
A new project: multi-track audio editing (2005) - pmarin
http://www.1014.org/index.php?article=283
======
signaru
Wow.

The title looks like a link to a toy project. But this is actually the origins
of REAPER!!!

My favorite DAW. Feature rich, original, not bloated, cross platform and
reasonably affordable. Pretty inspiring to see its early stages and how it is
very successful now. Despite the current version looking way cooler, some
early UI elements still recognizable.

~~~
panpanna
Yeah, took me a while to figure that out. Interesting to see that it took 15
years to get where he is today.

I've never tried reaper, how does it compare to DAWs like abelton live,
waveform pro (the old Mackie Traction) and bitwig (which is the go to
commercial DAW for Linux users)

~~~
kebos
It's really excellent - I previously used Cubase and Ableton.

~~~
panpanna
Interesting. How are the included effects and instruments?

Is there a single version or different tiers like abelton, where you get
almost no instruments with the cheapest tiers?

~~~
someoneiam
Reaper has a plethora of built-in effects and you can script your own in JS or
Python or EEL2. You'd have to use third-party synthesizers though.

That said, the GUIs of said effects are basic, but I personally still find
them useful.

There is no difference between the evaluation, non-commercial and commercial
tiers.

I'd say, give it a try, the days when Reaper was a niche DAW are way in the
past. Especially if you like the idea of being able to customize every corner
of your DAW, Reaper is the no-brainer choice.

~~~
spacechild1
Nitpick: the JSFX audio effects you're referring to are scripted in EEL2.
Reaper itself can be scripted with Python, Lua and EEL2 (see
[http://reaper.fm/sdk/reascript/reascript.php](http://reaper.fm/sdk/reascript/reascript.php)).
It also has a C plugin API.

------
aasasd
I recently finally installed a DAW called Caustic 3 on my Android phone, which
move I was putting off for quite a while, for lame reasons. I now consider
that time to be my wasted years. The app is worth its toy price just in shock
and awe at how well it works on a phone. It has limitations, but—pshaw!—it's
still a ‘workstation’ quite able to punch up to the big boys, only on the
phone—meaning I don't have to prop myself up at the table.

The demo is fully functional apart from saving files or exporting the song—but
it saves the project automatically between sessions.

It's mostly for electronic music, with nine synths available apart from the
sample-based one. However, with the sample-synth you can record some audio or
load a soundfont, or throw samples into the beatbox. There's even an audio
editor. But I'm guessing that phone memory might pose a problem for using long
audio tracks.

The app is made entirely by one guy. Afaik SDL is used for the GUI and input,
which leads to not only it being available on iOS too, but also on Windows and
Mac (and working in Wine)—where it's completely free.

This vid shows the gist of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86OrU-E7RU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86OrU-E7RU)
(and other ones in the channel explain the rest).

~~~
tomduncalf
Caustic does perform well, it's probably the best Android music making app
I've seen in terms of both performance and features.

That said, compared to what is available on iOS, it's pretty basic (sorry to
turn this into iOS vs Android, not my intention but just putting some info out
there for people interested in this area).

On iPhone and iPad, there are fully fledged DAWs (Cubasis, Auria, Garageband)
with many of the features of desktop ones if that's your thing (personally I
find this kind of software better suited to mouse, keyboard and large screen);
there are "groovebox" apps in a similar space to Caustic but with much more
powerful sound engines (e.g. Korg Gadget); and a huge ecosystem of amazing
plugin synths and effects which can be wired together using hosts such as AUM
(or one of the aforementioned DAWs).

While music making on iOS does have limitations compared to desktop (e.g. due
to iOS restrictions) and can be frustrating sometimes, if you can find a
workflow that works for you, it's incredibly fun and for me provides a great
experience somewhere in between "jamming" with physical hardware (a touch
screen is preferable to a mouse when tweaking knobs etc), and the flexibility
and convenience of using a computer. If anyone is interested in mobile music
making, iOS is the platform to go for - a base model iPad will open up a whole
world of cheap, fun, awesome-sounding music making.

The audio development situation on Android has improved somewhat since they
introduced a new API called Oboe, and low latency audio is now possible on
modern devices, but there is so much variation from device to device, and in
general you can't do anywhere near as much processing compared to even an old
iOS device without encountering crackling etc, so it's unlikely IMO that
Android will catch up to iOS for music making any time soon (source: I do
cross-platform mobile music app development).

