This is a page about the things that I expect from a DAW that I use to make my own personal music.

These are NOT things that I use to rate topics in the DAW Feature Chart. This is my own personal desires, which I attempt to separate from some level of objectivity when working on the DAW Feature Chart.

Last Update

Last Updated - 2021 March 14

I would consider this doc at about 20% “complete”.

Requirements

There are a number of things that I expect to be able to do with my DAW.

This is currently a brain dump. I will be refining this over time, possibly with more brain dumps :)

I will be adjusting terminology over time to be more consistent. Until this doc is at about 50%, I wouldn’t expect anything remotely coherent.

A note on Efficiency

I’ll be using the word “efficiently” a number of times in these descriptions, and it’s important to explain what “efficiently” means here:

in a way that achieves maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.

Productivity is achieving the defined goal that I want to do “efficiently”. What is wasted effort or expense? Perhaps it’s best to assign a points system to common computer actions. A higher total number is less efficient for me. Take all actions necessary and add them up for what I’d view as “interactive efficiency”.

• 0.5pt - A MIDI note or chord. ¹
• 1pt - Pressing a single keyboard key.
  • 0.2pts added for each key modifier, and the keys between the main key. ²
• 3pts - Switching to another window.
• 5pts - Grabbing the mouse.
  • 5pts - Use the mouse cursor to select a context before I can “do” a thing.
• 10pts - Top level menu item.
  • 15pts - Each menu level.
• 20pts - Identifying context. ³
• 1000+pts - Action is not undoable.

I will only say I wish something to happen “efficiently” if I expect to do the thing frequently.

Bias

If you can’t tell, I’m HEAVILY biased towards pressing a single button to do something. I’m also heavily biased against pausing to identify context. These happen to be related.

Everytime you touch the mouse, you must do (in some form, even with my mouse anchoring method or a tablet in absolute positioning mode [both of which I use]) these things:

• Identify the cursor location.
• Identify the current state of the software that you want to interact with.
• Evaluate if the state of the software matches what’s necessary to interact with it in the manner you want.
• Move the mouse.
• Track the cursor location.
• Move the mouse.
• Track the cursor location.
• Move the mouse.
• Track the cursor location.
  • Yes, this happens many times whether you realize it or not.
    • If you pay attention, you’ll notice that you overshoot your location much more than you realize!
• Interact with the software.
  • Probably move the mouse->track the mouse.
• Check context to make sure nothing has changed.
• Let go of the mouse and forget where the cursor is.

These things happen fairly fast for most people, but they also take more time and brainpower than you think.

My preferred alternative is software that doesn’t change state until you interact with it, and there is a way to reset the software’s to a known state. Generally this means using single-button presses that do one thing or error. That is rare in software, so my second preference is that I can reset to a known state, and perform a series of idempotent actions.

To phrase it differently: I want to close my eyes, interact with my computer, and know exactly what happens.

I don’t want to press a key and it does something different because I have the wrong window up, or wrong thing selected or the playhead is running or it’s the wrong time of day or I ate the wrong breakfast…

I want an interactive action do to the same thing always, or error if not possible.

Feedback

I want my DAW to be pollable or event based. I want a way for an external process to ask the DAW about its current state, or to retrieve that state with a minimal API.

I want to write programs to use my DAW. I want my DAW to be able to talk to me. I want to talk to my DAW. I want to draw new GUIs about my DAW’s current state. I want other people to write things for me.

Input

I want my DAW to have a minimal API to control it.

Anything that can be done in the DAW should be easily done via a simple API.

Given a complete feedback system and a complete control API, making custom interfaces for the DAW (particularly for accessibility needs) becomes trivial. This is important to me.

Memorable Shortcuts

I have an article/video on the shortcut system I prefer, but the author is no longer actively developing scripts.

This will be a multi-step process, and these steps may change as I engage with the shortcut systems of various DAWs.

