On: Ask HN: What project would you work on if you had ...

[AndyKelley]

Building a free and open source multiplayer digital audio workstation.

Here's the manifesto, copied from the README[1]:

* Fast but not over-optimized. Waste no CPU cycles, but do not add unnecessary complexity for the sake of speed.

* Take full advantage of multiple cores.

* When there is a tradeoff between speed and memory, sacrifice memory.

* Sample-accurate mixing.

* Never require the user to restart the program

* Let's get these things right the first time around:

   - Undo/redo

   - Ability to edit multiple projects at once. Mix and match

   - Support for N audio channels instead of hardcoded stereo

* Tight integration with an online sample/project sharing service. Make it almost easier to save it open source than to save it privately

* Multiplayer support. Each person can simultaneously edit different sections.

* Backend decoupled from the UI. Someone should be able to depend only on a C library and headlessly synthesize music.

[1]: https://github.com/andrewrk/genesis

[clay_to_n → AndyKelley]

I WANT TO BELIEVE

But seriously, this sounds like an awesome project. As far as I know, there are still no great multiplayer-DAW setups. Would be incredible, but definitely a big challenge - working alone in a DAW uses serious CPU cycles, and trying to get a second person in on it would be hard. Good luck!

[AndyKelley → clay_to_n]

Thanks :)

I've been saving up money so that I can actually take a year or so off work and try to build this. Maybe this time next year I'll have something to show!