A new Digital Audio Workstation created using AI

A multitrack recording, editing, mixing and mastering environment written in Rust — Linux first, Wayland native, GTK 4 native; Windows and macOS builds come from the same code.

FaderFrame aims to be a professional DAW: graph-based routing with buses, aux sends, folder buses and sidechains, hard-realtime multicore audio processing with automatic plugin delay compensation, MIDI and virtual instruments with a key, a chord track and MIDI effects, modulators and parallel effect containers, automation, CLAP/VST3 hosting (LV2 on Linux, Audio Units on macOS), an analogue-console-style mixer with modelled preamps, console summing and cue mixes for the performers' headphones, a full set of stock devices, mastering meters, surround, object-based (ADM BWF) and IAMF masters with binaural monitoring, album delivery down to CD and vinyl masters, video for working to picture, lead sheets, scratch pads, project templates, and dockable, detachable editors.

Status: in active development (version 0.23.0). Most of a working DAW is there; see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for what comes next.

Arranger: a clip clipboard (copy, cut and paste across tracks; Shuffle inserts), Select All (Ctrl+A), splits that keep every piece selected, slip editing (Ctrl+Alt+drag), Snap to Objects with a guide line, a grid drawn at every zoom (its strength in Preferences → Editing), folder buses and folder groups, scratch pads, a Play Start Marker, and an audit of the arranger and recording that fixed 33 defects.

Transport: the loop dragged or resized while playing without a glitch; Return to Start on Stop beside Return to Project Start on Stop (also on the Stop button's right-click menu); abort the take (Ctrl+Space) or abort it and record again (Ctrl+Shift+Space); a count-in before bar 1 when the pre-roll cannot reach back (the counter shows bar 0 and COUNT-IN); show mode arms each song's stop ahead.

Mixing: a send or cue send with a pan of its own places its source; cue mixes are complete (buses and returns solo- and mute-safe, automation, MIDI learn, control surfaces, talkback); the Inspector (F11) and the Channel Overview; check marks on every menu toggle.

Rendering: a report measured from the written files after every render and album export; every export asks before replacing a file and swaps the new one in only once it is complete.

Audio: a new Audio preferences page (devices, a second device through PipeWire or JACK, rate, buffer, channels, where each channel goes, latency); buffer changes applied live where the audio system can; recovery when a device goes and comes back; recordings placed by the device's real latency.

Plugins and devices: favorites in categories (plugin browser and insert menus); sandboxed editors no longer close right after opening (#12); the Synth's second wave in a three-deck editor with 33 more presets — 470 factory presets across the built-in devices.

Stability: the 0.22 crashes fixed — realtime threads past rtkit's time limit are demoted instead of the process being killed, and memory prefaulting, GPU errors and GStreamer's MXF demuxer no longer bring it down — and a crash reporter: a crash leaves a report in the Crash Reports folder, and the next start offers it.

Look: Lumen, a ninth skin drawn with light instead of hardware.

Screenshots

They show the demo session (--demo, or Preferences → General → On start-up): eight bars in A minor whose audio is generated, so it needs no files (the vocals, picture and drum-sampler shots add imported files). The main set is in the default Studio skin.

The Editing workspace: markers, the Intro and Verse sections, the key and the chord track above the tracks, the arpeggios in a folder, and in the bottom dock the pad's modulators — an envelope follower that ducks it under the drums and a synced LFO that moves it across the stereo field. Beside the transport are the Q (input quantize) and the "i" (Inspector) buttons:

Snap to Objects: the Bassline dragged in Slip mode (where nothing else attracts it) lands on the start of the Pad and Melody clips at bar 5; the guide line names what it caught. Above it the edit toolbar, with Objects and Samples (snap to samples) on:

A scratch pad: the Verse copied into a pad of its own ("Verse Idea" — its clips, section, key and chords) to try something without touching the song. The switcher in the arranger's corner shows the pad in the accent colour, the ruler is tinted, and its menu goes back to the song, makes new pads or brings this one into the song:

Recording from bar 1 with a two-bar pre-roll: what lies before the project's start is counted in — the counter runs up from −1.1 with COUNT-IN under it and the ruler shows a badge — and playback and the take begin on bar 1. The Transport menu holds the stop behaviours, aborting a take, the Play Start Marker and check marks for every switch:

The MIDI workspace with the piano roll editing the lead synth's melody, the key and the chords above the notes and the scale highlighted:

Clips: the plucks' harmony and the drum loop's hits converted to MIDI on new tracks under them, and the pad's clip effects (a compressor, a saturator and a reverb rendered into the audio it plays):

Vocals: a sung phrase in the pitch editor, its notes corrected to the key (their sung positions faintly behind them, the vibrato halved), and a speech clip transcribed into the Lyrics lane above the tracks (both imported into the demo):

The Mixing workspace: a preamp on the bass, inserts, sends to an echo and a reverb aux, a MIDI track's strip (it plays the arpeggiating synth), the drum bus's parallel-compression container and a true-peak limiter on the master:

The Inspector (F11, or the "i" in the header bar) on the left with the selected bass track — its routing, track settings, devices (with their latency and gain reduction) and its channel strip — and the Channel Overview in the bottom dock: input → American 312 preamp → Compressor → Saturator → channel → sends → output:

