Tracktion DAW Feedback

[574X]

Hello, and welcome to this long awaited feedback thread, after years of experience.
This has evolved and come closer to being solved over the course of the multiple versions of Tracktion, which we have grown through together, but the following remains.

I'd love to hear your suggestions, corrections, workarounds or questions, if you have any.
It would be life-changing address this.

User Experience:

• Automation point alt drag to select multiple (like clips)
• Clip – Auto-delete overlapping clips – Checkbox
• Separate playhead and editing cursor – Checkbox
• Rack plugins auto-route when added or moved within racks (and/or Right click connects nearest inputs and outputs of dragged plugin)
• Undo History - popup over undo button and/or undo history window
• Routing to multiple destinations via the track routing panel
• Returns/Sends at Zero Latency

Bugs:

• Folders and submix busses nesting improperly
• Copy auto locked items via ctrl drag causing daw to hang
• Sidechain inputs not passing through from a bus track that has multiple tracks routed to it

Best wishes in all future developments.

[Steve Bolivar]

Undo history has been discussed.
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=513186

[574X]

Thanks, that's a great thread.
It's evident that Undo in T7 often operates differently than intended, often not undoing vst changes and even failing to redo DAW changes.

Actions needn't be broken apart but rather identified, at the very least, so that we know what hole we may be about to dig for ourselves by engaging a unexpectedly functioning feature.

As for backups, I often use the "save edit as" which operates similarly to Reaper's "save new version," as it automatically adds the next number to the file name. However, this should be reserved for fairly significant changes, to preserve workflow efficiency.

[harvon]

It constantly irritates me that the ASIO4ALL driver for windows sound is unable to serve multiple clients. When a DAW uses it for example, then no sound on youtube, no sound on any other software. Would it help Tracktion sales if a multiclient ASIO driver would be included in the paid package?

[terrynoakes]

It constantly irritates me that the ASIO4ALL driver for windows sound is unable to serve multiple clients. When a DAW uses it for example, then no sound on youtube, no sound on any other software. Would it help Tracktion sales if a multiclient ASIO driver would be included in the paid package?

+1
Not only Asio4all. I have they same problems with my emu 1212m card and driver's.

[dRowAudio]

The driver problem is really up to the device manufacturer. Or perhaps you could use Windows Audio?

Is this list based on T7? There's some things that I'm sure have been fixed in W10 like the "Separate playhead and editing cursor".

[terrynoakes]

The driver problem is really up to the device manufacturer. Or perhaps you could use Windows Audio?

I'm on Win 8.1 and latest Waveform. Emu1212m sound card
I have tried Windows audio, admittedly some time ago,and from memory it only shows stereo outputs.
I will have a look again, to see if I've missed anything. Cheers.

[Peter Widdicombe]

I think, though, that Windows audio allows Waveform to get non-exclusive control of the sound device (stereo only ! ), so you can play Youtube while Waveform is open. Depending on the sound card, though, I find Windows audio tends to have much more latency than ASIO4All.

I don't have time to try now, but can you select an alternate audio device in Waveform than "default", so that Waveform uses a different one than Windows defaults to?

[Stuttaton]

With my Focusrite Scarlet 6i6, I can play fron Facebook, Soundcloud etc. while Waveform is open. I can even let Waveform and another program play at the same time.

[spoontechnique]

I would love to see some improvements to Racks. There's a lot of room for simple user-friendly features that make it more convenient to use. Racks are powerful but the tediousness can be prohibitive for me.

The PDC issue still looms large in my mind. I don't like having to line up rendered tracks because latency caused them to shift time upon rendering.

[574X]

Interface-specific ASIO drivers work well with Tracktion, in my experience.

Interestingly, the submix bus does effectively route to sidechain.
In fact, many of the submix bus issues have been improved, but what begs to be implemented is the ability to solo a track inside the nested submix bus, without necessitating that all layers above are also.

A couple more improvements of constant relevance:

• mute/unmute ALL selected tracks with a single press of mute
• return cursor to last selected position when playback stops

Some things which are less intuitive than expected are the ability to add takes to existing items, by selecting multiple items and creating a comp. Making this automatic would be excellent, and judging by how seamless it is to record takes, there must be a way to add on to that clip seamlessly, without necessitating any user actions.

