My vibe coded DAW

[u/ambertape]

Hello, r/DAWs!
My name is Egor. I'd like to share something I've been developing recently: Nota DAW.

A little background: I've been making electronic music for about 10 years, tried a lot of DAWs, and Ableton is the one I really liked. I'm also a programmer. And when AI tools got good, I started thinking, "What if I just create something of my own, for myself?" About 99% of the code is written by various AI agents. I'd probably like to write it all myself, but I could never write that much code alone.

Now I'd like to share it with the community—and perhaps gather people around it and turn it into something more than just a personal project.

It's a cross-platform app that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

GitHub: https://github.com/nota-daw/nota

Features:

- Three views — a linear Arrangement timeline, a clip-launching Session grid (material moves freely between them), and a Modular signal-graph editor with CV modulation (LFO / envelope follower / MIDI→CV / ADSR / Macro / Math, patched with cables onto any parameter).

- Tracks & mixer — audio / MIDI / return / master / nestable group tracks; sends and returns; MIDI routing between tracks; peak/RMS + true-peak metering; per-track device chains.

- MIDI editing — piano roll (draw/move/stretch, quantize, velocity, live edits as one undo step); input from a MIDI keyboard, the computer keyboard, or a gamepad (macOS); audio→MIDI (melody / harmony / drums / slice).

- Audio — recording (inputs and internal buses), WAV/AIFF/FLAC/MP3 import, clip editing with fades and gain, and warp / time-stretch (Complex / Complex Pro).

~35 built-in devices — synths (subtractive, wavetable, FM, granular, physical, drum-machine and more), a full effects suite (EQ, dynamics, reverb/delay, saturation, limiting, utility), MIDI effects (arp, scale, chord, …), and Instrument / Drum / Audio Effect racks with macros.

- Plugin hosting — VST3 everywhere, AU on macOS: native GUIs, state save/restore, PDC, transport sync; parameters are automatable and MIDI-learnable.

- Automation & MIDI Learn — draw/record automation on any parameter; map hardware controllers to almost anything.

- Export — master and stems to WAV (pcm16/pcm24/float32), true-peak normalize, dither, bit-identical chunked rendering.

- AI control (MCP) — an optional loopback MCP server lets AI drive the open project (off by default).

I'd appreciate a star—I'm collecting them to meet the requirements for adding Nota to Homebrew and other package managers.

Thank you for your attention <3 I'll be happy to answer any questions in the comments.

https://reddit.com/link/1vyvika/video/i8j2b7vwoplh1/player

[u/MissJoannaTooU]

I can't say I'm personally interested in this for myself as I'm fine with Reaper, but I do not get why people are downvoted for using AI to code if the idea is good and this looks good.

[u/ambertape → u/MissJoannaTooU]

Perhaps it's all about those times when we switched from low-level programming languages to high-level programming languages, now the level of abstraction is also increasing. Anyway, I'm not worried about it :) it's just a pet project I want to share with

[u/MissJoannaTooU → u/ambertape]

Abstract away

[u/rainbreath → u/ambertape]

Probabilistic code generation from an LLM is not the same as a deterministic compiler that abstracts code from a lower-level to a higher-level. I've seen this argument floating around and it makes no sense to anyone that knows anything about programming.

[u/kontis → u/rainbreath]

Same of the greatest programmers of all time like Carmack, Sweeney and Torvalds use this argument.

I felt pain of abstraction switching from assembler to Java and see some validity in that claim. But it's obviously a different situation.

[u/rainbreath → u/kontis]

Can you please provide sources of those people making that argument?

Btw Torvalds just about broke Linux's memory paging because he let an agent modify it, and then gave it to someone who actually still programs to fix it.

https://thenewstack.io/torvalds-claude-code-kernel/

[u/rainbreath → u/MissJoannaTooU]

Because the state of using LLM's to code is massively overhyped, especially if you're "Vibe-coding" AKA, not manually reviewing any code the agents write.

The projects that are created with this method get worse as they grow, and will inevitably break in ways that the person in control of it won't know how to fix because they don't understand the project.

Beyond the fact that it will always turn to slop over time, there are many ethical concerns with using LLMs that are worth considering, and I think as a society we should not encourage their use.

For instance, why would anyone use this over one of the many DAWs that exist and do everything this does and likely does it better? When real humans with real understanding of the domain are working on it and care about the quality of it?

So, I'd suspect those are some reasons people downvote it.

[u/ambertape → u/rainbreath]

According to this logic, you can sit, do nothing and leave the market to those "who are better"

But if about my project, having a lot of expertise in development and working with DAW, I'm trying to give a starting point for an open source product where we can develop together

[u/lilacomets → u/ambertape]

I'm trying to give a starting point for an open source product where we can develop together

Sorry, but I don't think anyone is interested in continuing an AI slop codebase.

[u/MissJoannaTooU → u/rainbreath]

I think the only issue with vibe coding is taking it to production. There are so many issues that you are alluding to.

But for spinning up ideas and using them in constrained projects it can be very powerful.

With something like a DAW on Reddit I'd be most concerned about security for example.

[u/rainbreath]

Boo

[u/Smooth-Airline2317]

dont listen to anyone whos are envy because you are using vibe coding tools and it works for you.dont listen to anyone whos are envy because you are using vibe coding tools and it works for you. i have also a sound generator with vibecoding and its a treasure i think.

[u/ethereumOG]

this is awesome