• List the shortcuts I use.
• List the shortcuts that I wish I used.
• List the commands with no shortcut assigned that I want to use.
• Organize shortcuts into workflows.
• ???
• Profit.

If a shortcut is specific to a certain DAW and generally unavailable then I’ll note it.

Work in progress.

Workflow

Comping

There are several parts of the comping process. First the concepts that prepare content for “comping”:

• Set two markers on the timeline, hit record, loop between the markers and have each pass saved as a separate recording associated with the track.
• Set two markers on the timeline, place the playback before the cursor, hit play. Recording only starts/stops at these markers and saves this section as a separate recording associated with the track.
• Associate arbitrary content from other tracks with another track efficiently.
• Associate entire tracks with another track efficiently.
• Dissociate specified non-mainline content from a track. i.e. “Remove a take”.
• Edit associated content as if it’s an independent entity. i.e. move content, stretch content, cut content, etc…

Utilizing the track content:

• Display these recordings on subsequent visual rows.
• Apply some sort of exclusive selection to contents of the rows efficiently.
• Apply some sort of inclusive selection to the contents of the rows, where overlapping content is automatically mixed when “combined”.
• The total of this selection becomes (automatically or manually) the content of the track where the recording originally occurred.
• Render or “glue” the main track’s content so that it appears to be a single contiguous part.
• Revert or “un-glue” a part at any point in time. i.e. not relying on an undo stack, but a command that can return you to the state before “gluing”.
• Apply edits to the main track, and have all associated content follow temporally.

Mood Killers:

• “Comping” has a splitting or splicing effect on the item that contains the takes. (see REAPER’s take system, gross)
• Splitting an item does not split and properly assign takes.
• Takes are the same colour while comping.

Click Track

My needs for a click track are relatively simple:

• Selectable sound source.
• Assignable track output so I can apply effects to the metronome.
  • Usually EQ and Compression/Sidechaining so that the click is audible for the current context.
• Defined pulse independent of the time signature.

It’s very important to me that I have a click track with these characteristics, and I won’t try any serious recording in a DAW without them.

A substitute for these features is all of these capabilities:

• Search for and import a MIDI track, with an assigned instrument.
• Search for and import a MIDI clip and automatically fit to tempo.
  • Efficiently duplicate/loop the MIDI clip.

Quick setup of a MIDI track/instrument gives me a click track with an effectable output, then I can select the appropriate pulse via importing a MIDI clip.

Audio Recording

• Comping
• Comping where all actions to a single track propagate to other tracks in a manner which retains their relative phase that existed before the change.
  • This means that any time-stretching actions are phase sensitive as well.
• Click Track
• Import a track with pre-assigned effects.
  • Easily browse these importable track assets.
• Import a set of tracks efficiently with:
  • Input assignments.
  • Effects.
  • Parallel routings i.e. “Aux Tracks”.
• Assign MIDI to effects parameters.
• Search for an effect and add it to the “guitar track” efficiently.
• Create & Assign a parallel audio path to a track (i.e. “Aux track”) efficiently.
• Count-in functionality.
• Remote recording actions:
  • Play.
  • Start recording.
    • And start playback or…
    • Record during play back.
  • Stop recording.
    • And continue to play or…
    • Stop playing.
  • Move playhead to a specific marker.
  • Turn on looping.
    • Select which markers to loop between?
  • Restart recording, single command consisting of:
    • Stop recording.
    • Delete recording on all record-enabled tracks.
    • Reset to location where recording started, utilizing all settings enabled when recording started(!).
    • Begin count-in if enabled.
    • Begin recording and playback.
• Phase-aligned grouped edits. (Yes, this is part of the recording process!)
  • Edits (and time stretching!) applied to one track are applied to other tracks in the group.
  • Turn groups on/off efficiently.
  • Sub-grouping would be nice, but not necessary.
    • The idea is that I could group all of my snare tracks for editing, and those tracks have a parent of ‘drum editing’. Sometimes I wish to edit only the snares, and sometimes I want everything in the drum group to be edited.

