Full album made in Waveform 12 PRO: my pros and cons. Tracktion! Answer please.

[Vollofi]

LoFi album Northern Lights

Waveform 12 PRO:
pros:
-modern workflow (I can say it's ableton-ish, but flexible)
-midi editor (except for some shortcomings)
-custom shortcuts
-big flexibility
-great browser
cons:
-it's unstable! a lot of crushes. especially, with uploaded plugins like Guitar Rig 7 or Kontakt 7 with big libraries
-it's buggy! as example, Positive Grid - BIAS FX2 just crush DAW (don't load without SandBox)
-project becomes laggy with the high amount of tracks (glitchy start/stop playback, increased probability of crushing and etc)

First, I was an enthusiast - detailed feedback to the support (photo/video, a ton of text). But I feel like they don't care about it. And it was no one fix for several months. As I remember, the support promised to release the general update before new serial edition, but... They just announced Waveform 13. What did we pay for? "Buy laggy product, buy the update to fix it after that. Repeat".
I do think, the update W12 to W13 should be free if they need to achieve something like loyalty.
Tracktion, do you want to be a broken toy for students or a solid workstation for scoring?

[dayvyg]

I hear what you're saying. Waveform is always on the verge of being great but never crosses the line from almost there to there. Lots of great features and some unrealized features (e.g. track editor) but always some really irritating bugs that are hard to ignore. I really think they need a second developer full-time. Figbug has added some great features but he's just under contract.

Also, the documentation is abysmal. The current training seems to count on some random videos from a couple of people with youtube channels but there's no continuity.

It doesn't seem like any of the core team pays any attention to their users on the forum either. At least have a moderator around that can offer some advice or help alleviate the frustration. Pretty sad!

I think they need to invest in their own product and realize Waveform's full potential. Until that time, I won't be investing any more money in it. Will you? It's your choice to make.

[Watchful]

Yep. This.

[unholyeyebrows]

I’ve often wondered whether there is a business case to open source some or all of Waveform. Get some enthusiastic devs involved (perhaps led somehow by Figbug as project leader) and see what’s possible. As a purely commercial product it never quite seems to have the investment required for such a technically complex project. I’d love to see the current feature set remain stable and effort made to fix the bugs (specially Linux stability). It does have great features but users need to be confident when investing time and effort in a DAW.

[nowgad]

/DEL/

[vitocorleone123]

I paid for v3 through 12. I wanted them to succeed, but the market may just be too tough for a little DAW that (usually) could.

I now use Studio One Pro.

[dysjoint]

As purely a long time hobbyist/enthusiast Tracktion, then Waveform, has the workflow that either fits my brain, or my brain has adapted to? There are obviously question marks around the beta testing and the post release bug fixing. Also some of the excellent but poorly implemented ideas, like Nowgad's modifier problem, and the great routing options that allow you to modify and record digital chains internally in real time, but the PDC might go haywire. There may still be questions about aliasing in the engine, but I'm no Admiral Bumblebee to be able to come up with a definitive test. And the documentation and macros could be brought up to date.

I'm stupidly optimistic, can't face the learning curve of (probably) Reaper or Studio One or Bitwig and will be updating. This time at least.

[fde101]

I’ve often wondered whether there is a business case to open source some or all of Waveform.

They already have: https://www.tracktion.com/develop/tracktion-engine

One of the challenges I think they face is that the Tracktion Engine is built on JUCE, which they don't own, and some of the features people have requested would require changes to JUCE that the JUCE team has been slow to make (or has refused to make).

Tracktion would probably do well to recreate their engine without the dependency on JUCE, but that would clearly take a fair amount of effort, and if their developer is already struggling to keep up with new releases...