Mostly this is because iOS is built on top of the foundations of MacOS, which
has a long history of pro audio use; and also because the iOS device landscape
is much more tightly controlled; but also Apple have made quite a lot of
effort to provide foundations for a music making ecosystem on iOS (e.g. Inter-
app Audio and AUv3).

~~~
2mol
Thanks for this detailed reply. It so happens that I just bought an iPad for
the purpose of jamming and learning how to use synths, so I'm very excited to
try out some of the apps you mentioned.

Can you recommend where to start? I.e a particular app that lets you compose,
jam, and tweak sounds, or a sampler, or just a particular tutorial.

~~~
tomduncalf
Yeah absolutely! I was actually just thinking I should write a blog post or
something about this topic some time, as I often find myself trying to explain
how to get started with mobile music making to people… perhaps this comment
can be v0.1 of that post ;)

To some extent, I’d say it depends on what kind of music you want to make, and
how you want to approach making it. I’d recommend different starting points to
someone who wanted to primarily “arrange” songs in a somewhat traditional
fashion, perhaps recording in some live instruments and adding some synths and
effects and drum loops etc.; vs. someone wanting to make
electronic/experimental music in a more freeform “jamming” approach; vs.
someone primarily interested in playing synths live with a keyboard.
Personally I’m more interested in the electronic jamming approach, but I’ll
try to comment on the approaches too, I’m just not an expert there.

If you’re interested in arranging songs and perhaps recording some live
instruments, you probably want something similar to a “DAW” (Desktop Audio
Workstation, terminology for desktop software such as Cubase or Logic).
Software like this presents your song as a timeline, usually with time on the
x axis and multiple tracks of recorded audio or MIDI notes on the y axis, so
you can see the overall arrangement and easily create e.g. a verse/chorus
structure (this kind of thing: [https://www.audiotechnology.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/03/2...](https://www.audiotechnology.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/03/2.Arrange-View-S3.jpg)).

This will let you record in audio from a microphone (you can use the one on
the device, or you can connect an existing audio interface via USB with the
right adapter, or you can buy specialist iOS microphones), edit it, add
effects to it etc., and then let you add in other tracks with synths etc. with
notes usually arranged in blocks on a “piano roll” ([https://sevish.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/19-edo-c-maj.p...](https://sevish.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/19-edo-c-maj.png\);) then you can structure your song
by moving these blocks around and editing them.

Garageband is actually a great starting point here – it’s free with every iOS
device, and has a load of built-in synths, loops and effects, and is pretty
easy to use. If you want to get more serious, I think Cubasis and Auria are
the two main contenders on iOS. Personally, I have to say I find this kind of
software a bit fiddly to use on an iPad, especially if you don’t have a
pencil. It’s the kind of thing that to me benefits from having a mouse for
more accurate editing and a big screen. That said, a lot of people do happily
make music like this on an iPad, and if you do want to go this route, you can
use a lot of the other awesome plugin synths and effects available for the
iPad inside your chosen app, so it’s pretty flexible.

If you’re interested in something a little less traditional and more
electronic focussed, but pretty straightforward to use, I think “groovebox”
type apps are great. These apps typically contain a bunch of synths and
effects, and let you create multiple tracks with loops on them, sometimes
using a piano roll, sometimes using a “step sequencer” (where you have 16
steps you can turn on or off, each step representing 1/4 of a beat). The main
difference between these and the more “DAW-like” apps, is that they tend not
to have such a traditional way of arranging songs on a timeline - it’s often
more about playing it somewhat live. They also tend to be closed ecosystems,
in that you can only use the synths and effects provided with the app. The
advantage here is that they tend to be cohesively designed, and immediately
gratifying.

For me, the best app on iOS for this is Korg Gadget. It comes with a big
selection of synths and effects, all of which sound great and strike a nice
balance between simplicity and still being able to tweak the sounds in
interesting ways. There are also a bunch more synths/effects you can buy in
app, but there is plenty to get started with in the basic version. It’s pretty
easy to use, and it sounds great. It’s not that cheap though, although they do
sometimes have sales on it, and there is a free “LE” version you can download
to try it out.