Sample Recording & Editing

I like to record samples of instruments I have on loan, am selling or just want to manipulate in its own context.

• Start recording when input passes threshold.
• Split on threshold, with a specified gate.
  • Selectable crossfading.
• Efficiently name selected clips by:
  • Ordinal placement in timeline.
  • Some concept of audio level.
  • Length.
  • Date/Time of recording or process.
• Export a selection of audio containers (item/clip/region/whatever) to files with names corresponding to the name of the item:
  • With Track FX.
  • Raw, as edited.

MIDI Input

I’m a simple man, I record MIDI with a controller 99% of the time.

• Click Track
• Start count-in on MIDI input.
• Constraint input to channel.
• Split channels to tracks.
• Filter playback of notes, but record them.
  • Sometimes I like to record with a piano sound regardless of the end sound, but I know which keyswitches I want at a given time. I want to play these keyswitches, but not hear them.

MIDI Manipulation

• Split channels of a MIDI stream (probably from a MIDI item) to other tracks.
• Process MIDI streams in-flight. (MIDI FX/scripts)
• Select MIDI notes via logical construction. i.e. “If the note is a C is between bar 2 and 4 and is preceded by a D4”.

Mixing

• Use the following functions on a single track, or a pre-defined selection (group) of items:
  • Increase/Decrease the level of a track pre-fx.
  • Increase/Decrease the level of a track post-fx.
  • Adjust panning of a track.
    • Change the level of the first channel, or second channel independently.
  • Adjust the balance of a track.
    • Change the level of the first and second channel inversely proportionally.
  • Efficiently find, then add FX to a track:
    • Before the fader.
    • After the fader.
  • Efficiently remove an effect or effects from a track.
  • Re-order effects efficiently.
  • Move an effect from one track to another, removing it from the source and placing an identical effect (same settings) on the destination.
    • Same, but do not remove the effect from the source.
  • If grouped, control multiple identical FX’s matching parameters with a single control efficiently. (Linked FX controls, or less efficiently: Macros)
• Change the pan law
• Increase the gain of a data encapsulate widget (Item/Region/Clip)
• Efficiently create buses for audio data that combine the data fed into them and assign what’s fed into them.
• Assign tracks to output to the input of another track, or tracks.
• Assign tracks to a hardware output or outputs.

Editing

Making changes to temporally delimited containers of data (clips/items/blah blah blah).

Playhead control

Integral to both editing and mixing, but an indispensable part of how I like editing systems to work.

Move the playhead to the:

• Next clip boundary.
• Previous clip boundary.
• Next transient.
• Previous Transient.
• Next n-value (tbd, I usually prefer zoom-based determination)
• Previous n-value (tbd, I usually prefer zoom-based determination)
• Specified Marker.

Crossfade Editor

• Left and Right side shapes
  • With tension or bezier curves.
  • Efficient toggle ripple on/off.
• Apply crossfade to selected overlapping clips and launch crossfade editor efficiently.

Audio Editing

These are things which I won’t tolerate more than a single key press (computer or MIDI-actuating):

• Move the left boundary of the selected clip under the playhead, to the playhead.
• Move the right boundary of the selected clip under the playhead, to the playhead.
• Split the selected clip at the playhead.
• Select the:
  • next clip on the track.
  • previous clip on the track.
  • next track with data on it.
  • previous track with data on it.
• Move the:
  • Left boundary of the next clip to the playhead.
  • Right boundary of the next clip to the playhead.
  • Left boundary of the previous clip to the playhead.
  • Right boundary of the previous clip to the playhead.
• Stretch the:
  • Left boundary of the next clip to the playhead.
  • Right boundary of the previous clip to the playhead.
• Adjust clip gain +1dB.
• Adjust clip gain -1dB.

And a few things I don’t mind being slightly more complex:

• Rectangle select to zoom.
• Turn on/off an editing group associated with the current track.

