Time for a Toontrack DAW!

[Will]

So… any plans for a Toontrack DAW? I think the market is ripe for a more musician-focused DAW, and given the way Toontrack optimized the experiences of products like EZMix and EZKeys to yield such great results with little effort beyond the straight creativity, I think they’re just the ones to do it.

It would be great to see something that’s not just a clone of everything else. EZMix is fantastic because it deliberately rejects the complexity of its competitors, and nobody has been brave enough (or perhaps smart enough) to do the same thing with a DAW. OK, perhaps Garageband, but they keep cluttering it up with new “features” and increased emphasis on learning/instruction.

Some things that would be cool to see:

– EZMix visibly integrated into a vertical channel strip. A control at the top to select the EZMix preset (from the ones that you own) and then underneath it two vertically stacked labelled knobs to control the effects. The knobs would change dynamically depending on the preset you select, just like in EZMix. Also, if you could select somewhere what kind of track it is (guitar, voice, etc.) the EZMix preset selection could be greatly simplified by just presenting those presets.

– Or maybe an EZMix whole enchilada channel strip: A vertical stack of knobs, one for each of all of the EZMix rack items so that all effects are available at all times and obvious. Set at zero/neutral, each effect is not loaded (i.e. taking up memory). Any change to the knob loads the effect dynamically. Presets could still be selected and used for the back-end/unavailable secret sauce settings. With 8 or so EZ knobs in the strip you could simply and quickly adjust compression, add EQ, a touch of chorus, try a little delay, try a little of something else. It sounds like it would be a lot of fun to play with. With the EZMix philosophy of reducing each effect to just one knob, the channel strip metaphor becomes incredibly powerful while retaining its simplicity.

– Automatic processing of recorded audio into chunks that can be manipulated like midi data. Other systems offer the ability to analyze and process audio like this on demand, but I say just go ahead and do it so it’s ready to use. I record some guitar strumming. Oops, my initial strum was a little late. Toontrack EZDAW already sliced up the track based on the peaks of the strums, so all I have to do is grab the beginning of the first strum and move it a little to the left, stretching the rest of just that strum’s chunk a little and leaving the rest untouched. This would also make it easy to just grab certain bits of performance to reuse in other places. Option-click this strum, that strum, and… that strum. Copy. Find where I want this newly created rhythm to go and paste. Oops, were two of my strums too loud? Option click the two strums, hold down some sort of volume hot-key and drag down. The waveforms of just those selections would be (intelligently) reduced. No automation needed!

– Speaking of automation, this area is ripe for some revolutionary simplification. Automation always seems the most daunting (and fussy!) thing to figure out in a DAW; everyone’s plan to make it simple is to have you “record your knob movements” which always seems really awkward on a computer. And yet, automation is absolutely necessary for several important common tasks like:

1. Evening out volume levels between takes or uneven performances on a track. There should just be a Flatten command that analyzes a track (or a selection within a track) and applies volume curves to flatten out any bumps or valleys it finds. Now you have a more or less even performance. You could imagine some intelligence that takes a portion’s high volume level and low volume level into account such that if it needs to lower some highs it doesn’t lower the low to be radically lower than the rest of the track. The resulting invisible “curve” would perhaps be more sawtoothy, but that might work.

2. Boosting/cutting a track or tracks during a particular section. Need to bring up the vocals in the chorus? Guitar in the solo? It would be cool to have a “Conductor” interface where the sections of your songs are along the top and your tracks are down the side. Each square in the grid they form would have a volume knob to set the volume of each track in each section. In other words, the Guitar track would have a separate volume knob for each section: Intro, Verse, Chorus, etc. Vocals would have their own set of knobs for each section. So much easier than drawing curves and settings points and on and on. And of course there would be intelligence behind the scenes to make the volume transitions smooth, etc. Additionally, if you want to experiment with, say, dropping the drums out of a section, just turn the volume down in that square and give it a listen. Easy.

– This may be obvious, but an EZKeys-like chord sequence “track” at the top could be used for all sorts of cool automated features. It could be cool to have the chords automatically line up with (or just snap to) and become associated with the automatically sliced-up audio events as discussed in the third point above. Then you could do cool things like click on the E7 in the chord track and select an option to slight bump its volume in each track. Maybe you then slightly lower a different chord. Suddenly you’re conducting the dynamics of your whole band chord by chord creating interest, groove, and feel. And all very simply.

