I will never understand "music software" people. I just do NOT get where their heads are at, in any way, shape, or form. If you asked me to come up with the worst way to deal with audio in software, it would look very much like what most DAWs currently look like.<p>I say this as someone who makes music and records it on a PC (MacOs/Windows/Linux), AND as someone who makes software for those same OSes. Admittedly, I do not really mess with loops or synthesizers, so I acknowledge those use-cases as some that might actually seem reasonable with current DAWs, but I definitely do not "get" it. I get bored screwing with synthesizers/filters (funny noise machines), and I use loops mostly with simple sequencers. So most of my time is spent producing and managing waveforms. To that end, every DAW looks - to me - like a god damned file manager, rather than a space for making content.<p>I'd LOVE for one piece of software to treat me like a user, rather than an audio engineer. I need a timeline, sure, but FIRST I need to pick an instrument; either by plugging it in (and the software auto-recognizing it), or by selecting a synth. I also need to pick a controller, if it's a synth. THEN I need to be put into an area where I can immediately get feedback for that thing. I don't need it to ONLY play when I hit record, or when I'm logging to the timeline. I need to have an empty space where I can start doing "takes". Simple snippets that I can refer back to. Auto-split during "silence", so I don't have to scan through a massive timeline to find the bit I liked. Obviously the mixers and things need to be summonable, here, for tuning. But they don't necessarily need to already be present. I don't need 18 knobs for tuning while I'm scritching out a riff, or finding the melodic line with my voice. I need to be able to try a thing, edit the settings, try again, edit again, back and forth until I feel like I'm "here in the space".<p>Again, this is like...every recording studio I've ever been to. You take some time to get your gear set up and, while that's happening, you play the things and find your sound in this space. Yet every piece of audio software just pretends like all of their audio processing isn't a change to the "space". It treats audio input a kind of "pure" input which it will alter, but doesn't immediately let musicians get a feeling for that alteration. Instead, we get infinite complexity right up front because "that's how computers work" or "that's how the files are handled" or "it's based on older stuff that had such limited processing this was the only way it could be done; now people are used to it, so we can't change it".<p>All nonsense. I'm not asking for every DAW to be geared towards musicians, I'm asking for ONE. Let ProTools still be ProTools. Or Audacity still be Audacity. But I'd really love if someone could make software for a 6 year old to plug a guitar into and start playing.<p>*yes, I am in a position to make that kind of DAW, and yes I do have the requisite insight to build the thing I'm asking for. And, boy, if I ever get the time, it's on. But I won't be holding my breath for my other projects to clear out enough to make this happen.