Tracktion Waveform – The Only DAW ‘Evolving At The Same Pace As Modern Music Production’

Tracktion Corporation has released Waveform, the successor to its Tracktion DAW.

The app is available in versions for Linux, Mac, Windows and even the Raspberry PI.

According to the company, ‘Waveform may be the only application evolving at the same pace as modern music production.’ 

Waveform is designed to inspire creativity, with a suite of composition tools. MIDI pattern generators let you quickly assemble musical arrangements, while built-in virtual instruments such as the FM Synth and new Collective sampler/synthesizer provide a wealth of new sounds.

Waveform is also designed to be efficient enough to support even the relatively tiny Raspberry Pi platform. This allows the app to run smoothly on almost any modern Windows, Mac or Linux computer, while also opening it up for use as an embedded solution.

Pricing and Availability:

Waveform is available now from the Tracktion website as well as retailers, with prices starting at $99 ($50 upgrade from any paid version of T5, T6, or T7).

32 thoughts on “Tracktion Waveform – The Only DAW ‘Evolving At The Same Pace As Modern Music Production’

  1. I’ve used several versions of Tracktion during the years but always turned away because of all the crashes and bugs with both Mac and PC. Judging from the KVRaudio forums, it’s not any better situation with Waveform so far…

    1. Hey everyone! I’ve got an ingenious new model for software businesses: release updates twice as fast by halving development & test time. So what if it’s buggy, just think of the marketing opportunities!

  2. Is evolving such a good thing? The big resurgence of analog synths and sequencers over the last half decade is kinda devolving isn’t it? And I find thst a very good and enjoyable thing .. but then again I’m an old guy lol

    1. What I’d love to see is a DAW that makes devolving easier. I don’t need content, loops, or built-in virtual instruments. I need a simple and solid way to integrate hardware of various types, including modular, with the DAW. MIDI, recording, arranging, etc.

      I don’t see that solution on the horizon unfortunately. The current gen still have issue with latency, stable MIDI clock & synchronization and the same old story.

    2. For almost 20 years now my daws on both pc and Mac have been basically midi recorders and soft synth enablers, with most of my audio stuff done primarily in Sound Forge. My daws are wonderfully powerful scratch pads and Sound Forge is my awesome tape deck, nothing crashes and my work flow is super fast so I’ll stick with what works for me and my personal creative process.

      1. I’m just agains selling a product that makes stuff and using the stuff that your competitors product made to show off your product. they could of easily sourced a track from there evolved comity of music makers.

    1. … and quick goolge-investigation suggests that the song’s author (Zach Nicita) is an Ableton user (hint – instagram profile) ]:->

  3. The demo video doesn’t show anything particularly evolutionary, innovative or forward-thinking. It does look like a pretty typical DAW.

    In some ways, a DAW shouldn’t dictate where music is going next– and bear with me here. A DAW should be flexible enough that when an artists pushes into a new direction, the DAW won’t fight him or her. The DAW should be feature-packed and powerful enough to let new things happen, both in terms of sound and in terms of composition. This is where DAWs like MOTU DP, Samplitude, Numerology, and others really let you push into those areas.

  4. I’ll stick to Live with my Push 2 (loving the workflow) and Logic Pro X (because Alchemy is the best damn soft synth on the planet).

    1. And in the meantime there are thousands of people out there that are not complaining but actually making music with these DAWs without accurate MIDI timing (can you imagine?). Music that people actually buy and that ends up in the charts. I wonder what it is that these people are missing….

      1. Being in the charts and people buying your music is but one standard for what is “good”. But your point about being able to make music with the tools you have, that’s mostly true.

        I use DP. I tried logic and hated it. Went right back to DP. I could have probably hung in there with logic but there would have been a cost. It is pretty important to choose tools that meet your needs and workflow. It’s ok to be picky about your software in the same way it is ok to be picky about the other things you buy.

      2. Perhaps these people are not so much missing something but rather know more about the technology involved: What the technical limitations of MIDI transmission and processing are and how this relates to acoustics and physiology. And they know how to work around certain things like (reproducible) latency when doing multitrack recordings. Jitter, on the other hand, is not so easy to deal with in general. But this is where knowing the limitations of human perception and also the processing in the instruments that receive the MIDI data from the computer might come in handy. Before you declare “inaccurate” timing (which is itself a rather inaccurate term to describe a bunch of phenomena that are mostly orthogonal) to be a problem, you should first check if it’s really a problem in the specific use case (instruments, interfaces, distribution scheme, musical genre, etc.). I totally agree that it’s all too easy to complain about technological limitations and sound all learned and stuff. But the important thing to remember is that a pro can create something good or even amazing with almost any setup. Being overly picky can be fun and is sometimes warranted but I feel that for many people it’s more and end in itself (looking at gear porn all day long instead of doing something with what they have).

      3. A possible solution is to go all-hardware and use the DAW just to record and edit. It also makes making music a lot more inspiring, again.

  5. I upgraded to Waveform (64-bit for on a maxed out MacBook Pro touch bar) and it crashed 5-6 times already… I guess I’ll stick to Logic

  6. Bottom line is whats most confortable for YOU to use. I still have 2 Mac SE30’s sitting in the closet, one with Opcode Vision .. the other with MOTU Performer. When I look back at my own history and discography, my best work was done on those toaster Mac’s with 80/90’s keyboards and rackmount synths. These days I like Reaper.

  7. all this just proves that the true viable platform for pc recording is mac
    check the latency figures on the internet , plus by running mac as your os,
    you dont need expensive external hardware interfaces to smooth out latency !!!!

    1. What year you posting from? Since the Oct Win 10 update, I am doing 16 tracks (mixed hardware audio tracks, Simpler, Serum, ext stereo vocal FX, with a few returns) I have all this running live with a £100 Berlinger card on a old PC laptop, with a round trip of 5.2ms – 2.6ms in and out.

  8. I have had Waveform for two days now, and I am already done with it. It is the most un-intuitive, complicated Daw I have ever worked with. On top of that, there are no stock sounds besides the one synthesizer Collector, which isnt really that great. Im sorry, but every Daw should come with a Drum machine that works natively in the software. There is none to speak of, and the Plug ins that I have simply do not mesh well with the software. The 64 bit version crashes every time I launch it, and I have to launch it 4 times before it finally works. I am completely unsatisfied with it thus far. The only reason why I purchased it, is because I have a Roli Seaboard Rise 49, and it was supposed to work “Seamlessly” with Waveform. It works yes, but you cant even adjust the volume pans in the mixer….you make the value changes and it doesnt do anything. So using Equator plug in with this DAW simply clips inexcusably. I basically threw 150 dollars in my fireplace really. NOT HAPPY!

  9. Carmen
    i have tried Waveform for about a week now, with no problems, and it even the cracked version! – i will soon buy waveform – i tried a lot daws, ableton came close but there is a error it it when using Falcon – i know this from uvi as i thoght it was my pc, but no

    check your pc for viruses

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