[HN Gopher] DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs
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       DAWproject: Open exchange format for DAWs
        
       Author : anigbrowl
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2023-09-27 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | elihu wrote:
       | One thing I'd like to see is native support for some notion of
       | pitch other than 12-tone equal temperament.
       | 
       | Looking at their example, I see this:
       | 
       | <Note time="0.000000" duration="0.250000" channel="0" key="65"
       | vel="0.787402" rel="0.787402"/>
       | 
       | ...which looks like it's basically just a representation of the
       | underlying midi.
       | 
       | One way they could represent other pitches is for "key" to allow
       | a floating point value rather than an integer. So, for instance,
       | 65.5 would be a quarter-tone (50 cents) above note 65.
       | 
       | According to their reference document, "key" is currently
       | required to be an integer:
       | 
       | https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/bitwig/daw...
       | 
       | There's other ways to support microtuning. They could apply a
       | tuning table to the midi notes, for instance. (Ideally they
       | should support more than the 128 notes that midi supports,
       | because 128 isn't enough for some use cases.) They might also
       | allow you to apply pitch bend to individual notes (which isn't
       | allowed in midi 1.0 but was added to 2.0).
        
         | gravitronic wrote:
         | At this layer of note information, fact is the data will be
         | either sent to a MIDI device or a plugin as a MIDI event, so
         | you might as well keep it in the native format and not convert
         | to a frequency.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | I feel like we're only months/years away from software and
           | file formats being obsolete for this for this sort of thing,
           | and instead songs are composed by humming a tune to ChatGPT
           | and have it add all the other instruments, some nice vocals,
           | and output the MP3.
           | 
           | If you want to make changes, you give ChatGPT the MP3 file
           | and say "switch out the trumpet for a piano and make the
           | singer a guy".
        
             | johnnyworker wrote:
             | As someone who makes music as a hobby that's about as
             | enticing as outsourcing sex. I don't care if the machine
             | can do it better.
        
       | izenme wrote:
       | XML, why?
       | 
       | And... 99% of the issues will be around plug-in management.
        
         | anigbrowl wrote:
         | Did someone say plugins
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLever_Audio_Plug-in
        
         | steve1977 wrote:
         | Why not?
        
         | hellotheretoday wrote:
         | Probably a relic of the musicxml format which still holds some
         | popularity in programs based around sheet music/western
         | notation
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | brtkdotse wrote:
         | XML is fine. Schema validation is really handy more often than
         | you'd think.
        
         | phero_cnstrcts wrote:
         | What would you propose? Json?
        
       | royjacobs wrote:
       | This is pretty nice. I've written some tools for my own softsynth
       | that revolved around parsing various DAW formats and having a
       | standard format, even just to export to, would have been very
       | nice to have.
        
       | ckbishop wrote:
       | Bitwig is quickly becoming my favorite DAW. Big fan of how they
       | develop software.
        
         | lagniappe wrote:
         | Bitwig knocked it out of the park coming out the gate with
         | Linux support. Can't say I'm surprised though, it's made by the
         | original team that made Ableton Live.
        
           | steve1977 wrote:
           | Bitwig was founded by people who were previously working for
           | Ableton. Some longer, some less long.
           | 
           | But they were not _the_ original team that made Live, that is
           | a bit misleading.
        
         | conradfr wrote:
         | Although the Spectral Suite drama was a poor move from them.
        
       | CharlesW wrote:
       | If the goal is widespread industry adoption, I'd recommend the
       | approach of extending a professional, standards-based interchange
       | format already supported by major DAWs: AAF.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Authoring_Format
       | 
       | https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd0000...
        
         | conradfr wrote:
         | The README extensively references AAF.
        
           | thrtythreeforty wrote:
           | Indeed. This is a Bitwig project. I think the default for
           | Bitwig engineering should be "assume extreme competence."
        
       | dmicah wrote:
       | It would be nice if Bitwig would support existing plug-ins
       | formats like AU.
        
         | sctb wrote:
         | Do you encounter many AU-only plugins? From what I can tell,
         | the limitations of VST/AU/AAX are more pressing and Bitwig are
         | working to address that with CLAP:
         | https://u-he.com/community/clap.
        
       | allears wrote:
       | Nice idea, but not useful unless each DAW manufacturer supports
       | the format. And there are a _lot_ of DAWs.
        
         | jesusofnazarath wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | phero_cnstrcts wrote:
         | Well, you have to start somewhere.
        
         | noizejoy wrote:
         | MIDI was enthusiastically supported by Yamaha and Roland, two
         | of the biggest synth players of that era.
         | 
         | So I imagine, for it to become widely successful, that this new
         | standard would need the wholehearted support of at least 2 of
         | Steinberg, Apple, Ableton, and Avid.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-27 23:00 UTC)