Some other apps that might be of interest in this area include Auxy (which is
simpler than Gadget, very elegantly designed, but a little bit basic for me -
but free to try), Ampify Groovebox (probably a bit easier to use than Gadget,
but more limited, again you can try it out for free), and NanoStudio 2 (which
is maybe a bit closer to a DAW than a groovebox, it’s somewhere in between).
If you’re interested in hip hop style music making (which is more sample
based), you might find Akai iMPC Pro or Beatmaker 3 interesting - these are
more focussed on a classic sampler-type workflow.

Finally, there’s the more free-form approach of using individual synth and
effect apps. There are tonnes of these, including from some of the big names
in the music industry (Korg, Eventide, Moog). You can use the apps on their
own, if you just want to play with one sound at a time (e.g. hooking up a
keyboard and playing with other instruments, or running a guitar through an
effect), but where it gets really interesting for me is that Apple added a
technology called “Audio Units” (more commonly referred to as AUv3) to iOS a
few years ago, which allows synths and effects supporting this standard to be
used as plugins inside other apps.

This means that you can hook up e.g. a synth by Moog to an effect by Eventide,
and then add a drum machine by Korg on another track, etc. You can do this
inside most of the DAW apps I already mentioned (and in Nanosutdio, I
believe), so you can use these plugins to arrange songs traditionally; but
another kind of workflow has emerged on iOS which is much more freeform,
primarily using an app called AUM. AUM can host Audio Unit apps, but has no
concept of a traditional timeline. Instead, it can host Audio Units which
generate MIDI note data instead of sound, then route this note data to synths,
which are then routed through effects. You can then just “jam” in real time
and record the results – it’s a workflow much more analogous to using hardware
sequencers and synths, and is something quite unique that has emerged as a
popular way to make music on iOS.

I actually recorded a video recently for someone showing a quick jam session
in AUM to explain the concept better, so check that out if you are interested,
it should explain it better than I can in words :)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xq0fw37k4lx8km/AUM.mp4?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6xq0fw37k4lx8km/AUM.mp4?dl=0).
If you are interested in this way of working, hit me up for recommendations on
specific apps and effects.

One last thing to mention is the weird and wonderful apps that don’t quite fit
in any of these categories. The fairly low barrier to entry to iOS
development, the nature of the touch screen, and the low price point of most
apps has created a really exciting scene of developers creating some really
crazy apps. Some of these are just nice uses of the touch screen, some of them
are fun toys, some of them are crazy modular synthesis systems. A few apps to
check out if this intrigues you: Figure is a really fun way to make simple
electronic loops. Samplr is one of my favourite touch screen experiences for
playing with samples. Drambo is an insanely flexible modular synth/sequencer
(there’s also MiRack, which is a port of a desktop app called VCV Rack, if you
are interested in modular). Fractal Bits is a weird and wonderful glitch
synth. There are so many great apps out there, the only problem is it’s
addictive! There’s a good forum at forum.audiob.us if you want to delve
deeper.

Sorry, this post is rather long - I hope it doesn’t break any etiquette rules
here.

TL;DR: Garageband is free, great way to get started with fairly traditional
music making on iOS. Gadget is king of the groove boxes but its worth checking
out a few apps as they tend to have free "lite" versions. If you want to get
into the world of freeform music making, AUM is the place to start. Have fun
and feel free to ask questions here or via Twitter/whatever!

~~~
2mol
This is great, your long answer is much appreciated!

Definitely a lot to digest, so I look forward to trying out some apps and
workflows. I'm happy to connect via twitter, and if you need a beta tester for
any eventual blogpost, then I'm more than glad to help out.

I think a focus on just one style makes sense. For me it's definitely more in
the groovebox category, even if there is still multiple aspects to it. I think
there are always the 2 topics of "how do I make nice sounds" and "how do I
build that up into good tunes/patterns/songs". Maybe drums could even be
considered a separate topic.

Personally I also want to get to grips with FM synths. For the composition
part I have to say I tried and failed at trackers (renoise), which made me
conclude I needed something more visually intuitive, and tacticle when it
comes to manipulating the parameters. I'm eager to see how well a touchscreen
works for the latter.

By the way, if you know of any place to hire good online tutors, I would like
to know about it!

~~~
tomduncalf
Got ya. I think Gadget sounds ideal for you, it’s really visual and quite
straightforward to use, but has loads of different synths (including a phase
modulation one, which is similar to FM). Maybe check out Gadget LE and see how
you get on with it!