So, if Toontrack was crazy enough to enter the DAW market, what revolutionary simplification would you want to see? What are you fed up with or frustrated by in your DAW? Even if you don’t have an idea of how to fix it, just state your problem, and maybe we’ll work together to invent something. Let’s show them (hopefully!) that there’s a market for a Toontrack DAW.

Or perhaps I’m just crazy. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

Topic

[Will]

Ooo, another cool idea:

When creating (or initially configuring) a track you could select not just an instrument, but also a genre so that the channel strip would get pre-loaded with the controls most relevant (and perhaps some of those same hidden special sauce settings like in EZMix). You can imagine all sort of combinations. 60’s Guitar gets you EQ’s modeled on old British boards with a fuzz and maybe a phasor and a tape echo. 70’s Guitar gets you different EQ’s, some simple chorus, analog echo, and flange. 80’s Guitar gives you LA board EQ’s, huge choruses, and multi-delays. And so on, for not just guitar but for all the other types of tracks. This is kind of like an EZStrip concept, I guess.

Sure other DAW’s like Logic have channel strip presets, but once you load them, all the settings are still hidden/lost in all the effects that were loaded. Using them in the context of the EZStrip idea make it more powerful while retaining the its simplicity.

[Whitten]

What we don’t need is another DAW (in my humble opinion).
There seriously isn’t enough varied choice out there for you – with Harrison Mixbus, Pro Tools, Reaper, Ableton Live, Logic and Reason all being wildly different?

[Will]

Oh, I totally agree that we don’t need another DAW *like those ones*. But I would argue that the *user experiences* of the DAW’s you mentioned are actually very similar: several “integrated” panels of distracting knobs/buttons/sliders/menus/icons all performing separate functions of dubious immediate value, too many options (which leads to decision paralysis), so many mental models of different tasks that unless you use it several hours a day for multiple weeks you are often asking yourself, “Wait, how do I do this again?” All these aspects make the current DAW’s hard to use as creative tools. Toontrack knows this. Check out their track record of innovation:

EZDrummer (plenty of other drum sample packages around at the time, but none were as easy to use or as smart under the covers)

EZMix (hundreds of plugins available of the same processors, but none that combined them into such an easy yet usably good-sounding package)

EZKeys (again, plenty of piano instruments out there at the time, but none that were quite as easy or had anything like the integrated chord sequence feature)

From the past evidence, Toontrack seems rather interested in innovating in crowded markets and seems to like to disrupt the status quo with products that make bold optimizations of the user experience. The DAW market seems like a natural candidate for Toontrack to disrupt with something bold. And I for one, would welcome our new EZDaw overlords.

[Nathan]

ORIGINAL: wrees

Oh, I totally agree that we don’t need another DAW *like those ones*. But I would argue that the *user experiences* of the DAW’s you mentioned are actually very similar: several “integrated” panels of distracting knobs/buttons/sliders/menus/icons all performing separate functions of dubious immediate value, too many options …

Heh, if you want simple, there’s garageband, but once you grow out of that, look at REAPER, it won’t cost you to look, and once the immediate needs have been met, find what else it can do.

I wouldn’t be happy with anything like this that didn’t perform more than my immediate needs

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SD2.3, NYII, C&V, MC, MF, ED, Latin Perc, Twisted, Pop, N1H, Electronic, Classic, Funkmasters, Rock Solid, Blues, Indie-Folk.

[Whitten]

Yeah, I think there is already something for everyone.
I used to use Logic – which is very easy to use in an intuitive, default manner, which is what you are requesting.
Now I’m using Ableton Live, which is nothing if not COMPLETELY different to Logic.
I’ve regularly used Pro Tools, Logic and Live, and can’t say I agree that all three offer the same user experience.

[Bob Muso]

@wrees said:

EZKeys-like chord sequence “track” at the top could be used for all sorts of cool automated features. It could be cool to have the chords automatically line up with (or just snap to) and become associated with the automatically sliced-up audio events as discussed in the third point above.

Thanks, a DAW with a Chord Track like EZKeys that can sync prerecorded (user or community based) instrument tracks recorded in different keys & tempos to the chord track. So the user opens the Chord template and records their instrument to a midi beat & rhythm template Sw or Ev.
The track wav and Chord Template is uploaded to a User Database. It is downloaded by another user they select that instrument track, select whole DAW track or Bars where the Instrument is sliced and stretch to flt chords and tempo. You can use EZD2 for you Drum Track.

[Author]

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