Blender DAW component suggestion

Hi. Blender does a lot of things. You can 3D model, sculpt, make animation, make films, post-process and not ultimately , make games. There is a single component that is missing, very important for film production/games: DAW component.(music production) Nowdays, the free DAW softwares that support VST plugins are a rarity. If a DAW component would be implemented in Blender, the same application could offer the entire pipeline for producing a movie. There are a lot of music producers out there, and, for a studio, I think that using the same software would be cool. I think there would be many music software developers that would like to participate with their code, to an Open Source software that does everything. For example, you should take a look at how many devs do free VST plugins. I think that for Blender, implementing a music production system would be a certain win.

P.S. I have noticed that some softwares begin to take take music more seriously, for example, Unity 5 will bring new ways of integrating and mixing music in your game. Blender should do that too.

For what it’s worth, Blender has JACK support (and has had it for a while). So any audio application that speaks to JACK (such as Ardour and Hydrogen, for example) can be used with it.

What kind of overlap, code-wise, do you think a 3d production package like Blender and a DAW have, to justify bringing them together?

Eh…not really that relevant. Most serious audio production is going to be done in an external application and mixed to 2-3 stereo tracks. For example VO, music and sound effects. There is no need to re-invent the wheel in this case. There are already audio strips and 3D audio speaker functionality inside Blender.

I would see this as a drain on developer resources because the end result will always be compared to professional audio production apps.

I have tried to use Blender, as it stands, for audio and it always falls short and out of synch. I just do my audio work in a “real” audio program (Audition, Sonar, Pro Tools, Ableton…etc) and composite the Blender render with audio in After Effects.

Is there a bug reported about this? - going out of sync is pretty bad and Id hope this kind of problem could be fixed, we should at least have working support for basic stuff like this.

There would be so many new components that would be needed that it just wouldn’t be feasible for Blender to have this without a dedicated developer who we know would maintain the code.

So to have a complete experience, you’d have to code a mixing interface, a piano roll editor, a list of midi samples and virtual instruments, a lot more sound filters, VST plugin support, an interface to place strips of music along with loops, the list goes on. Without a dedicated developer stepping in, there’s not enough resources.

After a quick research, I have found out that VST plugins are generally used in C++. So far, I didn’t saw any VST implementation in Python. However, I have found an interesting thing, that could be integrated in Blender. There is a Python module called Pyo. Pyo is fully integrated in Python. Blender will allways be compared with professional software. However, because it is free, it is the best choice for indies. A DAW in Blender, even if it is not evolved, will represent a handy feature.Even more, there is no need to spend time on making it from scratch. Pyo is a good
https://code.google.com/p/pyo/ code base for this.

I was looking for the same, i had some seperate video audio recordings who needed some audio tuning.
It would be awesome if ti where posible in blender, but so far it is not.
For this to work maybe its an idea to create a wrapper around Csound to be controlled from blender.
Csound is opensource, Csound is written in c++ (hence audio codecs require speed). But it has a Python API
So its functions can be controlled by python.

IF blender would support VST plugins, then it would mean that in one go, Blender is a top notch audio composer tool.
There are tons of free, and also comercial VLT plugins…perhaps its an idea to work to together with them ?..
Like a next year google summer of code project ?

i think the big + here is Csound has its own community (of coders, and fans), its also opensource.
Like there are other external render engines, this is about a sound engine basically.
It doenst need to be part of blenders internal code, it could be an external plugin, like we know lux render.

Adding more DAW-style functionality to Blender would be useful beyond just mixing/arranging sound - being able to use MIDI input (knobs/faders, note triggering) as an animation source within Blender has a lot of potential for synchronising animation to sound. I seem to remember there was an add-on but it didn’t work after 2.5

Like others on this thread, I’d prefer to just use a capable DAW for sound/music - it’s a big ask for the Blender team to maintain even a lightweight integrated DAW in Blender considering for it to be basically useful you need:

  • a PCM audio editor (which we’ve kind of already got)
  • a MIDI data editor (nothing like it yet in Blender) - whether piano-roll, even tracker-style…
  • an audio processing engine (beyond just adjusting volume/pan/speed)
  • an instrument rendering engine
  • some way of connecting all of it together and making it work - Buze’s UI for instance is partly node-based (notesequencer -> instrument -> effect -> output)

…and keeping it all cross-platform and GPL-compatible too. As we say in Australia: “Yeah, nah.” I don’t think it’s worth it either.

