(NOT Solved, I Surrender...) Any Tracktion Waveform Users here?

[GMaq]

Howdy,

After some recent frustrations with lack of MIDI overdubbing on Ardour and general dissatisfaction with Reaper's interface (it looks pretty cool but the context menus are absolutely overwhelming)... I thought I would demo Tracktion Waveform 13 Pro... it seems kinda cool, anyone here actually produce with Waveform?

[Kott]

Hi,
Yes, a bit. You can get the basic feature-set Waveform for free: https://www.tracktion.com/products/wave ... e-versions

[glowrak guy]

I find that I rarely need Reaper menus, after having saved a variety of projects with my most frequently used instrument collections and effect chains. But I don't make very complex arrangements. Theme selection also can help, I find this one to be very practical, and nice to look at.

reaper-RADO-V4C.ReaperTheme

rado-theme.jpg (189.63 KiB) Viewed 1874 times

[GMaq]

Hi,
Yes, a bit. You can get the basic feature-set Waveform for free: https://www.tracktion.com/products/wave ... e-versions

I did see that, they currently have a 40% off 4th of July sale for the paid version as well.. I've been an avid Ardour user since Ardour 2.0 and I don't see that ever changing for Audio but MIDI is still limited in Ardour although much progress has been made, programming drums with a pad controller with no MIDI overdub is a quick showstopper!

[GMaq]

I find that I rarely need Reaper menus, after having saved a variety of projects with my most frequently used instrument collections and effect chains. But I don't make very complex arrangements. Theme selection also can help, I find this one to be very practical, and nice to look at.

Haha, the Reaper theme is lovely, Your mutilated AV Linux with XFCE4 and JACK is another thing...

[Kott]

Hi,
Yes, a bit. You can get the basic feature-set Waveform for free: https://www.tracktion.com/products/wave ... e-versions

I did see that, they currently have a 40% off 4th of July sale for the paid version as well.. I've been an avid Ardour user since Ardour 2.0 and I don't see that ever changing for Audio but MIDI is still limited in Ardour although much progress has been made, programming drums with a pad controller with no MIDI overdub is a quick showstopper!

I have Tracktion/Waveform since version 7 or so. And I must say that it's been always full of bunch of very annoying problems, bugs and crashes, especially on Linux. The new version 13 gives me a hope, many problems have been solved and I can use it more than just for quick prototyping (Waveform is really good for a quick-start-and-play), though some people use it for huge sessions and for a long time, perhaps they use Mac.
Anyway, if you still unsure to buy or not to buy - try the free version or demo at first.

[Linuxmusician01]

Howdy,

After some recent frustrations with lack of MIDI overdubbing on Ardour and general dissatisfaction with Reaper's interface (it looks pretty cool but the context menus are absolutely overwhelming)... I thought I would demo Tracktion Waveform 13 Pro... it seems kinda cool, anyone here actually produce with Waveform?

I have the same "problem" with Reaper. Did you ever try Qtractor? Or isn't that DAW your thing either?

BTW Isn't Traction Waveform from Behringer and didn't they give it away for free with certain products of theirs?

[tavasti]

I got Waveform Pro few years ago, mainly because of included plugins.

I used it a bit, but somehow I did not like it. For me its automatic tool selection 'what you mouse cursor does depends on context' was failing thing. I ended up doing much more undo than on other DAWs (at least in editing midi with mouse). It might be great when used to it, for me it was not.

[talby]

BTW Isn't Traction Waveform from Behringer and didn't they give it away for free with certain products of theirs?

Waveform has a long standing history. To my knowledge, some 15 to 10 years ago it was very compatitive and Mackie purchased it but didn't maintain it sufficiently. The founding programmer of Waveform went on for new projects and is the creator of the JUCE C#major frameworks, code libraries specialized on audio processing and nowadays the base for many DAW plugin developments - and ongoingly also for the Waveform DAW.

Finally Waveform was getting independent from Mackie again, and programmers have had a very hard time to get it back into shape and modernized. Eventually, with the latest release in spring 2024, Waveform13, this process largely succeeded. There are still glitches, here and there, but they continue to work very hard on bringing this DAW back to its former fame.

The implemented workflow appears unusual for many users coming to it with experience from other DAWs. However, by "unspoiled" newcomers it is very well received, because the workflow to work along a track from the left to the right appears quite intuitive. INPUT adjustmenty are located at the left of a track, then come all the clips holding the audio, midi, some fundamental effects like GAIN and alike and automation curves, and the right side of the track contains the signal chain of plugins and OUTPUT adjustments.

I came to it a year ago, because it initially was the ony DAW installing flawlessly on my Linux driven Laptop and carrying all functionality I was searching for. Ardour, Bitwig, Reaper, Fairlight inside Davinci Resolve, Qtracktor, LMMS, Audacity, none could compete.

Meanwhile I wouldn't like to exchange it for something else nomore. It came out that it was not simply a first choice concerning installation and concerning the provided range of functionality, but for me proofed to actually well "deliver".

Some of the stock plugins are not fully competitive anymore. They do their basic job well. That's it. The developers are obviously concentrating on first getting Waveform itself pushed up again - which is obviously a good decision. But this is not a problem. Stock functionality includes that you can build up sophisticated effect racks, and you can design yourself which parameters you want to immediatly see at the surface of the rack ("face plates"), so that you do not need to enter a rack for reaching to an often used parameter of some plugin in there. Back to the stock plugins, if searching for more sophisticated functionality you might want to check out the LSP plugins, then. Simply use them instead of the stock plugins, where needed. Of course, you can enhance Waveform with any other Linux compatible plugin, being it effects or instruments.

