As we move forward, the capabilities of DAWs become more similar. But there are still 4 DAWs that are used more. Cubase Pro, Logic Pro, ProTools, Studio one.

Of course, there are FL Studio and Live, which are mostly used for electronic music production. These two have a special architecture and this faulty architecture has continued from the beginning until now. Efforts have been made to make these two DAWs similar to the first 4, but they are still far away. FL Studio has good VSTi plugins, but because of its weak track architecture and organizations, it is not used as much as before.

Cubase on the Windows side and Logic on the Mac side seem to be winning the DAW market. Studio one was going well, but Cubase took the place of Studio one with the added features, and in my opinion, it has the first place in the mentioned list. FL Studio and Live are at risk of losing their markets if they don't change their architectures. What do you think?

 

Why do you ask?

 

Suno will win the DAW wars

 

So that DAW makers see this thread and don't face the risk of bankruptcy in the future.

 

Digital Performer.
They got incredible stretch algo

 

None. The market is always big enough.

 

Because of boomers' marketing strategy it will be Pro Tools for a while.

 

I just hope that someone does not need steal my ideas, although I am checking for electronics bugs in the house......

I believe 100% that my ideas for a mixing platform will be less reliant on actually physical output hardware and more on remote hardware and sofware plugins.

Many years ago I setup a small demo concept of using 5 computers ( desktops and laptops) in a network all serving out midi and audio.
All computers had Reaper running ( all running at the same time + Rearoute and Reasend) and all the plugins were identical on every machine.

What this concept was about was to have zero physical hardware outputs ( except for Stereo Out monitoring) and having the actual processing of effects and VSTi's running on the machines. By sending audio and midi to those machines running the VSTi and VST on the track mixers this completely eliminated the need for local cpu plugin usage for mixing.

This idea is not for the recording portion although for VSTi's the latency was not an issue and I recorded fine with it ( when the audio returned back to the main Daw). For guitar and remote Amp sims the latency increased when monitoring live ( not by much).
A further test was also done with another person who was across the city running remote plugins from Waves where he was hosting the plugins and I was sending and receiving the audio through his Desktop.

This test was done on audio and computer hardware available to the masses nothing high end.

Basically this 10 year test proved that the future of Daw's is online integration with rent-able hardware running remotely.
The only downside to this is with physical hardware the off site integration is not available ( to physically move dials).
For software based plugins I can see the future writing on the wall you will be remotely be renting those plugins with some local interfaced to adjust the settings on the remote plugins.


This will be an overhaul of all Audio Daw's moving to online based plugins and even running audio through physical hardware mixer channels running on someone else's house for example.

Right now you can send your audio from Reaper to my Reaper that is routed to audio outputs and inputs on an Allen & Heath GL2400 analog console and then the audio is sent back to you in real time as you record or monitor that audio.


That is the future of Daw's full remote mixing capabilities as far as I know only Reaper has been built like this and I believe this was intentional. So some studios in the future can actually rent out channel track strips on their physical consoles this would be a completely different approach for mixing than we have right now with local plugins or local hardware..

Imagine your signal running through an SSL 4000G and external top end outboard gear coming back to you? This could be recorded and thus actually passed through real hardware. There are limits due to dials, pots, eq's but this could be easily solved by renting engineered ready to go track strips.

Ai and Online Software/Hardware is the future of Daw's and Reaper proved that well over 10 years ago.

 

Last edited: Dec 1, 2024

Whichever company decides to code AI into it to ensure better mix decisions right out of the gate.

 

The Green one ...

 

better question is will be there ever a totally new one in future which can compete with all that 20 years of developing major DAWs .

 

REAPER, hands down. The customization, the lightweight, the updates, the impossible scripts catering to every detail and the sheer number of people converting to REAPER from Cubase and Logic on a daily basis tell enough. Pro Tools only hangs around out of pure tradition and the old 90s established standard. From an efficiency point of view, they are at the back of the line, or even further.

 

REAPER is all anyone needs IMO. ive tried others but keep coming back to Reaper. am i missing out on something? like i hear one is great for live performance use, one is great for midi, etc. i mainly am recording a handful of guitar tracks, a couple for bass, couple vocal, and ekit into a drum sample library vst. any reason i should try out another DAW besides reaper or can reaper do it all?

 

Shared or Collaborative Composition over the Net would also be interesting, like say:
2 PCs sharing the same Reaper Project file, VST Plugs, and Libraries..

Any recorded and submitted MIDI stem is instantly shared between pcs
any recorded and submitted Audio file is also shared..

So we could have collaborative composition,
just like a game of chess

That will be pretty easily implemented if they wanted,
like sharing the project states..


-About connecting machines via MIDI..
I think you will have a better mileage with Cubase or Logic in this case,
cause (last time I checked) Reaper's MIDI and Audio engine is monolithic, they're not separated..

So MIDI latency is always tied to Audio latency, and that's not really optimal.
Cubase also has great compat with all type of synths and external gear..


-In terms of external processing or serving,
ReaMote does a great job indeed..

Altho there's some alternatives like Audiogridder, or BlueCat's Connector..
or the classic VE Pro method, that's common for library servers.

 

@Dan Fuerth

Not sure I fully understood the entire post, do you mean something like accessanalog.com but integrated directly into the daw and the daw itself possibly being entirely cloud based?? They've been running real time remote access to hardware since 2019. The hardware is controlled robotically so the changes you make in their vst are reflected in real time on the hardware without the need for a human to relay the physical info.

 

To be honest, I already doubt the implicit premise. And the statistics as well. Do the statisticians count cracked software at all? Will todays bedroom producers define who leads the market in 10 years from now with an easy to crack DAW?
What's important is who can earn money with a DAW in the future, not where the old farts like me are currently spending their time & money because they can't adapt easily to new things_

And why do you even ask when you think you already know the answer?

Is it you Foster?

To me, this all sounds like very sweeping value judgments without any factual substance and aimed best at starting another DAW war here. Thanks, but no thanks!

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2024

dont play dumb ....

 

I asked because for serious projects in the music industry these 4 DAWs are usually used. There must be reasons for this. If the reasons become clear, other DAW manufacturers will stop being stubborn and by changing their architecture, they will provide more and better facilities to their users. Some manufacturers have a strange stubbornness in maintaining the existing conditions and not changing the structure of their tools, and no matter how much the users beg them, they do not make many changes in their tools. Those 4 DAWs have created better facilities to manage and organize different components of projects within themselves and have been better adapted to the current conditions. Those 4 DAWs have similar and more features than other DAWs, and when there are so many similarities in them and they have managed to attract more opinions, it is not better that other manufacturers also come to their senses and by rearchitecting, provide more conveniences to their users?

At one time, Imageline invested heavily in its plugins, but did not think about managing and organizing projects and kept its poor architecture. Now they have faced many problems in this field and they have somehow reached a dead end. Because if they are going to change the architecture to create the necessary similarity with those 4 DAWs, many users will face confusion in the new environment and will not be able to create the necessary coordination between the different parts of the project easily. This architectural change should have happened years ago, but it was postponed due to reasons such as developers' lack of understanding of the needs of the day, and this issue has caused a lot of disorder in the DAW projects of this company.

 

Last edited: Dec 1, 2024

I have to agree, unfortunately

 

You're describing a horrible dystopia, but you might be right on that guess.
I hate 'you'll own nothing', bad enough I have to rent something I don't want (Pro Tools)