Highly automated digital audio workstation extensible in Guile

https://www.zrythm.org

by majkinetor • 6 years ago

186 85 6 years ago

zrythm.org

majkinetor• 6 years ago

FYI: Build and run it free, or pay for installer and to support development.

slezyr4• 6 years ago

Same as with XChat, Ardour. I wounder, how they look at the packages from the distros?

slezyr4• 6 years ago

Huh, they bundle packages for archlinux, debian10, fedora32, ubuntu1804, ubuntu1910, ubuntu2004.

cies2• 6 years ago

Distro's remove the need for an installer. Distro package users may still pay to support dev't.

Shared4042• 6 years ago

Same with modern ZynAddSubFX. I personally have no issues with this model, I'd rather pay for libre software then equivalent proprietary. That being said, if I were to try using this I would probably build it.

memming2• 6 years ago

Korean developers? UK currency?

slezyr4• 6 years ago

Zrythm and the Zrythm logo are trademarks of Alexandros Theodotou. See our Trademark Policy for more information.
Alexandros Theodotou
I am a native-level English and Greek speaker born in Cyprus, currently based in the UK.

Where did Korean developers came from?

jabbany• 6 years ago

They just have a very (over)zealous locale detection system that tries to show you a language localized page based on your browser's language priority.

ThePadawan• 6 years ago

I can however second parent's astonishment.

I'm located in Switzerland, with language preferences for en_EN, de_DE and de_CH, but was redirected by 301 to /ja/ (the japanese language page).

There's overzealous and then there's malfunctioning...

hellofunk5• 6 years ago

Whenever I see something like this, my first question is, wow what a beautiful cross-platform UI -- I wonder what they are using?

It's amazing how challenging it is in 2020 to have a simple path for creating a cross-platform UI that actually looks good and is not aimed at developers as users, but rather competes with the polish of established applications. Unless you go with Electron or pay thousands per year for a Qt license, options are quite limited.

slezyr4• 6 years ago

GTK with many custom widgets.

Nokinside• 6 years ago

Or you pay noting and use QT.

cies2• 6 years ago

Distros are filled with Qt based software that's FLOSS. Among them all of KDE.

chrisseaton• 6 years ago

I think they're using Gtk but they're basically using it just as a canvas to draw their own widgets.

formerly_proven2• 6 years ago

Content production tools have fairly unique UI needs compared to the average desktop application, e.g. they often have very complex timeline controls that offer dozens if not hundreds of different interactions specific to the tool at hand. Generic UI libraries would only be a hindrance there. They almost never have enough screen space, so the widget/interaction density is far greater than what’d be ergonomic for standard apps. Since people spend considerable time learning these tools they generally have their own UI paradigms independent of the host OS, which is the opposite of what you‘d want in a crossplatform toolkit.

jcelerier2• 6 years ago

an immense amount of content production tools use Qt without much issues though. Cubase, various Allegorithmic Substance things, Krita, Maya...

PaulDavisThe1st9• 6 years ago

Excellently put. I will have to quote this in the future.

deckard1• 6 years ago

I have argued in the past that any app worth a damn will not use some generic off-the-shelf widget kit. This includes even apps such as Excel or Word.

The reasons for this are that GUI widget kits are generalized to the least common denominator. They are written with a specific, narrow usage in mind and will never fit your application to the degree you need. And in some cases the author of a certain widget tries to do this, and the widget succumbs to the weight of complexity required to be all things to all people. Not even GIMP uses only GTK+.

The second reason that staying in one widget kit is bad is because it's a competitive world out there. You need to differentiate. That's not easy when every app looks and feels the same because they all use the same tool kit.

In addition to all of this, different OSes have different UX. A Qt app on Mac is not going to be identical to a Qt app on Linux. Assuming the Qt app is written to the guidelines of the OS and not just doing whatever it wants. Internally, the app will do what is best (e.g. photoshop canvas), but will play nice with the external window manager, accessibility, etc.

dependenttypes• 6 years ago

Why does everyone keep repeating the "pay for a Qt license" meme every time that someone presents a Qt software? You do not need to pay for a Qt license, it is under lgpl, just like a lot of other libraries that you can use in both foss and non-foss applications. Even GTK which some replies suggested uses the LGPL! Same goes for glibc which you link all of your programs to.