This would definitely be a dream come true, being able to do everything inside the same software I love! :slight_smile:
I could quickly think about using it to do typical DAW work, and also using it in conjunction with BGE to work as PureData for interactive realtime 3D audiovisuals, etc etc… Just dreaming… :smiley:

But honestly, it’s an utopia. There’s too many things involved and too much work would have to be done to make it at least like other basic DAWs around.
It’s totally not worth it, and it’s best to keep blender light for what it does well and have a dedicated software for audio.

I use for sound design and/or music composition Ableton Live, Reaper, Pro Tools and PureData.
Reaper is very powerfull and free for small projects, by the way, I’ve used it already to create all the audio for a blender short movie. You should check it

The problem with VST plugins is that they don’t work well under linux. You can use them through wine, but the latency is horrible.

If DAW functionality is needed, why not get DAW software? Blender shouldn’t try to be everything to everyone; it’s impractical. I mean, if you’re still tweaking an animation while you’re mixing audio, you’re going about it the wrong way. :slight_smile:

Here are some things I found with just a quick Google:

Linux distros with support for audio production
Reaper
25 Free DAW applications

Reaper has been getting a lot of good press.

And if you want FX plugins, there are tons and tons of free ones around. Just Google: “VST plugins” and you’ll find thousands to pick from.

Houdini has “CHOPs” channel operators where there are some really cool audio features like oscillator or realtime frequency analysis that can translate to channel data that in turn can be piped to midi or any animatable parameter in and outside of Houdini. It is really fun to drive data from/to music and of course it would be nice to have that kind of functionality in Blender but I use Houdini for that. Though if I could take the best parts from DAW´s and put it in Blender it would be better timeline display of multichannel audio with low latency sound playback/scrubbing realtime feedback to have (similar speed as a DAW), no 3D-package really have that.

Reaper is not free, so please don’t spread such misinformation! Just because Cockos has such a generous license policy, doesn’t mean it should be abused. There is a 30 day trial period and then it turns essentially into nagware, but a personal license is $60 and should be purchased if you use it. There is a also a business license for $225 if you make over $20k. Please read their “honest business model” for further info:

http://reaper.fm/purchase.php

Btw, I own licenses for most of the main DAW’s . yet Reaper is the one I mainly use. Having a very flexible/honest license is certainly one of the reasons I use it. Many other companies make you jump through hoops with their challenge/response BS , and I refuse to use DAW’s or plugins from these companies any more. U-he and Fabfilter are also good examples of companies that make plugins that also treat their customers as honest.

Cool. I hadn’t looked at it from that point of view.

Still, when considering a music editor, the obvious place to put it would be in the VSE and the VSE already has sync issues, so I think the best approach would be to break out the VSE/audio/music editor into a standalone application. Give the developers a chance to solve its problems without being encumbered with the rest of Blender as overhead. That’s got to be a lot to keep in one’s head while writing code.

You can scrub audio in Blender. It’s an option in the Playback menu of the Timeline. It’s not as fancy as say Reaper’s scrubbing but it does the job.

Forget all the DAW stuff, just put in some meters for the poor old VSE, so we can know what the “volume” values actually mean.

It’s true, it was a bad choice of words (the Free thing).
I meant you can work and train with it straight out before you have money for it.
I have the 60$ license (sadly I don’t make more than 20k :stuck_out_tongue:
It really is a honest business model and a great software!

I’ve been using FL Studio for all my DAW needs. I like the program, and the close contact you have with the devs via the forum. But the best part is the price IMO. You buy it relatively cheap, and after that you get all future updates for free. I prefer that over having to pay every time there is a new version of the program.

If i recall correctly, VST’s an open-source in general don’t mix well together when it comes to licensing. That’s why there’s the LV2 open plugin standard, but i haven’t seen many softsynths that use it.