Currently, I don't see any way to "Warp Time" of multiple clips simultaneously. When recording live instruments, this is of critical importance.

Once Warp Time is selected, the ability to crop the "Warp Time" waveform window to the clip length disappears. This would ideally be one click away, on a dedicated button.

Bug: "Delete parts of selected clips which overlap other clips" can cause T7 to permanently become unresponsive. I may have a project file example, if interested.

Thanks to everybody who's sharing their input.

[spoontechnique]

Submixes have improved a ton since W9. There's occasionally some wonkiness but I rarely notice it now.

574X is right, warping multiple clips is a huge thing for recording engineers. I think most of Waveform's issues can be traced to the small dev team. With fewer people you can only have so many different perspectives. So sometimes I see something in Waveform and think, someone who 100% thinks as a composer/engineer/producer/whatever wouldn't organize things this way. I think it's just a byproduct of a small dev team wearing so many hats.

For example, I don't think a musician or composer would have the grid only be switchable between triplets with a button on the menu with no shortcut. That's too common a thing. Or with step clips, there should be a way to have different channels have different rhythmic values. The first thing a musician would think is "alright let's stick a snare on every beat, then have some kicks in 16th notes, and triplet hihats", which isn't possible in one step clip. The first thing I thought when I saw there's no custom scales in the menu is, "where's my phrygian ultradominant hyperdiminished scale"? And a recording engineer would have way more tools to take notes and keep track of what's what in a project.

This is my overall feeling about Waveform. Individually every element is 90% there. You can do anything well in Waveform. But it doesn't always excel, because it needs that last 10% that comes from specializing in each individual element. Still my favorite DAW obviously. But it could benefit a ton if a few people who have one particular workflow/style all contributed feedback to the individual parts.

[574X]

Agreed, however Reaper is essentially a dev team of two people. I find it to be the most full featured DAW, though Tracktion offers a variety of other advantages.

In the case of triplets and step clips, there are some intuitive ways around that, such as separating your instruments by track, having separate step clips for each intricately programmed instrument, creating new clips where you want triplets, or inserting new (duplicate) patterns into the step clip, then adjusting the number of steps and the step length. Furthermore, there are midi repeater plugins (piz midi) which can be set to handle this, and automated.

I simply use midi clips and the midi line tool, set to any triplet value that I want. A variety of grids matching the sequence is a luxury that isn't necessary for me.

Between Track Names themselves, Track images, track colors, clip colors, note colors, the Text plugin, and Marker clips, there are an abundance of identifiers and note taking tools for me.

Of course, since the step clip grid per midi note, triplet grid accessibility, scale customization, and note taking, are at the forefront of your personal experience using this DAW, I'm glad you drew attention to it.

I'm open to any solution to the lack of multi track warping, though the ability to create a Warp Group seems in line with Tracktion's style. Reaper will simply add warp markers to all selected clips, to the same location in the timeline, irrespective of clip length, visible in the main window.

[chico.co.uk]

Currently, I don't see any way to "Warp Time" of multiple clips simultaneously. When recording live instruments, this is of critical importance.

Groove Doctor may be what you're looking for. If you're thinking of needing to quantise, or tempo map things like, eg, a drum kit, recorded with multiple mics.

It appears to be influenced by Pro Tools Beat Detective, if you're familiar with that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKWQf3R5OP8

[spoontechnique]

Of course there are ways around the issue with step clips. For example, with drum programming, I split out kick, snare, hats, cymbals, etc. onto different tracks with their own step clips. If I need smaller subdivisions I chop up a step clip into smaller sections. But it's not elegant. Especially not compared to Cubase's drum editor, which lets you change the grid per-channel without affecting the others, and doesn't change the actual note values, just the grid. Which lets you easily have a kick/snare in quarter notes and hi-hats moving between 16ths and triplets, or whatever. All in a single clip. But that's a tangent.

I tried Groove Doctor when it came out but I didn't really get it, so I haven't used it since. I'll take another look at it. Might be useful on recorded guitars, depending on how accurate its transient detection is.