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by someguyiguess 28 days ago
Yes. I’ve wanted something like this for a while. I’ve always wondered why there isn’t version control for DAWs. So many times I’ve spent hours editing a track and accidentally saved it without specifying a unique file name. Only to open it later and wish I could go back to before the changes that fucked it up.
4 comments

The good version controls used for code & text are line-oriented; most DAW session file formats are semantically scoped, and so the VC tools won't work well.

Most DAWs allow you to "snapshot" a session at any time, and return to it as you want to. Certainly Ardour does that.

DAW projects aren't text. They can include audio files, plug-ins, automation curves, MIDI data, and more.

A complete reconstruction would have to save and freeze all of those elements.

You can save references to save space, but you still need a complete collection of everything as a starting point.

And DAWs themselves regularly change their saved file formats.

For a completely secure reconstruction you'd have to save a complete virtual machine with the current DAW version, current OS, current installed plug-ins - with licensing and DRM - and all of the project data.

That's no different than git + binary blobs.

The problem is not the non-text elements, because in a non-destructive non-linear editor, those elements are rarely, if ever, modified after creation.

The rest of the state can easily be represented as text, but as I noted in my other comment (a sibling of yours) the format is rarely line oriented which makes most VC tools not particularly suitable.

Logic Pro allows you to revert to previous saves / auto-saves.
Reaper makes periodical autosaves.