Tracktion Waveform 12 Free - now available

[abacab]

https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free

"The world's best and only cross-platform, unrestricted, fully-featured Free DAW just got a major update… Introducing Waveform 12 FREE."

 

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by abacab

[Fleer]

Noice. One of my fav daws. 

[mibby]

@Fleer  Does it do a particular thing really well? Or do you like the workflow or what?

[abacab]

I like the MIDI pattern generators.

 

[abacab]

Older video from Tracktion:

 

[Fleer]

1 hour ago, mibby said:

@Fleer  Does it do a particular thing really well? Or do you like the workflow or what?

Well, I love Tracktion’s sonic world. It all started with Retromod, Biotek (1&2) and the so-called Collective, but these last years they have been pretty amazing with synths like F.’em, Spacecraft, Hyperion, Abyss, Chop Suey and Novum. You can tell I’m pretty much enamored with Tracktion and their DAW made me forget Reaper. 

[Doug Rintoul]

Still haven't upgrade to Waveform 12 Pro. I wonder if there will be a sale on upgrades in the near future.

[abacab]

11 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Still haven't upgrade to Waveform 12 Pro. I wonder if there will be a sale on upgrades in the near future.

There is usually a deal farther down the road, around the holidays, or just before the next version is announced,

My last upgrade was to WF11 Pro. That's probably the last Pro upgrade for me for a while. Don't use it that much these days. It's only a back-up DAW for me that I originally bought for the pattern generators to create MIDI chord progressions for export.

Studio One Pro now offers its chord tracks, plus there's now Scaler 2, neither of which were available when Waveform was first released, also having them both now makes it a bit of redundancy for me. Although it is so easy to make a chord progression from scratch in Waveform, I may dabble with Waveform 12 Free to see if there are any improvements.

[Fleer]

Didn’t get Scaler 2 myself. Waveform does it all. 

[Fleer]

A good vid on Waveform 12 Pro (and Free) that sold me. I particularly dig the Master Track feature. 

 

[abacab]

OK, just tried out the Waveform 12 Free.

At first glance, the new UI improvements are nice, and the core program appears essentially the same as Pro, except that it's missing the Pro plugins as well as the chord and arranger tracks. Any plugins that you own will scan and be available.

They have added a "master" track, and the global marker and tempo (time signature, tempo, & key) tracks are available as well.

It also includes "Rompler" which has a usable palette of essential sounds, the 4OSC synth, a micro wave sampler, and micro drum sampler with 808 & 809 micro kits.

 

Edited August 21, 2022 by abacab

[asprog]

Note that you can now upgrade/personalize Waveform Free with paid expansions: https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free-expansions

 

Edited August 21, 2022 by asprog

[kitekrazy]

fully-featured Free DAW - I'll take Bandlab.   I've taken a ride on the Tracktion train ever since it came out but it's not for me even though I will probably mess with the free version.

[abacab]

16 minutes ago, Paul Young said:

fully-featured Free DAW - I'll take Bandlab.   I've taken a ride on the Tracktion train ever since it came out but it's not for me even though I will probably mess with the free version.

Tracktion Waveform is probably the BEST cross-platform, fully featured FREE DAW...

Edited August 21, 2022 by abacab

[Esteban Villanova]

The conparison chart says something like ‘advanced MIDI’ wasn’t included in the free version.  Any idea what’s that?

[rsinger]

I played with it a bit and the MIDI generator is kind of fun. Addictive Drums 2 didn't work for me, it doesn't render properly. If they fix AD2 and other VSTs I like work, I may get the MIDI Producer expansion. 

[abacab]

12 minutes ago, Esteban Villanova said:

The conparison chart says something like ‘advanced MIDI’ wasn’t included in the free version.  Any idea what’s that?

I took a look today, and as I mentioned above, chord and arranger tracks are missing from the free version. The chord track would allow your MIDI tracks to follow changes in the chord tracks,

[abacab]

1 hour ago, rsinger said:

Addictive Drums 2 didn't work for me, it doesn't render properly.

I dragged a 4-bar pattern from AD2 over to a Waveform track, and then used File > "Export: Render to a file",  and successfully exported a wave, flac, and MP3 file.

What settings were you using? I took the defaults...

 

[ALC]

3 hours ago, abacab said:

Tracktion Waveform is probably the BEST cross-platform, fully featured FREE DAW...

I would agree with this.

Cubase and Live have bundled versions (with hardware) but no free versions.

Studio One Prime doesn’t support 3rd party VSTs.

A lot of very good free options (like Cakewalk) are Windows only.

Waveform even supports Linux.

 So, if you want a common DAW for sharing projects that utilized VSTs, Waveform would be a reasonable choice (otherwise, if VSTs were not required, for pure audio recording, I’d go with Studio One Prime).

[abacab]

16 minutes ago, ALC said:

if VSTs were not required, for pure audio recording, I’d go with Studio One Prime.

And it's a rather affordable $99 upgrade from Prime to Studio One Artist, which does include VST support now. That's $50 less than the full Waveform Pro. And Artist is bundled with some PreSonus audio interfaces.

Overall I think that Studio One offers a better workflow and feature set. And a user manual.