co-creation platform. Connectivity with more powerful client-based DAWs is on the roadmap.
If you’d like to discuss or collaborate, feel free to email me at david@openmusic.io.
by gordy_gordstein on 2/11/25, 1:59 PM
by jdefr89 on 2/11/25, 12:54 PM
by 6stringmerc on 2/11/25, 12:50 PM
by shidoshi on 2/11/25, 6:15 PM
by kundi on 2/11/25, 4:49 PM
How could we get in touch with your team?
by anthk on 2/11/25, 12:57 PM
by accounter8or on 2/12/25, 6:46 AM
by dnjdkdldh on 2/9/25, 3:54 PM
Does it support plugins?
by popalchemist on 2/12/25, 9:36 AM
by catapart on 2/11/25, 1:35 PM
I say this as someone who makes music and records it on a PC (MacOs/Windows/Linux), AND as someone who makes software for those same OSes. Admittedly, I do not really mess with loops or synthesizers, so I acknowledge those use-cases as some that might actually seem reasonable with current DAWs, but I definitely do not "get" it. I get bored screwing with synthesizers/filters (funny noise machines), and I use loops mostly with simple sequencers. So most of my time is spent producing and managing waveforms. To that end, every DAW looks - to me - like a god damned file manager, rather than a space for making content.
I'd LOVE for one piece of software to treat me like a user, rather than an audio engineer. I need a timeline, sure, but FIRST I need to pick an instrument; either by plugging it in (and the software auto-recognizing it), or by selecting a synth. I also need to pick a controller, if it's a synth. THEN I need to be put into an area where I can immediately get feedback for that thing. I don't need it to ONLY play when I hit record, or when I'm logging to the timeline. I need to have an empty space where I can start doing "takes". Simple snippets that I can refer back to. Auto-split during "silence", so I don't have to scan through a massive timeline to find the bit I liked. Obviously the mixers and things need to be summonable, here, for tuning. But they don't necessarily need to already be present. I don't need 18 knobs for tuning while I'm scritching out a riff, or finding the melodic line with my voice. I need to be able to try a thing, edit the settings, try again, edit again, back and forth until I feel like I'm "here in the space".
Again, this is like...every recording studio I've ever been to. You take some time to get your gear set up and, while that's happening, you play the things and find your sound in this space. Yet every piece of audio software just pretends like all of their audio processing isn't a change to the "space". It treats audio input a kind of "pure" input which it will alter, but doesn't immediately let musicians get a feeling for that alteration. Instead, we get infinite complexity right up front because "that's how computers work" or "that's how the files are handled" or "it's based on older stuff that had such limited processing this was the only way it could be done; now people are used to it, so we can't change it".
All nonsense. I'm not asking for every DAW to be geared towards musicians, I'm asking for ONE. Let ProTools still be ProTools. Or Audacity still be Audacity. But I'd really love if someone could make software for a 6 year old to plug a guitar into and start playing.
*yes, I am in a position to make that kind of DAW, and yes I do have the requisite insight to build the thing I'm asking for. And, boy, if I ever get the time, it's on. But I won't be holding my breath for my other projects to clear out enough to make this happen.
by HelloUsername on 2/11/25, 1:06 PM
by spicy-punk-fog on 2/11/25, 6:59 PM