Ijumfs2• 6 years ago

IBM / Redhat reputation managers want you on systemd + gnome + wayland. Their natterings reach all corners of the Internet. It's concerted, shameless, and it's really starting to get irritating.

hellofunk5• 6 years ago

The license for QT has been evolving quite a lot over the last year or two, which makes many developers very nervous to use it without a paid license. Have you seen what they’re doing?

weeber• 6 years ago

The README [1] says C + GTK+3.

[1] https://git.zrythm.org/cgit/zrythm/tree/README.md#n22

krn• 6 years ago

Unless you go with Electron or pay thousands per year for a Qt license, options are quite limited.

I might be wrong, but it seems that Bitwig Studio, probably the most popular cross-platform DAW, uses JavaFX for the UI.

hellofunk5• 6 years ago

I was very curious, so I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwig/comments/4c2zoh/what_program...

Sounds like it’s probably not much of a Java app.

marcan_426• 6 years ago

Addendum: since this is getting downvoted, probably because I didn't explain why this matters beyond philosophical arguments, read my reply down the thread for why the license means in practice I can't use this DAW as a live plug-in host (without a huge hassle). There's a practical concern for you. One that doesn't apply to most proprietary applications, it's very unique to the AGPL.

This looks good, I've been making music with Ardour lately and this has a few features I wish Ardour did.

But - too bad it's not free software. It's unfortunately licensed under an EULA, the GNU AGPLv3 - which, as much as the FSF would like you to believe otherwise, is not a Free Software license, as it violates Freedom 0, your right to use/run the software however you wish without conditions. The AGPL imposes requirements not only on people who distribute the software (like a simple copyright license, e.g. the GPLs, BSD, Apache, etc), but also on people who merely use it (it requires you to make the source code available to anyone who even uses the software indirectly, e.g. as a service).

So I might use if it's good, but I won't be contributing patches to it, as I would with other software like Ardour, and I won't use it in a live setting. I can't in good conscience spend my free time contributing to software behind a EULA.

(I haven't the foggiest clue why they picked this license either; its main purpose is to extend the GPL's virality to network services to the detriment of user freedom, but this isn't a network service.)

coldtea• 6 years ago

This reads more like a general diatribe against AGPLv3 than a critique of the program.

I don't like GPL licenses myself, I prefer BSD/MIT/etc.

But that aside, this has very little to do with this program, and it very little (if any) impediment to using this kind of program.

It might prevent a company from building a commercial closed source version (which is fine, we have plenty of commercial DAWs already), and it might prevent a company from somehow turning this into SaaS. Both of those seem like very remote and unlike possibilities, even if this was non GPLv3.

marcan_426• 6 years ago

It's certainly a critique of the AGPL. I was just rather shocked to see the AGPL here, of all places. It doesn't make any sense, and it puts me off of considering it as a general free software DAW, and more in the same category as the proprietary plug-ins that I use (because there's no FOSS alternative). I'll use them, but not consider them a community project I can contribute to.

It may not be obvious how the AGPL would impact your ability to use a DAW, but it does. Just two days ago I was at band practice with a band I play in, and we decided that for one song the guitarist, who didn't have a part on it, would play a synth running on my computer, via a MIDI keyboard. That's a computer network by most definitions. That means the guitarist is now a user of the software on my computer. I was using Carla (LGPLed) as a plug-in host, but had I been using this instead, I would've been obligated to inform him of the fact and offer the source code.

In other words, this means I would never consider using this DAW in a live environment with any external interaction at all (no inputs other than my own, that includes no microphones or analog inputs that might pick up third party signals), lest I become legally obligated to start explaining what I'm running and where to get the source to everyone around me.

Now I bet the authors of this software didn't think of such use cases and don't care about them - and this is why the AGPL is evil, because it encroaches on users' rights well beyond you might think at first glance.

squarefoot• 6 years ago

"I don't like GPL licenses myself, I prefer BSD/MIT/etc."

