[sublinear]

Are there any examples of music software that can be used professionally and isn't crippleware?

Specific to this "problem" with git, are there music project formats that aren't binary, or at least trivially and unambiguously machine translatable to/from plain text?

If the binary format is just TLVs why can't there be a plain text representation?

[piltdownman]

Cakewalk, Waveform Free, BitWig and REAPER all come to mind for DAWs. Audacity and Ardour as utilities.

For the second question ablbundle, the Ableton Note project filetype, might fit your criteria.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Why is Ardour a "utility" and not a DAW ?

[piltdownman]

Because its primary use-case in 2025 is as a hard-disk recorder. It is certainly a DAW by intent, but has fallen off since the days where SSL et al were contributing to the codebase.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Uh, I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.

Firstly, SSL never contributed to the codebase.

Secondly, Ardour's capabilities in 2025 vastly exceed what it was in 2008 when SSL paid me to work on it, and development continues today, arguably faster than ever before.

[piltdownman]

I've every idea what I'm talking about, as well as who I'm talking to.

Firstly, if funding development of the Ardour platform and employing you isn't contributing to the codebase, I don't know what is.

Secondly, full MIDI support - something we've had since Steinberg Pro 24 and Cubase on the Atari ST - was eventually brought in when? 2013? Instead you make a big deal about the various recording features that were present ahead of ProTools - e.g. in-track mixing (transparent regions), PFL/AFL solo models, a dedicated monitor section, multichannel master outs.

Anything further can simply be responded to where you historically hand-wave away the feature-lag between Ardour and DAWs with exponentially more market-share as the 'conception' of people who use "modern pop production techniques".

Indeed as you say yourself "If there's another DAW out there that works better for you than Ardour, you should use it. But you might also be surprised at how well Ardour works for you, especially if you record people playing instruments."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281462

[PaulDavisThe1st]

You're quoting from a thread that is 10 years old.

I know you can do better. Nobody needs to use let alone love ardour. But misinformation about it is troubling.

BTW, protocols dominated the daw space with either no MIDI or about as weak an implementation as ardour's, so appeals to 80s sequencers is a bit pointless

[sorrythanks]

REAPER is used professionally by many.

and it's more "nagware" than "crippleware"