MIDI Editing

These are things which I won’t tolerate more than a single key press (computer or MIDI-actuating):

• Place note at playhead in the middle of current view.
• Move selected note up 1 semitone.
• Move selected note down 1 semitone.
• Move selected note up 1 octave.
• Move selected note down 1 octave.
• Select notes intersecting playhead.
• Split notes intersecting playhead.

Note: currently very sparse. Require more time to flesh this out.

Arrangement

Making changes to large ad-hoc selections of things.

Select:

• A rectangular area (contiguous tracks, and a time selection including all items and metadata [automation etc…]).
  • Via Mouse.
  • Via track and “between markers” selection.
• Information matching logical selection, “If the note is a C is between bar 2 and 4 and is preceded by a D4””.

Move selected tracks:

• To become contiguous, but in the same sequential order.
• To the end of the list efficiently.
• To the start of the list efficiently.
• To a cursor position.

Move selected data:

• Start of selection to playhead.
• End of selection to playhead.

Workflow

Things that help me use the DAW.

Context

• A single command to deselect all things and return focus to the main arrangement window.

Save

• Automatically save without interrupting workflow, or during idle times.
  • Keep autosaves in a separate directory with the project.
• Optionally restore last state after a crash.
• “Save Version”.
  • Save current state of project with ProjectName-Date. Continue project as-is.
    • Alternatively, save project as-is and rename current project to Projectname-Dat.
• Save a track’s state efficiently.
  • Recall a track’s state efficiently.

Zoom

• Zoom to:
  • Clip.
  • Everything in view.
  • Previous zoom level.
  • Next zoom level.
  • 4 pre-defined zoom levels.
  • Markers surrounding the cursor.

Window Management

• Efficiently recall a window setup.
• Mnemonic shortcuts for closing left, bottom and right side panels if applicable.

Markers

• Edit marker names efficiently
• Re-order markers.
  • Ensure that markers line up with the shortcuts that I expect to trigger them.

Selection

• Save the current item selection efficiently.
  • Recall the current item selection efficiently.
• Save the current track selection efficiently.
  • Recall the current track selection efficiently.
• Save the current time selection efficiently.
  • Recall the current time selection efficiently.

Search

• Search for track by name.
  • Optionally select these tracks.
  • Show routing children (tracks that route to this track).
  • Show edit group children (things that will respond to edits together).
• Search for clip by name.
  • Optionally select these clips.

Routing

• Display all inputs to this location.
• Display all outputs of this location.
• From any ‘routing’ UI, search for possible destinations.
• From any ‘routing’ UI, search for possible inputs.

Effects

These are the general effects that I expect to have, and the functionality that I desire.

I, like most people, enjoy having various flavours of these types of effects. I’ll be focusing on a general-use product of each type that I’d be happy using if it was my only option.

All effects

• Fast fade on bypass.

EQ

• At least 3 bell bands.
• High pass
  • Variable slope.
• Low pass
  • Variable slope.
• Smoothed filter automation.
• Type in filter values (level and frequency)
• Logarithmic graphical view with:
  • Spectrogram view.
    • With matching piano graphic.
  • Line graph.
• Output level.

Compressor

• Variable attack/release shapes.
  • Or common topology emulations.
• If ratio is available, scaled with 1:1 at minimum value, 4:1 at 50% and 10:1 at 100%.
• Input level.
• Output level.

Expander

• Variable attack/release shapes
  • Or common topology emulations.
• Ratio.
  • Scaled with 1:1 at minimum value, 4:1 at 50% and 10:1 at 100%.
• Input level.
• Output level.

Reverb

• Pre-delay is accurate to the apex of next stage of reflections.
• Pre-delay in tempo.
• Pre-delay in milliseconds.
• Independent control of Early/Late Reflection parameters.

Delay

Undecided. I like complex delays, so I need to trim my preferences down before filling this section.