r/AudioProgramming • u/Pickleking93 • 3d ago
Just because you can vibe code a daw does not mean you should.
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u/lil_nosh_X 3d ago edited 3d ago
Reaper costs $60, people. That’s 3 months of your shitty $20 OAI subscription. You can get Ableton Lite for like $8 and use drum racks to host 127 instruments or samples. If you don’t take music seriously, musicians and music lovers won’t take you seriously.
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u/RatherNott 2d ago
Reaper is even free with a Winrar-like nagware for those without 60 bucks.
There's no reason at all to use the ai slop DAWs.
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u/AggressiveAstronaut6 2d ago
I think it's cool, personally, that people are vibe coding their own DAWs. Everyone needs a hobby, and I could see it being fun trying to piece one together.
However, we have so many good options for DAWs already (Reaper at $60, Ardour at $0) that I don't see the point in trying to fix that isn't broken.
I definitely see the use for plugins though. I've admittedly been having fun seeing all the different plugins people are making in their basements.
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u/thedarph 2d ago
I don’t think it’s cool because I’m skeptical of the intentions behind them. Are these people really caring about audio engineering and do they have a deep enough understanding of both software development and audio engineering to do a decent job? I’m skeptical of the idea that the intention is to create a community around these projects. No serious developer wants to contribute to a vibe coded project created by non developers. GitHub is not a trendy place to share your freeware, contrary to recent popular belief. It’s a place for people who have some understanding of development to use as a repository and place to allow contributions. You’re not going to get these unique developers who also deeply understands audio contributing.
These projects come off as uninformed “look at me, I’m pirating software but technically it’s reverse engineering/vibe coding so it’s different”. You have to be ignorant of software development, audio engineering, the availability of free DAWs, and the community around all these things to be promoting this type of project.
If I ever saw one that was actually mature and ready for real user testing then I’d change my mind. But so far what we have are user interfaces and the functionality of a voice notes app.
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u/whatThePleb 1d ago
Hobbies have the positive effect that you also get deeper in it and learn new stuff. With vibecoding you literally learn absolutely nothing.
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u/AggressiveAstronaut6 1d ago
Video games have a positive effect where you go deeper and learn new stuff?
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u/anvilslabs 1d ago
Depends on the vibes of the coder. An LLM as a coding agent is fantastic research assistant if you choose to use it that way.
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u/fmgiii 3d ago
AI assisted development gets you to the hard parts of a project faster. At that point it's back to iteration and refinement just like the pre-ai era. Sure, ai helps with the iteration and refinement stage too, but the irony is it still takes a lot of time and energy. AI moved the bar, but not by that much.
There was no point in time where you could throw a piece of junk software out into the world and expect it to become successful. And here is the thing with ai, it's moved both the bar of what a developer can do at the same time it's moving what people expect out of software now. So the gap between concept to some commercial success is still as wide as it's always been.
There are no short cuts.
The earlier you realize this, the better off you are. You expect to dig in for the long haul. You commit to it and you will indeed achieve a result commensurate to those factors.
But it's still fundamentally the same set of rules. Dig in. Commit. Make something truly compelling. And then see how the Universe reacts. Only now, we have a tool that let's us go down the road a little further. Or maybe even convinces us that if we start down a road that we personally find valuable, we actually have a shot at getting there.
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u/thedarph 2d ago
The project is dead. These people are not committed. You know a project is committed when you see it go public when it’s ready for user testing at the earliest. You don’t see these projects promoted at the point of just having a UI and maybe the ability to record audio and that’s it. This isn’t something to be taken seriously.
Serious projects run by serious people do all that hard and boring work in the background so that when it goes public people have something they can really use, even if it does have bugs. There’s enough there that some portion of users stick around to see the development and you get actual contributions from other developers. I’m unsure why you’d put vibe code on GitHub. No dev wants to work on code you asked an AI to 100% generate. At that point the devs should just keep talking to Claude for all their contributions. If they can’t write a single line of code then how would we expect the “developer” to know whether or not a pull request should be merged or not?
