[drchopchop]

I know this is a hobby project, but who is the target user for something like this? What's the benefit of doing this in a browser?

Desktop DAW's have many benefits:

  - ASIO drivers for low latency
  - Better CPU utilization
  - Multi-channel output
  - VST plugins (essential for most composers)
  - Good MIDI support

[disintegore]

I realize this probably isn't what the OP was aiming for, but I think a web-based DAW would be wonderful for artists collaborating over the internet.

I am currently recording an album with my band and we all have have monitoring equipment and recording interfaces at home (save for the drummer for obvious reasons) and currently we just bounce a Reaper project between each other so we can all add our respective tracks.

It's far from ideal. We don't all run the same OS. We don't all use the same commercial plugins. Result is that nobody gets the same audio out of it and sometimes the project gets mangled (eg the Linux port can't load some resources because they point towards `C:\Users\JohnDoe\Album` or something). Also, the folders get huge very fast.

A web-native DAW would solve a lot of these problems, assuming realtime audio is possible. I know that, for instance, with Pipewire or JACK/PulseAudio, you could probably pull it off, but I have no idea how it would work on Windows' audio stack which appears to be made of pixie dust.

I'm hoping the VST format dies a painful death, personally. It's a non-portable legacy solution and even in the best of cases it's a pain to work with.

[spaceman_2020]

I don't think you can really squeeze out enough performance out of web browser for a full-fledged DAW.

One of my complete song can push even my Intel i9 to its knees on desktop. You're talking about dozens of MIDI tracks, dozens of audio tracks, several plugins...that requires heavy duty performance.

[ajakate]

Agreed! Around the time the lockdown happened my band discovered bandlab.com, another online DAW. The lag/performance is a little slow to do serious recording (though you can get by by making an audio recording and manually shifting it a few ms in the interface), but it's a fantastic way to share songs/ideas back and forth. Often what some of us do is record tracks in our own local DAWS and upload the track wavs to bandlab. At the very least it allows us to:

- mute tracks easily, change volume on parts

- add tracks where we can upload alternate/extra parts

- visualize the structural flow of a song

- general cut/splice play around :)

the company that makes bandlab also makes a desktop DAW called cakewalk. It seems to have a nice feature where you can sync it with bandlab, which would be killer. It's windows only so I've been unable to try it out though

[drchopchop]

Ableton does allow you to easily export sessions, and freeze tracks that have custom plugins. Their stock plugins are now good enough that they can rival commercial ones for many use cases (which is often good enough to the track to the final mixing stages).

Definitely agree re: VST format - PC/Mac/Linux fragmentation is annoying, old plugins often can't even be loaded, and sharing presets is a pain.

[rdelpret]

Checkout audio movers!

https://audiomovers.com/wp/

[rzzzt]

Firefox' audio backend, cubeb supports Jack, CoreAudio and WASAPI output, so low latency and multi-channel playback is not completely out of reach.

[EUROCARE]

Locked down school computer users

Chromebook users

On-the-go users

Teachers where students have their own computers

I bet there's more

[stevehiehn]

The platform is really about uploading strictly annotated loops and stems to the server and have them exposed via an API. The DAW thing your looking at is really just away to preview the content. So I'm trying to see how far I can push it.

[bee_rider]

That seems like a really cool idea, and I'd be curious to see how far it can go.

I'm sure you aren't aiming your project at, like, totally upending the record publishing industry. But it would be cool if someday artists could upload snippets, mix them together, publish the result for sale on a site. And somehow have it sort out the contributors so that royalties can be trickled down elegantly so that, like, the internet-equivalent of a session artist gets a fair cut.

Uh... not to set the bar too high or anything. Good luck!

[paulmd]

Yeah latency and timing seems like the killer, it's practically hard to imagine a worse possible environment for this.

Especially, btw, with the Spectre/meltdown mitigations that coarsen the browser's clock resolution/etc.