OpenDAW – a new holistic exploration of music creation inside the browser
75 comments
·February 9, 2025PaulDavisThe1st
duped
I was a longtime JUCE user and won't hold my breath for them to support the web. They skate strictly where the puck was two years ago, not where it's going. I also wouldn't call their Linux support "easy" - it's not surprising to me very few JUCE developers even consider using Linux in CI, let alone as a supported target.
That said, I think there's something interesting about building out an audio platform with "no VSTs" as a constraint - about 6 years ago I was convinced that the web was a deadend for even middling complexity audio projects when I saw Bandlab at NAMM, and I was very wrong. It seems like the value of a DAW that you can fire up in a browser and instantly access all your projects/share them with your friends is more valuable than having no plugins and crashing after hitting browser tab memory limits. And looking down the road it frees you from the serious problems with native plugins and current plugin APIs.
wdfx
Drivers and control panels for interfaces are also an issue on non macOs and windows platforms. I don't see hardware vendors changing that any time soon.
p0w3n3d
There is no such thing as DAW inside a browser. DAW is mostly about the lowest latency possible unless it's for the sole purpose of sound creation (synthesis/sampling). This would allow it to bear the name Digital Audio Rework Station (DARwS) In all other cases lowest latency, ASIO drivers etc. are a must-have.
nerflad
A lot of people who have apparently never stepped foot in a recording studio are replying to you. Pre-plugin era was exactly about this. Drive the DAC and manage writes to the disk without introducing (much) latency so tracking can get done. Perhaps no one who uses this will intend to setup more than one microphone.
wdfx
Absolutely agree with you here.
There's a huge divide between people who might play with this at home as a toy and those who would be able to work with professional musicians with it.
The latter group will have some very strict requirements around performance, latency and workflow.
Edit: and reliability
tigeba
Just going to add this RE: reliability. Today CPUs are so powerful you don't need DSP systems anymore to do things like low latency tracking. It is still up to the user to manage latency by carefully selecting plugins, etc. With DSP based systems, the latency is generally fixed and extremely stable. I still use a very old PTHD system because it works great for recording audio :)
jampekka
Minimal latency is only really needed for live performance and monitoring, though these do tend to be crucial demands in most cases. A major problem for browsers is also poor support for multichannel devices.
They do plan to have a "native wrapper like tauri" in the future. I've played around with node-web-audio-api for low latency multichannel for Electron, but it wasn't a great success. Mostly because Rust audio backends (and almost all audio backends in general) aren't very good in such usage.
input_sh
If you're just picking up samples from Splice or whatever and arranging them, sure, latency means nothing, but it becomes pretty crucial when you're recording an instrument.
worthless-trash
Why would recording be the latency sensitive part, wouldnt it be the playback ?
tnolet
No, low latency is not needed for all non-realtime things. Even then, you are looking for latency compensation. Just add one VST plugin to an audio track and you will instantly add latency.
The crux is you want everything to play in sync when doing recording and overdubbing, e.g. "hit record and what I hear live is in sync with what I have recorded already". Almost all DAWs solve this by just starting things a bit later (latency compensation). Some audio cards solve this by allowing direct hardware monitoring. But even then you will have some samples of latency.
jcelerier
> Just add one VST plugin to an audio track and you will instantly add latency.
most plug-ins don't add latency ?
beAbU
Most audio interfaces support direct monitor, so there is essentially zero latency between your source and the monitor when recording tracks. DAWs then allow you to set the latency as a "take nudge" where the take is immediately nudged by the known latency amount, so that when you play back your tracks they are in sync.
Lastly, some fancy interfaces have built in DSP, so that you can load your effects right in the interface, for when you want effects in your recording monitor feed...
So I dont think latency is that critical anymore, and with a decent interface its mostly sorted out.
Mashimo
Why do you need the lowest latency possible to operate a DAW?
TehCorwiz
There are three places to accumulate latency, the input from the instrument to the computer, the processing of filters, the output to the monitor (headphones/speakers)/recording. Sometimes you can get away with 2 or 3 ms of latency, but anything over 5 ms is super frustrating. Remember, you're fighting the latency between plucking a string or hitting a key and when the computer acknowledging the data and sending it back out to the monitor which you're using as your guide. Best case you go and "massage" the new track to line up with the existing tracks, worst case it sounds like an out of sync high school marching band.
EDIT: The concerns here are primarily with input latency. Between plucking a string and heading it in your monitor it has to go through: your input hardware, the USB interface, the OS, the browser (which doesn't have explicit low latency capabilities), and JS. Most platforms support ASIO which is a low-level driver for reading audio data from devices. About as close to reading the ADCs yourself. Without a low-latency driver working with the OS there's so much latency overhead it's audible.
null
bugbytz
Not to mention DPC latency for us Windows customers
Mashimo
Thanks.
AFAIK ASIO is windows only.
wdfx
Because when you want to record your instrument along with whatever else is in your project, timing is critical and everything needs to line up.
You cannot be performing to audio that you are hearing with any delay, especially if the monitoring of the live audio is also being routed through software.