The GPL may deserve some criticism from a business point of view, but how many of the businesses that criticize it openly, or attempt to dodge it covertly, were brought to success thanks to developers who could become what they are by studying and modifying code that without the GPL would have never been published?

oneplane3• 6 years ago

This is definitely a limitation of AGPL: you cannot interact with it (VST) unless your interactions are also public and free.

A program (DAW) that is built on integrating with third party code but limits what code you can integrate with is rather contradictory.

michaelmrose8• 6 years ago

To me free usage of the software means I can use a piece of software in any fashion I use for any purpose I use it. I cannot understand how the requirement to share your modifications prevents any lawful or reasonable use.

Most end users don't modify their software after all.

The sole and only wrinkle is that a requirement to share your code may in some instances keep you from adding some secret sauce to the software, using it to derive profit, and not sharing it with the party that created 99% of the value by providing you the software in the first place. Which seems to be literally complaining that it works as intended.

If we accept the premise of copyright and licensing software in the first place I'm not sure where you derive the justification for complaining that they are merely interested in giving you some rights to their efforts and not others. After all they could give you none. Regarding existing free software you already can't take GPL software and make it part of your AGPL software. The kind of software that can be incorporated in AGPL software is software that is allowed by license to be incorporated with software that adds additional restrictions like BSD licensed software.

Many would term that "more free" but would somehow manage to differentiate between taking "more free" software and using it to build proprietary software that gives downstream no privileges and taking "more free" software and using it to build software with restrictions that gives some privileges and somehow find the latter wanting.

aasasd• 6 years ago

zrythm.org/RU not found

Automagic redirect wasn't such a good idea here.

mxmilkb• 6 years ago

For related chat; #zrythm #lad #lau #lv2 and #jack on freenode.

grawprog2• 6 years ago

Has anyone actually tried this? Most of the comments seem to be about the licensing or the ui, i'm just curious how this holds up to ardour. This actually looks pretty awesome.

pindab0ter• 6 years ago

As someone who recently spent a few weeks to get acquainted with Reaper, what would be a reason to use Ardour instead?

alchemyromcom• 6 years ago

I believe Ardour has an open license and Reaper has a proprietary licence. In terms of functionality and ease of use however, I think Reaper is hard to beat.

spaceman_2020• 6 years ago

Ardour is free and open source.

You might also want to try LMMS. Pair it up with ZynAddSubFX as the synth and you have a pretty competent studio.

Relevant submission: https://midination.com/free-music-production-software/

backlash8752• 6 years ago

LV2 plugins aren't supported in Reaper but are in Ardour, this makes quite a difference in Linux. In my opinion the anywhere to anywhere routing is better in Ardour. That said, I moved from Ardour to Reaper and prefer Reaper.

PaulDavisThe1st9• 6 years ago

http://admiralbumblebee.com/music/2020/02/25/20-Mixbus-Featu...

backlash8752• 6 years ago

I've tried using it but it crashes too often and is generally too buggy to use. It seems to be in an early stage of development so this is to be expected. The UI and general workflow look very promising though, in particular the piano roll. It has a long way to go to match the maturity and features of Ardour, but the UI design that it's aiming for will make it more suitable for people making EDM.

PaulDavisThe1st9• 6 years ago

It's using some notable chunks of Ardour's code, which might help it along.

OTOH, Reaper's lead developer was thinking of doing that at the beginning of Reaper's life, decided against it, and we can see how (well) that worked out! :)

PaulDavisThe1st9• 6 years ago

FWIW, the original versions of Ardour were "extensible in Guile" too. The entire program (well, the GUI) ran inside the interpreter's REPL. We ripped that our before v2 came out. These days, we use Lua.

dmoreno• 6 years ago

The title says "extensible in Guile" which sounds great, but I don't see any mention in the article.

Is there any resource about this Guile extensibility?

coldpie• 6 years ago

https://manual.zrythm.org/en/scripting/intro.html

Highly automated digital audio workstation extensible in Guile

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