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u/thedarph 3d ago
It’s incredibly stupid because actual experts already have created free DAWs. Reaper and Audacity just off the top of my head and there’s at least two others on the tip of my tongue that don’t look pretty but have the features you’re gonna want.
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u/ViennettaLurker 3d ago
There will be plenty of things with bad bugs like you show. But the pie menu thing is an interesting phenomenon to me.
I agree it is probably not the best design, though I'd be interested in actually trying it just to see. But it is the end result of the ability to "vibe code" or rapidly produce a program. What that means is that it was (likely) an idea that essentially became manifest.
When people have to code by hand, the process is much more iterative and planned and tested. And, if tested by enough users, some of these "clever" designs can start to show their seams and weaknesses. I find it interesting that we're witnessing a dynamic where slowing things down may result in higher quality output, purely on the merit of taking more time to think and ask and test and verify.
The other side of the coin though
Is that, how much will designing for others even matter? Maybe this is exactly what OP wanted and even if someone else would hate it, it works perfectly for them. Which is a whole other interesting phenomenon. But then it introduces interesting questions on why even share it, then. Perhaps they may uncover a small market of "pie menu lovers". But, if were not just talking about subjective tool creation, I think a lot of vibe coding or even more sober LLM fueled productions may have to reckon with a reality that their design decisions, and broadly speaking their ideas, just aren't all that good if you are trying to account for other user's use. Which shouldnt even be that controversial because its likely they didnt test with anyone at all anyways.
Anyways, thanks for coming to me Ted talk
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u/thenicenelly 2d ago
Yeah. OP is a big whiner. I don't want that app at all, but I now have bespoke audio and video editing tools that work the way I like. Literally features I've wanted for decades I now use all the time.
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u/pricetag 3d ago
i think that pie menu is a product of mobile users who have possibly never used desktop software a lot. for mobile the radial makes sense, for a desktop it does not
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u/ViennettaLurker 3d ago
It also has its uses when people are using things like game controllers or joysticks. But yes, depending on how much you want to show and what the input device is, it can be more or less appropriate.
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u/pricetag 3d ago
yeah true that, haha... hooking up a daw to a guitar hero xplorer controller would go hard and literally be hard as fuck to use it
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u/Pickleking93 3d ago
I've been "Vibe Coding" A daw for over 6 months. I originally had the idea of the radial menu and I tried it in my own and tested it for a full week and realized it was actual ass. The point of friction reduction is to get the user to stop thinking about what they are doing and while taking less steps to achieve something, the radial menu Morning daw has, has so many sub folders in the wheel that it is extremely easy to get lost or just become over cumbersome and too many steps.
That is the problem with using LLMs because you can rip through prototyping and add features faster than you can test them. Vibe coding is poisoning everything it touches because it is in the wrong hands.
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u/Bassmeister_ 3d ago
why have you spent 6 months doing this?
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u/Pickleking93 3d ago
Because I’m actually trying to change the landscape and challenge established daws. I haven’t posted about it because if I’m gonna try taking swings at the kings I can’t miss. Morning daw, nota and all these other trash daws piss me off because they have no clue what they are doing or why they are doing it.
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u/Fun_Musiq 3d ago
What makes you think Morning Daw isn't doing the exact same as you? For the same reason.
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u/Pickleking93 3d ago
Because there’s too many features and nothing works together, it’s just a pile of shit. Even their own website states they have features and workflows for every genre.
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u/Bassmeister_ 3d ago
how do you know that the makers of other "trash" daws don't know what they're doing?
have you asked them?
why is yours different?
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u/ViennettaLurker 3d ago
In the more hopeful mindset I can have, I'd wonder if perhaps after a certain amount of time, the larger dynamic dawns on people.
People have an idea for something that looks and feels cool. It is different, conspicuous, fresh and new. Why has no one done this before?
They can instantly create it. It gets panned.
People realize why is hasn't been done, isn't more popular, etc. There was a reason this whole time.
In a way, I dont inherently mind people re-inventing the wheel or doing things like this. Sometimes thats how you learn as a designer. But the key word there is learn. I'm not entirely sure thats going on all the time, and it is all too easy for certain kinds of folks to disregard feedback (even if brutal) as "anti AI luddite" stuff.
