[_qbjt]

> The point is that "trying to make music" isn't much of a description: people's workflows for "making music" vary dramatically. Not many years ago, more or less the only way to do this was to record yourself playing one or more instruments and/or singing. These days, there are many fundamentally different workflows, and countless minor variations of each one.

Excellent point and apologies if that comment came across as inflammatory. I really respect the work you and the Ardour team have done even if it's not for me (and infinite thanks for your work on JACK, it truly is a special piece of software). My frustration has more to do with there not being a FOSS DAW that gives me that true Ableton-like experience. I understand why though, this stuff is hard to build and one workflow does not fit all as you point out.

[thefr0g]

Ardour is really great for recording and mixing. For a more "contemporary" workflow you might want to try zrythm¹, it's getting better and better. (I still use Bitwig though…) If you exclusively make electronic music you could also look into LMMS², it's more of an electronic-music-toy than an actual DAW but thats not necessarily a bad thing.

¹ https://www.zrythm.org/en/explore.html ² https://lmms.io/

[_qbjt]

> For a more "contemporary" workflow you might want to try zrythm¹, it's getting better and better.

Oh wow, Zrythm looks awesome! Thank you for the suggestion, I'll be taking this DAW for a spin sometime soon. :)

> Ardour is really great for recording and mixing.

Yeah, I'm actually warming up to Ardour as a general mix & mastering environment. It reminds me of Logic Pro in that sense, being more suited for final touches than composition (in my personal workflow).

> If you exclusively make electronic music you could also look into LMMS², it's more of an electronic-music-toy than an actual DAW but thats not necessarily a bad thing.

How is LMMS these days? I tried it sometime last year and had a lot of fun but it crashed too much for my personal comfort (tbf that could have just been whatever buggy LV2 / VST plugins I was testing). It comes a bit closer to the "look and feel" I look for in a DAW - kinda reminds me of older versions of FL Studio which is kewl because that's the software I learned how to produce music on.