------
flavor8
I digitized my studio a few months ago and settled on Reaper (running on
kubuntu 20.04). I'm pretty happy with it, though Linux support is "beta" and
support is forum based (there's a couple bugs that I'm just living with
because nobody's engaged on them in forum posts).

I probably could have gotten away with Ardour for my needs (recording,
editing, mastering) - however, I can run Reaper at lower latencies (via Jack
configuration) than Ardour. Mixbus seemed promising, but requires more latency
still. Bitwig is cool, and I'd happily pay for it, but their midi
implementation on linux is pretty weird, and I don't have the patience to
fiddle around to make it work. I haven't used Ableton, so I can't comment on
comparison; there _is_ a plugin for Reaper which gives it a live performance
mode apparently along the lines of Ableton's, but it's mac/windows only.

Anyway, Reaper is extremely featureful, and is only around a 15MB download.
Good midi implementation, customizable, good range of bundled effects (and
ability to write your own in javascript). There's an audio engineer who posts
tutorials on youtube under the name "Reaper Mania" \- check out the recent
ones to get a sampling of capability / workflow.

------
gkanai
Justin Frankel of Winamp and Gnutella, before he went on to make Reaper.

------
Ruhrbaron
Awesome "historic" documentary. I just recently got into playing around with
electronic music production, and went for Ableton as my DAW of choice for now.
Reaper was a serious contender though, and I understand it's the weapon of
choice for quite some semi-professionals and even pros.

Very interesting to see how it started like a toy project.

------
MrJagil
As a professional podcast producer I’ve been experimenting with moving my
workflow to ios and have been absolutely smitten with this thing:
[https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/multitrack-
daw/id329322101?l=d...](https://apps.apple.com/dk/app/multitrack-
daw/id329322101?l=da)

It has that “slower-workflow” but “you cant fuck up by misclicking” vibe, that
i miss from older UIs. Moving slower allows your mind to wander while working
which can unlock some real creative thoughts.

... and it’s 13,9 MB.

------
Nition
If you want to see how it looks today:
[https://www.reaper.fm](https://www.reaper.fm)

------
vikingcaffiene
I just switched from logic to reaper a few months ago. It's an incredible
piece of software that does everything and more that I need from a DAW while
also being able to load all my plugins etc.

It's lighting fast and completely customizable too. Oh! And the video
tutorials with Kenny Gioia are incredible.

The only criticisms I'd level at it are that it's initial configuration is not
that user friendly. You also lose a lot of software synths and stuff that
you'll need to buy if you are migrating from logic (I already used Native
Instruments stuff so it wasnt a big deal for me).

For $60 it's hard to beat. Way better than pro tools imo.

------
tokamak-teapot
I bought Reaper a few months ago and use it on an old MacBook where it
performs quickly and flawlessly. Very happy to see the journey it has made!

------
yomritoyj
I've been having fun playing with Soundtrap. It runs in the browser, allowing
you to access your projects on any device. I'm not sure if it can meet the
needs of professionals, but for someone just starting out with music it has
been great.

[https://www.soundtrap.com/](https://www.soundtrap.com/)

~~~
panpanna
Is there a connection to the article?

------
harel
I appreciate Reaper very much although I'm religiously married to Cubase since
it was a single floppy disk. This is quite something to dig up an origin story
of a DAW.

~~~
einr
Same. I love Reaper, its no-nonsense approach, how unbloated and customizable
it is. Truly great software. I paid for a copy out of respect and
encouragement, but I never use it. I've tried, but it's just not going to
happen anytime soon.

Cubase is kind of a house of cards with lots of weird technical debt from back
when there were Atari ST's in every recording studio, but it _works_ and the
Cubase keyboard shortcuts and workflow are just so ingrained in me that
switching is not worth it -- when you're writing and recording music the
shortest path from idea to execution is always the best. I can't afford to let
my tools get in the way of that. This is also why I still use Cubase 5 instead
of a newer version -- because I know exactly how it works, there are no
surprises, and it does everything I need.

~~~
DreamScatter
Reaper has extensive support for customizing keyboard shortcuts. I think
there's even a Cubase skin theme.

~~~
harel
It's not just shortcuts. It's the whole package. I know one swimming pool, I
know the sharks and the little fish. Another pool - different sharks,
different fish... By the time i got to know them, I forgot what i was doing in
the pool in the first place