MIDI functionality and related editors are said to be quite complete, but I have no personal experience there.
Maybe check back with the Waveform community here:
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=22

Good Luck!

[GMaq]

Howdy,

After some recent frustrations with lack of MIDI overdubbing on Ardour and general dissatisfaction with Reaper's interface (it looks pretty cool but the context menus are absolutely overwhelming)... I thought I would demo Tracktion Waveform 13 Pro... it seems kinda cool, anyone here actually produce with Waveform?

I have the same "problem" with Reaper. Did you ever try Qtractor? Or isn't that DAW your thing either?

BTW Isn't Traction Waveform from Behringer and didn't they give it away for free with certain products of theirs?

Hi, thanks to all responders, Interesting to see this much response to a DAW that rarely gets mentioned here..

I want to like Qtractor, I know it is obviously under constant development and Rui works extremely hard on it and all of his excellent Q-stuff. I don't particularly love the QT toolkit in general and how it looks, especially with non-KDE DE's I've also never gotten my head wrapped around how Qtractor routes Audio and I'm very used to Ardour which does a tremendous job with all things Audio, something that Qtractor and Reaper also both have is the separate MIDI editing window and from my many years of Ardour and energyXT I'm used to 'in-lane' editing and not managing a separate window. None of these are really complaints they are simply observations. BTW @Linuxmusician01 I think you are thinking of energyXT that was distributed with Behringer stuff..

This isn't the first time that wanting better MIDI for drum programming has made me look elsewhere, but all roads have ended badly and I fear Waveform will too. I hacked the Linux version of energyXT and put it on life-support several times but it was horrible for Audio work, I purchased BitWig on sale only to pass it along to somebody else and transfer my license a year later, my gut tells me regardless of how much Waveform has improved I have hundreds of existing projects done with Ardour so jumping to a completely new DAW when I'm 93.7% satisfied with Ardour simply for MIDI workflows that I don't always rely on is probably short-sighted. I actually can limp along decently with doing drums in Hydrogen and exporting them as MIDI and importing the MIDI into Ardour, it's convoluted but I know it works and maybe that should be the acid test..

[GMaq]

*Further note..

Yep, I think I'm done, using my own AVL-Drumkit LV2 Plugin makes the Waveform 13 Pro demo crash and it takes out X with it, I had to CTRL-Alt-F1 to the console and manually restart X... If I can't use those drumkits this is an exercise in futility. Has anyone else tried or observed problems with x42 AVL Drumkit LV2's using Waveform?

[glowrak guy]

I find that I rarely need Reaper menus, after having saved a variety of projects with my most frequently used instrument collections and effect chains. But I don't make very complex arrangements. Theme selection also can help, I find this one to be very practical, and nice to look at.

Haha, the Reaper theme is lovely, Your mutilated AV Linux with XFCE4 and JACK is another thing...

Mousing up or down to reach a panel icon is more difficult than a wrist-flick to a vertical panel on a side. A guy named Jerry Atric, who had some repetetive stress issues, pointed that out to me. I also put the panel on the left, since that is the side of Reaper that is most often clicked. Low mileage mice last longer, as do their captors. So there is some method to my madne...er,uhh, I mean my 'mutilation'. Pipewwire is still a bit like replacing a really good tire and wheel combo with an oval spare that has 5 extra valve stems, a greek manual, gui colors a second grader would scowl at, and connections regimen that would make a Cubase user kiss page 433 of his manual.
But the vehicle pipewire rides in is NASCAR ready, as long as the driver remembers which way to turn on lap one
Cheers

[GMaq]

@glowrak guy

Well I haven't used JACK, PulseAudio or PipeWire for recording in years, I use the DAW's ALSA backend, no distractions, no spaghetti, no mess.. Of course I have to make AV Linux work beyond that and it simply subs in pipewire-jack to behave like JACK always has... It's actually simpler than it was, Qjackctl has been replaced with a PipeWire Metadata application to set buffer (aka quantum) and sample rate and qpwgraph handles the visible routing if you even need that..

You don't have to like it but all the protestations about complexity and spaghetti are a bit overblown I think... As far as performance I haven't heard any reports that it performs worse than JACK did on previous AV Linux versions.. As far as complexity on this particular system shown in the picture there is both an unused onboard Soundcard and an unused HDMI port on the Video card so if there is some 'spaghetti' shown in the graph to those particular Audio devices it can be ignored. This screenshot is from a fresh boot and there are no connections, they will only appear when you launch an application that needs Audio connections so PipeWire is no different than a JACK/Pulse setup when first started, I don't care if you're using JACK or not when you launch a JACK application the graph is going to get messy fast whether you're looking at it in qpwgraph or qjackctl, connections are complex..

shot-2024-07-04_22-47-43.resized.jpg (151.53 KiB) Viewed 1592 times

The last piece of the puzzle for those who have multi-io interfaces is open the PulseAudio Volume Control and select "Pro Audio" in the Configuration tab to identify the various channels individually.

[Kott]

Has anyone else tried or observed problems with x42 AVL Drumkit LV2's using Waveform?

Works for me. If plugin is crashy you can set sandboxing to it.

[antiesen]

I have used tracktion since the first Linux beta up to v11, and was happy with it. Unfortunately, after changes in the audio engine from v12 onwards, it didn't work on any of my computers and I switched back to Reaper. So far I am more than happy with it.