
Highly automated digital audio workstation extensible in Guile - majkinetor
https://www.zrythm.org
======
grawprog
Has anyone actually tried this? Most of the comments seem to be about the
licensing or the ui, i'm just curious how this holds up to ardour. This
actually looks pretty awesome.

~~~
pindab0ter
As someone who recently spent a few weeks to get acquainted with Reaper, what
would be a reason to use Ardour instead?

~~~
puranjay
Ardour is free and open source.

You might also want to try LMMS. Pair it up with ZynAddSubFX as the synth and
you have a pretty competent studio.

Relevant submission: [https://midination.com/free-music-production-
software/](https://midination.com/free-music-production-software/)

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Less ambiguous (in English) to use a loan-word and say "Ardour is libre and
open source".

~~~
Shared404
I would argue that it's not only ambiguous but harmful to use the word "free"
to describe libre software at this point.

So many people have "Free means it steals your data" beaten into their heads
at this point.

This is of course referring to the general population. I would assume that
people on HN have no issues with Libre-Free vs Beer-Free.

------
hellofunk
Whenever I see something like this, my first question is, wow what a beautiful
cross-platform UI -- I wonder what they are using?

It's amazing how challenging it is in 2020 to have a simple path for creating
a cross-platform UI that actually looks good and is not aimed at developers as
users, but rather competes with the polish of established applications. Unless
you go with Electron or pay thousands per year for a Qt license, options are
quite limited.

~~~
formerly_proven
Content production tools have fairly unique UI needs compared to the average
desktop application, e.g. they often have very complex timeline controls that
offer dozens if not hundreds of different interactions specific to the tool at
hand. Generic UI libraries would only be a hindrance there. They almost never
have enough screen space, so the widget/interaction density is far greater
than what’d be ergonomic for standard apps. Since people spend considerable
time learning these tools they generally have their own UI paradigms
independent of the host OS, which is the opposite of what you‘d want in a
crossplatform toolkit.

~~~
jcelerier
an immense amount of content production tools use Qt without much issues
though. Cubase, various Allegorithmic Substance things, Krita, Maya...

~~~
hellofunk
I wonder if most of these are now using QML or if they’re primarily adopting
the older widget style.

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majkinetor
FYI: Build and run it free, or pay for installer and to support development.

~~~
slezyr
Same as with XChat, Ardour. I wounder, how they look at the packages from the
distros?

~~~
cies
Distro's remove the need for an installer. Distro package users may still pay
to support dev't.

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aasasd
> _zrythm.org /RU not found_

Automagic redirect wasn't such a good idea here.

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mxmilkb
For related chat; #zrythm #lad #lau #lv2 and #jack on freenode.

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dmoreno
The title says "extensible in Guile" which sounds great, but I don't see any
mention in the article.

Is there any resource about this Guile extensibility?

~~~
coldpie
[https://manual.zrythm.org/en/scripting/intro.html](https://manual.zrythm.org/en/scripting/intro.html)

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memming
Korean developers? UK currency?

~~~
jabbany
They just have a very (over)zealous locale detection system that tries to show
you a language localized page based on your browser's language priority.

~~~
ThePadawan
I can however second parent's astonishment.

I'm located in Switzerland, with language preferences for en_EN, de_DE and
de_CH, but was redirected by 301 to /ja/ (the japanese language page).

There's overzealous and then there's malfunctioning...

~~~
memming
Interesting. I wonder what gave in my ability to recognize Korean characters.

------
marcan_42
Addendum: since this is getting downvoted, probably because I didn't explain
why this matters beyond philosophical arguments, read my reply down the thread
for why the license means in _practice_ I can't use this DAW as a live plug-in
host (without a huge hassle). There's a practical concern for you. One that
doesn't apply to most proprietary applications, it's very unique to the AGPL.

This looks good, I've been making music with Ardour lately and this has a few
features I wish Ardour did.

But - too bad it's not free software. It's unfortunately licensed under an
EULA, the GNU AGPLv3 - which, as much as the FSF would like you to believe
otherwise, is not a Free Software license, as it violates Freedom 0, your
right to use/run the software however you wish without conditions. The AGPL
imposes requirements not only on people who _distribute_ the software (like a
simple copyright license, e.g. the GPLs, BSD, Apache, etc), but also on people
who merely _use_ it (it requires you to make the source code available to
anyone who even uses the software indirectly, e.g. as a service).

So I might use if it's good, but I won't be contributing patches to it, as I
would with other software like Ardour, and I won't use it in a live setting. I
can't in good conscience spend my free time contributing to software behind a
EULA.

(I haven't the foggiest clue why they picked this license either; its main
purpose is to extend the GPL's virality to network services to the detriment
of user freedom, but this isn't a network service.)

~~~
coldtea
This reads more like a general diatribe against AGPLv3 than a critique of the
program.

I don't like GPL licenses myself, I prefer BSD/MIT/etc.

But that aside, this has very little to do with this program, and it very
little (if any) impediment to using this kind of program.

It might prevent a company from building a commercial closed source version
(which is fine, we have plenty of commercial DAWs already), and it might
prevent a company from somehow turning this into SaaS. Both of those seem like
very remote and unlike possibilities, even if this was non GPLv3.

~~~
marcan_42
It's certainly a critique of the AGPL. I was just rather shocked to see the
AGPL here, of all places. It doesn't make any sense, and it puts me off of
considering it as a general free software DAW, and more in the same category
as the proprietary plug-ins that I use (because there's no FOSS alternative).
I'll use them, but not consider them a community project I can contribute to.

It may not be obvious how the AGPL would impact your ability to use a DAW, but
it does. Just two days ago I was at band practice with a band I play in, and
we decided that for one song the guitarist, who didn't have a part on it,
would play a synth running on my computer, via a MIDI keyboard. That's a
computer network by most definitions. That means the guitarist is now a user
of the software on my computer. I was using Carla (LGPLed) as a plug-in host,
but had I been using this instead, I would've been obligated to inform him of
the fact and offer the source code.

In other words, this means I would never consider using this DAW in a live
environment with any external interaction at all (no inputs other than my own,
that includes no microphones or analog inputs that might pick up third party
signals), lest I become legally obligated to start explaining what I'm running
and where to get the source to everyone around me.

Now I bet the authors of this software didn't think of such use cases and
don't care about them - and this is why the AGPL is evil, because it
encroaches on users' rights well beyond you might think at first glance.

~~~
catalogia
Let's be real, nobody is going to SWAT you for not telling your guitarist
friend about software licenses. It's really a non-issue; if you want to get
particular about such things that is certainly your prerogative. But if that's
not your cup of tea, then just don't worry about it.

~~~
marcan_42
"It's a non-issue" is not really a good approach to take to software licenses.
The point of licenses is that they should be followed, and they should be
written so that following them does not unduly burden your users. It doesn't
make much sense to pick a license expecting your users to break it in ways you
don't care about.

~~~
catalogia
I'm not the one who licensed this software this way, so your complaints are
misdirected. I'm just pointing out the practical reality of the situation,
that if you were to violate the license in the way you describe, nothing bad
would happen to you.

If it's the principle of the matter that concerns you, then fine. But if
you're concerned by the possibility of actual consequences, then your concern
is misplaced.