At a certain point of latency it introduced delays and badly affects how you perform. In some circumstances it makes performance actually impossible.
There are ways around this, namely if the software knows exactly what the input and output latency is then the playback and recording can be compensated. For live monitoring though you really need that done in the audio hardware itself in hard real time.
tigeba
Music is very latency sensitive. If you are recording any source you generally want to have overall latency < 5ms. Input and monitoring latency is usually either handled by using fancy DSP systems or a "hack" where input audio bypasses any internal processing and gets routed directly back for monitoring.
prmoustache
It is important if you are driving hardware synths and samplers through midi.
Otherwise latency is not really a problem.
jcelerier
it's pretty hard for me as a musician to record guitar tracks in sync if I'm not getting the lowest latency through my computer (since I try to use e.g. software amp sims & pedals, etc.). Past ~8ms I feel it when I play, past 15ms I can hear the less accurate playing in the recorded tracks.
wdfx
> Otherwise latency is not really a problem
This is absolutely not true. Latency in audio systems is important in almost every aspect of using a DAW
null
dmje
This is deeply impressive, and of course the first thing I'm doing is sharing it with some mates. The technical completeness of this, the fact that you can do this sort of thing in the browser at all - that to me is mindblowing (I'm 52 and remember when marquee tags were a bit of a stretch...).
But... like other commenters - there it stops, and I'm just not quite sure why.
The audience is probably me. I'm an avid Ableton user - I pay a bloody fortune for it, I upgrade it every year, I am happy to support their development because it's an insanely - insanely - good piece of software that does everything I need it to do. I'm also now completely embedded in the clip view, so going back to a linear view just isn't a possibility for me.
More to the point though - this clearly isn't aimed at people who know nothing about what they're doing. It's very non-amateur and clearly very, very powerful. But at the same time it isn't aimed at me, either - as someone who does know what they're doing, I'm thinking "um, VSTs?" or "clip view?" or "live performance / latency issues?" or whatever.
So... who is the audience? Maybe there is a middle ground of people who don't have the means to fork out for a good desktop DAW. Maybe teenagers who are wanting to learn the principles without the spend. Maybe because it'd be very cool for collaborating? I just don't know.
Nonetheless, it's an insane demonstration of what can be done in a browser these days and for that I massively doff my cap - amazing work!
bugbytz
My question is why not just have a desktop daw implement rpc on their daemon to work collaboratively natively instead of being sandboxed in a browser? Or does this already exist?
wdfx
Isn't that's asking for terrible UI latency?
gravitronic
there is a DAW with that feature, they then extracted the multiplayer core and license that. Forget the name, though.
Polarity
I think it’s time for a truly open Digital Audio Workstation one that’s actually usable, well-designed, functional, and free from logins, cloud dependencies, or mandatory subscriptions. Something you can simply download or access from any platform that supports a browser.
That’s why I really like the idea of building a DAW in the browser, it has huge potential for all kinds of users, especially in education, whether for kids, older people, or just anyone who wants to make music on the go, no matter what device they’re using.
I see a lot of promise in this project and fully support André, who has already contributed to developing great audio tools.
Parae
It already exists. It's called Ardour. Paul, the main developer is quite active on HN.
PaulDavisThe1st
I suspect the GP doesn't think much of Ardour's design :)
inatreecrown2
This is impressive but, why would I use this over other DAWs? Why name it openDAW if it is not open source?
edit: I like the idea of the "Discoverable Toys" and can see how this could develop into something new. But why not just concentrate on that and bring it to other DAWs in form of a plugin, instead of writing a whole new DAW in the browser?
mijoharas
Good question, I read the about page[0] which says:
> Will the DAW be open source from the start or only become open source later?
> To make the most of being open-source, we believe that there should be an appropriate infrastructure for documentation and quality assessment of code contributions. Our current focus is to lay the foundation for an MVP and release a public standalone version 1 by the end of the year.
So it seems that they intend to open source it later. Still a bit of a strange move, but fair enough I guess.
Mashimo
> instead of writing a whole new DAW in the browser?
Ease of use. Login without installing anything, work on a project on the tabled on the train, later on continue the project without syncing it somehow, all while working in collaboration with a friend.
jampekka
I would welcome a new open source DAW. Ardour is the go-to option now, and is very capable, but it's starting to show its age and the UI is quite clunky (or an acquired taste at least).
Also the open source audio editor situation is quite dismal. Audacity is really the only game in town. It's showing its age too and its trajectory doesn't look great. A more editing-focused DAW, which OpenDAW seems to be, would be very welcome.
akx
We've had https://www.audiotool.com/ for 15 years...
Polarity
the developer of audiotool literally is the creator of openDAW
demarq
Definition of success. When people point to your competitor and the competitor is still you.
gordy_gordstein
And I've been trying to use it for 15 years, and each time I think "ok, next PC upgrade, this is gonna be sick!" ...and it's still molasses. Not even criticizing it. I've been pumped about it from the start, but it was asking a lot of the web as a platform 15 years ago.
