[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.

[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.

[Will]

Hi, Toontrack folks. Is there any chance you might do this or should I abandon my plans of periodically asking for it here and perhaps rabble-rousing in the forums?

Thanks!

[Author]

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