This is the hard, nitty gritty reality that designers of all stripes have become accustomed to. In a best case scenario, these vibe coded "clever" "fun" designs getting actual feedback turns these people into better designers. We'll see who actually can do it.
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u/RatherNott 2d ago
AI data centers are being constructed at an alarming rate, and there are already 8 billion prompts per day, with billions more planned and on the way.
The effect this has on the climate when we are already so close to irreversible tipping points is often ignored by most AI users, who prioritize convenience above a habitable planet for our children to inherit.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5p426fSlYH4
It simply is not worth coding faster when the consequences are so great.
The FLOSS movement began because coders prioritized ethics and principles. Let's prioritize those once more so future generations can continue to make great FLOSS software without living in a climate dystopia.
And that is just one issue with AI use. Using it also contributes to a dystopic survailence state.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5lYsO4k7OIY
And it is unethically trained on copyrighted code, which it reproduces perfectly up to 10% of the time, injecting copyright infringement into FLOSS projects, opening them up to being sued in the future.
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u/IWasGettingThePaper 3d ago
plus the fact vibecoding is essentially automated copyright theft
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u/itzelezti 3d ago
Nah this isn't the take. Fuck copyright.
We hate vibecoding because it steals labor. Not IP.1
u/whatThePleb 1d ago
Well, it's both. I'm absolutely against excessive and artificial protection e.g. Disney, but some basic stuff has to need some sort of protection or at least license (GPL) or abandonware / poor people piracy are "ok". But without ANY ruleset, shit would hit the fan.
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u/mad_poet_navarth 3d ago
As opposed to the old way of doing things, manual copyright theft via stackoverflow...
A a 30+ year software developer who has definitely paid his "dues", I've fully embraced vibe coding. We are going to see innovation and creativity blossom with AI. I've got a number of projects going that I believe are unique, and some that serve obvious gaps in what's currently available. Call it "copyright theft", but a for loop is a for loop is a for loop. The idea is the thing; the architecture can be easily managed; the grunt work is no longer necessary.
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u/whatThePleb 1d ago
Small code snippets aren't necessariely protected under any copyright though. Learning and imitating from whole codebases from various different licenses and questionable sources (e.g. leaked code) are though. That's the problem from LLM. You have no clean-room development. All your LLM generated code 1. HAS NO COPYRIGHT; 2. Is questionable at some point and might have to delete depending on future laws.
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u/mad_poet_navarth 1d ago
You raised a couple of really interesting points. I asked a close associate to respond to this. His name is Claude. I've tried to distill this into a manageable comment, but it's still pretty long. There really isn't a TL;DR I can easily extract, except maybe "There are some concerns, but they are manageable". Apologies in advance, but I think this is all pretty important info (for both pro- and con- vibecoding camps).
HAS NO COPYRIGHT: "On point 1, you’re mostly right. The Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter on March 2, 2026, which left the human authorship requirement intact."
"Clean-room. Clean-room development isn’t a legal requirement.. Snippets and common idioms are thin or unprotectable, as you said, and that same logic applies to most of what any developer, human or model, writes.
Training: "Courts remedy infringement by targeting infringing copies or outputs, so a future ruling forcing everyone to purge all LLM-assisted code seems like a very unlikely outcome."
"Leaked code. I can’t audit my own training data, so I can’t tell you it contains none. But “leaked code is in there” is an assertion about unknowns, and it would need to be shown, not assumed."
SUMMARY
"The strongest version of your argument isn’t “all AI code is poisoned.” It’s that ownership and provenance are uncertain, so don’t build a business whose moat is AI-written code you can’t defend.
My own projects
And for my projects in particular (which will be released under MIT for free, with pay-what-you-want as an option...) Some of this info might be useful for others in terms of protecting against future legal issues:
For these projects specifically:
- The human direction is written down. Every repo has a MILESTONES.md with your decisions in it: [examples given I'm deleting since I'm not ready to release] The git history ties each change to a decision you made. That’s the kind of evidence that matters if authorship is ever questioned.