[vitocorleone123]

As purely a long time hobbyist/enthusiast Tracktion, then Waveform, has the workflow that either fits my brain, or my brain has adapted to? There are obviously question marks around the beta testing and the post release bug fixing. Also some of the excellent but poorly implemented ideas, like Nowgad's modifier problem, and the great routing options that allow you to modify and record digital chains internally in real time, but the PDC might go haywire. There may still be questions about aliasing in the engine, but I'm no Admiral Bumblebee to be able to come up with a definitive test. And the documentation and macros could be brought up to date.

I'm stupidly optimistic, can't face the learning curve of (probably) Reaper or Studio One or Bitwig and will be updating. This time at least.

Other than configuring devices, Studio One was an easy change from Waveform (for me).

It does have some oddities around routing vs the simple and straightforward Waveform. Before a v7 of S1 arrives I’ll re-evaluate Waveform.

[Vollofi]

Extremely high probability to crush/freeze the DAW if you run one of this plugins:
NI Crush Pack (BITE, DIRT, and FREAK);
NI Mod Pack (FLAIR, PHASIS, CHORAL).
This fx's are not new; NI Komplete is very popular pack of software. Not tested enough.

[asprog]

Extremely high probability to crush/freeze the DAW if you run one of this plugins:
NI Crush Pack (BITE, DIRT, and FREAK);
NI Mod Pack (FLAIR, PHASIS, CHORAL).
This fx's are not new; NI Komplete is very popular pack of software. Not tested enough.

No crash nor freeze with these plugins since years...

[Vollofi]

Extremely high probability to crush/freeze the DAW if you run one of this plugins:
NI Crush Pack (BITE, DIRT, and FREAK);
NI Mod Pack (FLAIR, PHASIS, CHORAL).
This fx's are not new; NI Komplete is very popular pack of software. Not tested enough.

No crash nor freeze with these plugins since years...

Mate, I am working on the remix right now. There are 34 tracks in the project. I can run an instance of Dirt for the kick just after two hard restartings of the DAW. 3d time was lucky. I use a lot of Dirt, Phasis and Bite - so it's not imaginary issue.
I have a big project for Heavyocity rescore (around 68 tracks). It was finished recently. It was a real headache.
Also, I process a lot of stuff weekly.
What about your experience with this plugins in Waveform 12?

[asprog]

I'm not here to say it's an imaginary issue and understand it could be a real headache for you.
I just say that it works well for me, even with large projects.
Each setup is different, so difficult to compare but I just wanted to weight the crash probability and clarify these plugins could not cause trouble...

[Vollofi]

I'm not here to say it's an imaginary issue and understand it could be a real headache for you.
I just say that it works well for me, even with large projects.
Each setup is different, so difficult to compare but I just wanted to weight the crash probability and clarify these plugins could not cause trouble...

Honestly, I just tired because of crushes
BIAS FX 2- just not working without sandbox (DAW crush while the plugin connects to the servers at startup)
This NI fx's... Idk, but I have an issue exactly with them.
And sometimes crushes because of Kontakt 7 and Guitar Rig 7 - but I can understand it's heavy plugins
Other my stuff works well (not a single crush issue)

[operandx]

I'm not here to say it's an imaginary issue and understand it could be a real headache for you.
I just say that it works well for me, even with large projects.
Each setup is different, so difficult to compare but I just wanted to weight the crash probability and clarify these plugins could not cause trouble...

Honestly, I just tired because of crushes
BIAS FX 2- just not working without sandbox (DAW crush while the plugin connects to the servers at startup)
This NI fx's... Idk, but I have an issue exactly with them.
And sometimes crushes because of Kontakt 7 and Guitar Rig 7 - but I can understand it's heavy plugins
Other my stuff works well (not a single crush issue)

It's really hard for devs to fix issues if they can't repeat them. For example, I don't have all those NI plugs but I do have Phasis and Freak and have never seen an issue with those two (PC VST3 versions). Likewise Bias FX worked ok, mind you I don't have it installed anymore, didn't rate it and didn't like it phoning home. NI plugs also phone home use data but that can be turned off at least.