Stargate Is The Newest Open-Source Digital Audio Workstation

[stargateaudio]

Interesting project.

Thanks

Can it already compete with qtractor and Muse for MIDI editing? What do you not like about those as FOSS, Qt-based MIDI editors?

Great question. I have not used Muse in a while, but I have used Qtractor recently. Qtractor is still very much a traditional DAW for traditional recorded music, whereas I am building something that is far more catered towards modern electronic composition, with a strong pattern-based workflow. Aside from that, I personally dislike the piano roll editor in Qtractor, the way notes are added, also the way that plugins and routing for tracks are managed. Of course, maybe some will prefer that based on their own workflow or comfort level with it, but I am trying to build something quite different than anything that has existed before, and serve a specific niche that IMHO has been underserved in open source DAWs. Kind of like what FL Studio is to Windows users, but I am actually trying to take the concept further than FL Studio did, rather than cloning FL Studio as LMMS set out to do.

Then some of the other project design goals that could not be accommodated with other DAWs:
* Extreme CPU optimization, being completely usable on 10-15 year old laptops, to better serve those who cannot afford the latest CPU, this was only possible if I created my own ecosystem
* Project portability and durability across CPU arch. OS and many years of time, once again, only possible if I control the ecosystem

If you want to read more about why I created yet another DAW, I summarized it in this manifesto:

https://github.com/stargateaudio/stargate/blob/main/docs/project_design_principles.md

Do you foresee Stargate being able to go toe-to-toe with REAPER as a MIDI editor in a few years with support for microtonal scales etc?

I think so, I believe the MIDI workflow already quite robust has some advantages, given that Stargate DAW was designed as a "MIDI first" DAW and not "recording first" like most others (including Reaper). I have already had multiple requests for adding support for microtonal scales. I believe it should be possible to do, maybe not even difficult. The biggest blocker right now is that I have never composed microtonal music and I do not understand the features that a microtonal composer would find compelling. I understand the basic idea of microtonal, but I really want to understand what will make this a great feature before I design it. If you have ideas that you would like to share, feel free to start a FR on Github or reach out on Discord to discuss.

[danboid]

I've had a quick go with Stargate. It looks promising but I've not been able to get any sound out of it yet under Ubuntu when using Pulseaudio. I like its simple and clean interface and quick build time.

You say you have no intention to support any existing plugin format. What if an experienced dev says they want to add VST or LV2 support and make a serious effort to do so? Would they have to fork Stargate or would you accept patches for plugin support if someone else was willing to do the work?

It's much more geared towards live performance but have you seen https://www.bespokesynth.com/ ?

[stargateaudio]

I've had a quick go with Stargate. It looks promising but I've not been able to get any sound out of it yet under Ubuntu when using Pulseaudio. I like its simple and clean interface and quick build time.

Is `pasuspender` installed on your system? It's possible that I need to include `pulse-utils` (or whatever the package is called) in the Ubuntu package dependencies. When `pasuspender` is installed on a system, Stargate tests to make sure it works by running something like `pasuspender sleep 1`, and if it works it uses it to run the engine. Check if pasuspender is installed and working, and let me know. If it's not installed, I suspect that is the cause of your problems.

You say you have no intention to support any existing plugin format. What if an experienced dev says they want to add VST or LV2 support and make a serious effort to do so? Would they have to fork Stargate or would you accept patches for plugin support if someone else was willing to do the work?

I would definitely consider it. We would need to hash out the details of the implementation first, which might be quite a process. Implementing MIDI out to allow connecting to something like Carla might be a better option than natively hosting the plugins.

It's much more geared towards live performance but have you seen https://www.bespokesynth.com/ ?

I did see that. Looks very cool, but modular synths are not really suited to how I work. I used to use Reaktor 3/4/5 back in the day, had to give it up when I realized I was wasting all of my time wiring things up insead of making music, LOL. But I have been considering ways to make the Stargate plugin rack more modular, maybe something akin to Reason where you can flip the rack around and see the back side and wires.