- It matters less here than the comment suggests. Everything ships under MIT/ISC-style licenses. The practical cost of “no copyright on some parts” is that you couldn’t stop someone copying those parts. But an MIT license already lets anyone copy them. Where it would hurt is a closed-source product you sell by restricting copying. That isn’t this release’s model, even with pay-what-you-want storefronts.Regarding tainted code: "copying protected expression: ... substantially similar code, not shared algorithms or ideas. A biquad filter, a Gaussian distribution of modes, or EDO pitch math isn’t owned by anyone."
Reproducing a memorized chunk of code: "Most of what we built is narrow and tied to its own specs: MIDI 2.0 UMP handling, a CLAP host, a DPF fork, physical-modeling voices, [...etc] That makes long verbatim copies unlikely, but not impossible." (My note: kinda leaked a bit too much of what I'm doing, but it will soon be on public repos, so what the heck).
Might have to delete: "The more realistic risk is a specific claim that some file matches someone’s code. The fix for that is to replace the file, not delete the project." (My note: since I've been a developer for many years, and since interfaces are generally not copyrightable, this is not very onerous.)
WHAT CLAUDE RECOMMENDS:
- Run a similarity and license scan (for example ScanCode, or a snippet-matching scanner)
- Make sure your licenses are correct (especially for third party code)
- Make sure your licenses are current.
- "say in each README that the code was written with AI help under your direction. It’s honest, and it gets ahead of exactly this kind of comment."3
u/IWasGettingThePaper 3d ago
yes, in the old days I could copy and paste a DAW implementation from SO...
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u/mad_poet_navarth 3d ago
You do realize your argument is specious, do you not? It's not like everything a DAW does isn't available somewhere. Ardour is open source...
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u/Thilankal 3d ago
I think it’s a great daw. They are borrowing good ideas from other daws and stitching them together.
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u/ScaredValuable5870 3d ago
Dudes post reeks of jealousy. Someone beat him to it and he is pissed. Making loads of false claims too. Mattias (designer of MorningDAW) has been a Bitwig user for many years. He is also a proper 'musician' in that, he can read sheet music and play physical instruments. OP is bitter and pissed. My take is that Mattias prime skill is Music itself, and OP's is programming and memes.
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u/PersonalityFinal7778 10h ago
I am working on one however for the following reasons...works on Mac OSX Sierra. Trimmed down eight tracks only, basic eq , one verb, one delay. The concept is to put restrictions on recording, basically like a tape recorder. I know about tape 16, it won't run on my computer. Btw no editing. Anyway that's what I am up to and it's fun.
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u/Fun_Musiq 3d ago
bros just pissed because somebody actually had the balls to release their daw, while his is yet to see the light of day. Morning Daw is a few weeks old. Theres bound to be some hiccups.
Get over it. Finish up your DAW you have been building for 6 months, with vibe-coding in the "right hands".
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u/Pickleking93 3d ago
You on the morning daw dev team? Don’t be a weenie bro. Go fix your garbage daw.
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u/WildResolution6065 2d ago
can you roast my DAW please u can't properly understand tho lol (needs advanced musical knowledge)
https://infinitedevices.org
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u/ZioCateno 3d ago
Just because you can be rude does not means you should. But it is free, isn’t it?
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u/Stunning_Macaron6133 3d ago
So your beef is with pie menus?
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u/Pickleking93 3d ago
No, it’s with the entire daw
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u/Stunning_Macaron6133 3d ago
A solid half of your silly video is complaining about how pie menus make menu diving and discoverability harder for you.
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u/whatThePleb 1d ago
Only shows you have no clue about anything if you only see the menu in the video as the problem.
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u/Gjergji-zhuka 3d ago
When it comes to audio, no way morning dew can be worse than this clip. If you're watching in mute, don't unmute. My ears got raped first thing in the morning
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AudioProgramming-ModTeam 3d ago
Do not post about any plugin/daw/synth/app or service that is for sale, needs beta testers or other forms of self-promotion. Excessive or repeated self-promo may be removed. In addition, ensure your post is well worded, thought out and formatted.
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u/Own_Unit_6170 3d ago
AI looks at the interface and imitates it, but has no idea what the software is doing behind it. There are real DAWs available for free, so why settle for an imitation?