This is featherweight in comparison, and a lot closer to a traditional DAW than audiotool's skeuomorphic virtual analogue approach.
raggi
About: https://opendaw.org/
gravitronic
hey, this is really nice. Have you seen web audio modules? https://webaudiomodules.com
It is an audio/video/midi plugin standard for the web and it is rather mature.
During covid I worked on a collaborative browser-based DAW, https://sequencer.party. I definitely bit off more than I could chew, but you can wire up plugin chains at least.
I would strongly suggest you consider adding webaudiomodule support and instantly get ~50 plugins supported in the DAW. I also packaged up a bunch of them ready for consumption here: https://github.com/boourns/wam-community
jdefr89
Neat.. But.. Why? There are already a ton of DAWs and at this point all of them essentially support the same features and folks end up using all the same Waves VSTs... DAWs can be resource intensive when low latency is key (say recording vocals). Browser DAW ain't gonna do so well for that type of thing. Still cool though..
handity
This is remarkably complete.
But it makes me question why "the browser" is apparently still the inevitable platform of the future.
In order for a PWA to be normal and usable, it must be available offline, open in a window without browser chrome, have similar performance to a native application, be launchable via a shortcut on the host OS, and respond to the mouse and keybaord shortcuts the way you'd expect. I think I've just described... an Electron app?
It's cool that this kind of thing can run in a web browser. With no install hurdle, it's much easier to convince people to try it out, and it's cross platform. Beyond that I can't really think of any advantages to having it run in the browser.
If what's lacking is an easy way to try software, I can't help but imagine lots of ways this could be addressed that would be much more pleasant to use than loading PWAs. Right now I can't seriously see myself enjoying using a PWA for work.
I say this having recently finished several large design projects in Figma, which is apparently a gold standard success story for browser based apps. Despite the years of development and herculean engineering efforts, I can still feel the browser jank. I begrudgingly open the thing in chrome, as it completely chokes in Firefox. It still chokes on moderately sized canvases, moving things is slow and laggy compared to native apps, keyboard shortcuts sometimes don't work or keys get stuck in a weird pressed or unpressed state, loading is slow, elements pop-in over tens of seconds.
I know I'm an old man yelling at clouds at this point, I'm just disappointed that we seem to be going backwards in performance and usability of software.
jampekka
> In order for a PWA to be normal and usable, it must be available offline, open in a window without browser chrome, have similar performance to a native application, be launchable via a shortcut on the host OS, and respond to the mouse and keybaord shortcuts the way you'd expect. I think I've just described... an Electron app?
You've just described a PWA. You can install them as a host OS shortcut, they run without browser chrome, should have performance equal to Electron.
Also if you really want extra bloat and faff, any PWA is trivial to turn into an Electron app.
Most of PWA criticism is based on misunderstanding PWA capabilities.
zb3
> why "the browser" is apparently still the inevitable platform of the future.
Because it doesn't require trust. The browser actually got the permission model (almost - but there are extensions) right. I can safely open this and not worry about security.
gordy_gordstein
At first glance, this looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. Would be nice if the built-in samples featured some one shots as opposed to just loops, though I haven't dove in deep enough to see if there are facilities for chopping up longer samples. Definitely plan to fool around with this some more after work and see what it can do.
dnjdkdldh
Is this open source?
Does it support plugins?
rock_artist
> To make the most of being open-source, we believe that there should be an appropriate infrastructure for documentation and quality assessment of code contributions. Our current focus is to lay the foundation for an MVP and release a public standalone version 1 by the end of the year.
> If you want to help programming please be patient and wait for openDAW to be fully open-source. We will communicate this step loud and clear. Until then, we appreciate any feedback, testing and suggestions. Please log into our Discord server.
> Yes, the offline native app will have VST support at some point in future.
Source: https://opendaw.org (FAQ)
twelvechairs
Does 'MVP' in this context mean they want to sell something as a business, or just that they want a good functioning version (like, be out of alpha stage)?
PaulDavisThe1st
Or they just read HN too much?
The thing that people complain about most when it comes to using DAWs on Linux is that 90% of the plugins in the world are not available (at least, not without some relatively technical magic such as yabridge).
It is therefore quite curious to see people get all excited about a DAW on another "platform" where at least 90% of the plugins in the world are not available, and in all likelihood are even less likely to ever become available than they are on Linux.
There's certainly a role for a tool like this in education and for people who so far have no realized that they really need to have Pigments or fabfilter for their project. And yes, people do exaggerate the extent to which a specific plugin is needed. Nevertheless, the lack of ability to run essentially any of the existing 3rd party plugins would, were it a native DAW, be viewed as completely crippling.
The webaudio modules "standard" offers some hope here, and I suspect that within 2-5 years, plugin toolkits like JUCE will allow you to build not just as "windows/VST3" or "Linux/LV2" or "macOS/AudioUnit" formats, but also "wasm/webaudiomodule" (or something like it). However, given how easy the various Linux options already are with JUCE, and how few plugin developers choose to use them, I have to wonder if the massively larger size of a "browser platform market" would be enough to get them to add another platform.