Folders that are buses and groups: the Arpeggios folder sums its tracks (BUS in its header, its strip a FOLDER BUS in the Inspector) and its G switch makes them one for editing and arming:

A cue mix for the performers' headphones: the bar over the strips switches the mixer between the main mix and Cue 1 (Copy Main Mix, pre-fader taps, TALK latched); every fader, pan and mute now sets the track's send to the cue mix, framed in its colour — a track that reaches the master through a bus is off by the console rule (the drums go through the drum bus) — and the master section is the cue mix's own, on outputs 3–4 with its click:

A multi-output instrument: the Drum Sampler on the lead synth's track plays its pads (loaded with six samples, its editor on the right) into its outputs, and Create Output Tracks gave every output a track of its own in one step — Lead Synth Main and Out 1–8, in a folder under the instrument, routed where it went (its own track now only carries the instrument):

Surround and objects: the master as a 7.1.4 bed, the tracks placed in its room (the small rooms in the mixer strips, their meters showing every channel), the lead synth as an object, and the Surround Panner with the pad behind the listener and up high:

Device editors: the EQ (dynamic and spectral bands, analyser), the Synth (three decks of sections under its oscillator, filter and envelope displays — LFO 2, the mod envelope, the modulation matrix, the wheels, chorus, delay and reverb among them), the Program EQ and the Parallel Squash container on the drum bus:

The Compressor on the bass (its transfer curve and the gain reduction over the signal), the true-peak Limiter on the master with its loudness readouts, the Reverb and the Delay (Echo):

The Mastering workspace with the Tools view (EBU R128 loudness, levels, phase and spectrum):

The album: the demo's sections as songs, analysed, with what delivery will make of them (levelling, limiting) and the CD and vinyl masters a click away:

After every render and album export, a report measured from the files as written:

Picture: a movie in the arranger's Video lane above the demo (a filmstrip of the clip) and the video window in the bottom dock, frame-exact against the sound — the time burnt into the picture (10.440 s) and the overlay's project timecode (00:00:10:11 at 25 frames a second) agree:

The clip launcher: the demo's clips sent to it in four scenes, the Verse playing (green, each clip's loop progress under its name) and the Chorus waiting for the next bar (yellow). The letters are launch modes (G gate, T toggle, R repeat, L legato), the chevrons follow actions. Record to Arrangement is on: every loop played to its end is already written into the arrangement above, where the tracks that play the launcher are dimmed:

Preferences → Audio (here on the silent dummy device with a pretend eight-channel interface): the devices, sample rate, buffer size and channels, then what runs — the stream, the latencies (recordings move back by the input and output latency) and where each channel goes. With PipeWire or JACK it also offers a second device to play on or record from:

The plugin browser with favorites in categories of your own, a plugin's details and its realtime check:

Nine skins, switched live (View → Theme or Preferences → General → Theme): Studio, Vintage Console (walnut cheeks, enamel panels, skirted knobs, plasma bar-graph meters), Daylight (light), Midnight, Frost, Fjord (dark slate and petrol panels with coral and old-gold light, calm contrast for long sessions), Neon, High Contrast and Lumen:

Lumen, the newest, is drawn with light instead of hardware: ink planes stepped by luminance, halo knobs with glowing value arcs, pill faders and buttons that light from within, fine gradient meters with a bloom, clips as translucent cards, a glass transport display in tabular figures and one cyan-to-violet accent:

GTK 4 application, native on Wayland, HiDPI/fractional scaling via GTK. Optionally the analysers, the EQ and the devices' faces are drawn on the GPU (vello on wgpu; Preferences → General → Drawing): the mastering tools went from 26 to 55 frames a second, and the frames go to GTK without a copy through the CPU — as dmabufs on Linux (60 frames a second), as shared D3D12 textures on Windows.

Arranger (virtualised): tracks, audio clips with waveforms, MIDI clips, move/split/delete, snapping, zoom down to single samples with the grid drawn at every zoom where clips snap (how strongly: Preferences → Editing → Grid lines), loop range (dragged or resized while playing without a glitch), playhead, console-style track headers with mute/solo/arm/monitor, volume, pan and meters (the wheel over the headers turns their faders and knobs and never scrolls; a held scrollbar stops the view following the playhead). Clicking a clip selects it and moves the playhead to the (snapped) click; Shift-click selects from the last clicked clip, Ctrl-click toggles one, Ctrl-drag draws a rectangle, Ctrl+A selects every clip shown, and moves, trims, fades and gain changes apply to every selected clip. Splitting (S, or B with a range) keeps every piece selected, so aligned drums split again without reselecting.

Snap to Objects (on by default; Edit menu, the edit toolbar's Objects, Preferences → Editing): a drag within 8 pixels of a clip edge on any shown track, a marker, a section, the loop, the edit selection, the Play Start Marker or the stopped playhead lands on it, before the grid, with a guide line naming what it caught; automation points, tempo points, chords and piano-roll notes snap the same way. Alt bypasses all snapping; in Slip mode only objects attract.

Clipboard: Ctrl+C/X/V/D copy, cut, paste and duplicate the edit range (with its automation) or else the selected clips — with everything they hold, by value, so a paste works after the source track is gone. Paste goes to the playhead (the edit cursor without Link Timeline) on the selected track, the other copied tracks following on the tracks